Kentucky regulators defend mining record

• Groups looked at water quality monitoring at surface mining sites and found identical entries repeated%2C accusing Frasure Creek of trying to mislead the state and state regulators of being asleep at the wheel.
• State regulators said they have an active enforcement case against the company%2C but it's too soon to discuss its details.
• The same practice was the subject of enforcement action involving Frasure and another company four years ago.

Kentucky environmental regulators on Tuesday fought back against charges from four environmental groups that they missed as many as 28,000 clean-water violations at a dozen surface-mining complexes in eastern Kentucky.

State officials had already identified new clean-water violations that were described Friday in a threatened lawsuit by environmentalists against Frasure Creek Mining, said R. Bruce Scott, commissioner of the Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection, on Tuesday.

He said it was "premature" to discuss the "scope and nature of those violations."

His comments followed accusations on Monday by Appalachian Voices, Kentucky Riverkeeper, Kentuckians For The Commonwealth and the Waterkeeper Alliance that Kentucky's inspectors failed to catch faked water pollution reports by the company, which has recently gone through bankruptcy reorganization.

The groups claimed in a lawsuit notice dated Feb. 14 to Frasure that the company had resumed falsifying the reports to show water running from its mines, just as they the groups and state regulators had previously claimed the company did four years ago.

In the 32-page notice, the groups said the company essentially copied and pasted identical water quality data from month to month.

MINING: Groups allege 28,000 mining violations, lax enforcement

"It's just amazing they have the audacity to do the very same thing as four years ago," said Ted Withrow with Kentuckians For The Commonwealth. He also said the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet, which is still trying to reach a settlement with the company over the earlier violations, should have already cracked down on the latest erroneous pollution reports.

He questioned whether state officials "have the will" to enforce the Clean Water Act on mining companies.

In a written statement Monday, cabinet officials called the criticism against them "inflammatory," saying that since 2011, its enforcement division has reviewed 179,000 discharge monitoring reports involