West Virginia Environmental Settlements: Coal, Chemicals, and PCBs

West Virginia’s environmental settlements have grown out of coal mining discharges, a chemical spill that contaminated the Charleston water supply, PCB pollution in rivers and lakes, natural gas construction work, and municipal sewer failures. The dollar figures run from a few hundred thousand to roughly $200 million in required pollution controls, and most of the cases are brought under the Clean Water Act by the U.S. Department of Justice, the EPA, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, or citizen groups suing under the statute’s enforcement provisions.

What follows is a case-by-case look at the largest and most consequential of those agreements.

Coal Mining Clean Water Act Settlements

Coal mining has produced more enforcement activity than any other industry in the state, and most of the money has come through consent decrees that combine civil penalties with required investments in wastewater treatment.

Alpha Natural Resources, 2014

In March 2014, Alpha Natural Resources, its subsidiary Alpha Appalachian Holdings (formerly Massey Energy), and 66 related companies agreed to spend an estimated $200 million on wastewater treatment and infrastructure upgrades at roughly 79 active mines and 25 processing plants across West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Virginia. The deal included a $27.5 million civil penalty, described at the time as the largest ever under Section 402 of the Clean Water Act. West Virginia, a co-plaintiff, received about $8.9 million of that penalty.¹

The government alleged more than 6,200 permit violations at 794 outfalls between 2006 and 2013, involving iron, selenium, salinity, and other pollutants. The consent decree required treatment systems to eliminate selenium and salinity violations, environmental management systems, internal and third-party audits, and escalating penalties for any future noncompliance. It also resolved violations from an earlier 2008 consent decree with Massey Energy that had carried a $20 million penalty.¹

Consol Energy and Dunkard Creek, 2011

In March 2011, Consol Energy agreed to pay a $5.5 million civil penalty and spend an estimated $200 million on pollution controls to settle Clean Water Act violations at six West Virginia mines: Blacksville No. 2, Loveridge, Robinson Run, Four States, Shoemaker, and Windsor. The mines had allegedly exceeded chloride limits hundreds of times over four years.²

Those discharges had fed a September 2009 golden algae bloom in Dunkard Creek that killed thousands of fish, mussels, and amphibians. Under the consent decree, Consol built a centralized reverse osmosis treatment plant near Mannington capable of processing 3,500 gallons of mine water per minute. The facility was expected to remove over 96 million pounds of total dissolved solids and more than 11 million pounds of chloride per year. Consol also had to move wastewater discharges from its two Ohio River basin mines away from sensitive headwater streams and into the Ohio River itself.³

Arch Coal and International Coal Group, 2015

In August 2015, Arch Coal and 14 International Coal Group subsidiaries agreed to a consent decree covering hundreds of Clean Water Act violations across mines in West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. The government alleged more than 1,200 violations of discharge limits for aluminum, manganese, iron, and total suspended solids over six years, amounting to more than 8,900 days of noncompliance. The companies paid a $2 million civil penalty and had to put compliance management systems, third-party audits, training programs, and a violation-tracking database in place.⁴

Bluestone Coal, 2016 and 2020

Bluestone Coal Corp., part of the coal operations tied to the family of then-Governor Jim Justice, agreed in 2016 to a $900,000 fine and millions in new pollution control investments. That settlement resolved more than 23,000 water pollution violations between 2009 and 2014 across operations in five states.⁵

In December 2020, a separate consent decree was filed in federal court in Bluefield to resolve a Sierra Club suit over selenium discharges at Bluestone’s Red Fox Mine. The company pledged to come into compliance within one year, pay $30,000 in new penalties, and contribute $270,000 to the West Virginia Land Trust for land acquisition along the Tug Fork River. Shortly before that federal deal, the WVDEP had reached its own agreement, accepting $125,000 in penalties and relaxing selenium limits at three of the four outfalls at issue.⁵

The 2014 Elk River Chemical Spill

On January 9, 2014, a storage tank owned by Freedom Industries leaked crude MCHM, a coal-processing chemical, into the Elk River in Charleston. The spill contaminated the water supply for about 300,000 people and produced both criminal cases and the largest consumer class-action settlement in the state’s environmental history.⁶

Freedom Industries was fined $900,000 on three criminal Clean Water Act counts, though the court acknowledged the bankrupt company was unlikely to pay. Six owners, managers, and employees pleaded guilty to misdemeanors. Company president Gary Southern and executive Dennis Farrell received 30-day jail sentences; the other four received probation. Together, the six were fined $92,500.⁷

The civil case was larger. A $151 million class-action settlement was reached with West Virginia American Water Company and its parent companies ($126 million) and Eastman Chemical, the supplier of the spilled chemical ($25 million). U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver Jr. granted preliminary approval in September 2017 and final approval on June 8, 2018.⁸⁹

Claims fell into six categories: residential, business, hourly wage loss, medical, pregnancy, and government. Residential households were initially told to expect $550 plus $180 per additional household member, though the final approval order noted payouts could be up to 20 percent lower. By early 2018, administrators were processing more than 95,000 claims, roughly 80 percent of them residential. Unclaimed funds reverted to the defendants.⁶¹⁰

Monsanto PCB Settlement, 2025

In December 2025, West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey announced a settlement with Monsanto Company, Solutia Inc., and Pharmacia LLC over polychlorinated biphenyl contamination in state waters. The state reported that PCBs had impaired more than 540 acres of lakes and 440 miles of rivers and streams.¹¹

West Virginia is guaranteed $24.5 million under the agreement, with $12.5 million due by the end of 2025. The total could reach $60.5 million by December 2030, with the additional amount contingent on the outcome of Monsanto’s separate indemnity litigation in Missouri against its six largest former PCB customers. If those recoveries fall substantially short, smaller backstop payments apply. The settlement contains no admission of liability, and West Virginia agreed to cooperate with Monsanto in the pending indemnity suit.¹²¹³

Antero Resources Natural Gas Settlement, 2019

In February 2019, Antero Resources Corporation agreed to pay a $3.15 million civil penalty and perform an estimated $8 million in environmental restoration to resolve allegations that it had illegally dumped dredged and fill materials into West Virginia waterways while building natural gas infrastructure. The settlement was reached with the Department of Justice, the EPA, and the WVDEP, and covered 32 sites in Harrison, Doddridge, and Tyler counties.¹⁴

The violations involved well pads, compressor stations, pipeline crossings, and access roads affecting more than 19,000 linear feet of streams and over four acres of wetlands. The company had impounded streams, filled wetlands to build compressor pads, rerouted and culverted stream channels, and failed to restore areas after temporary construction. About half of the sites were identified by Antero’s own self-audit. The settlement required a 51.5-acre mitigation site to restore, enhance, and preserve more than 11,500 linear feet of streams and over three acres of wetlands.¹⁵

Berkeley County Sewer District

The Berkeley County Public Service Sewer District reached a consent decree with the United States and the WVDEP over chronic violations of its wastewater discharge permits, including effluent exceedances, sanitary sewer overflows tied to inadequate maintenance, and failure to develop a required stormwater management program.¹⁶

The civil penalty totaled $864,000, split evenly between the federal government and the state. West Virginia’s share was partially satisfied through a supplemental environmental project valued at $1.145 million, which diverted sewage from two package treatment plants to a larger facility and decommissioned the smaller plants. The district was also required to spend an estimated $50 million over 10 years on system assessments, capacity upgrades, and corrective action plans. Within the first year, rehabilitation had to focus on areas with a history of overflows; within five years, at least 65 percent of the system had to be assessed.¹⁶

Ionic Toxicity Settlement With the EPA, 2024

In November 2024, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia approved a settlement between the EPA and the Sierra Club, the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, and the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, represented by Appalachian Mountain Advocates. The groups had sued in March 2024, alleging the EPA failed to develop required pollution budgets, known as Total Maximum Daily Loads, for streams in the Lower Guyandotte River watershed rendered biologically dead by elevated salinity from surface coal mining.¹⁷¹⁸

The proposed consent decree, published in the Federal Register on March 29, 2024, required the EPA to publish draft TMDLs for 11 high-priority streams by October 31, 2024, and finalize them by January 15, 2025, unless the WVDEP completed the process first. The affected streams supply drinking water to roughly 100,000 residents.¹⁹

The agreement drew pushback. The WVDEP filed a motion to intervene in April 2024, stating it was “flummoxed” at having been excluded from months of negotiations and “astounded” that the EPA had not mounted a defense. U.S. Senator Joe Manchin called it a “sue and settle” arrangement that bypassed the regulatory process. The court granted the state’s intervention, and under the final agreement, the WVDEP assumed responsibility for developing the pollution standards with EPA oversight rather than the EPA imposing them directly.²⁰²¹¹⁷

A Note on West Virginia v. EPA

West Virginia’s name is attached to one of the most consequential environmental cases of the past decade, but it is a Supreme Court ruling rather than a settlement. In West Virginia v. EPA, decided June 30, 2022, the Court held 6–3 that Congress had not given the EPA authority under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act to impose emissions caps based on “generation shifting” from coal to natural gas, wind, and solar. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, applied the “major questions doctrine” and limited the EPA’s “best system of emission reduction” to measures applicable at individual plants. The ruling struck down the legal basis of the Obama-era Clean Power Plan.²²

1
U.S. Department of Justice. Coal Companies and Subsidiaries Spend Estimated $200 Million Treatment and System Wide
2
U.S. Department of Justice. Consol Energy to Pay $5.5 Million Penalty and Install Wastewater Treatment Plant to Settle Clean Water Act
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U.S. EPA. Consol Energy Clean Water Act Settlement
4
U.S. EPA. Action Resolves Hundreds of Coal Companies Violations
5
ProPublica. A Coal Company Owned by This Billionaire Governor Has Pledged to Stop Breaking Pollution Laws
6
WTAP. Judge Approves Settlement in WV Chemical Spill That Polluted Tap Water for 300,000 People
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e-WV: The West Virginia Encyclopedia. Elk River Chemical Spill
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting. Judge Approves West Virginia Water Crisis Settlement
9
Bailey Glasser. $151 Million Freedom Chemical Spill Settlement Wins Preliminary Approval
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting. Settlements From 2014 Freedom Industries Spill Not Ready to Be Paid Out
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WV MetroNews. McCuskey Announces $24 Million PCB Contamination Settlement With Monsanto
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WV Attorney General. Attorney General McCuskey Announces PCB Contamination Settlement Monsanto $60.5 Million
13
Bayer. Settlement West Virginia and Illinois
14
U.S. Department of Justice. U.S. and West Virginia Reach Settlement Antero Resources Corporation Clean Water Act
15
WBOY. Antero Resources Reaches Settlement With Federal and State Agencies Over Violations in West Virginia
16
U.S. EPA. Berkeley County Public Service Sewer District West Virginia Clean Water Settlement
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WV Rivers Coalition. West Virginia Environmental Groups Secure Historic Settlement to Clean Up Coal Mining Pollution
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WBOY. West Virginia Environmental Groups Reach Historic Settlement
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West Virginia Watch. WV Environmentalists Laud Agreement With EPA for More Oversight in Some State Waters
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting. DEP Motions to Intervene in EPA Settlement
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Courthouse News Service. Proposed Consent Decree, Civil Action No. 3:24-0130
22
Supreme Court of the United States. West Virginia v. EPA, 597 U.S. (2022)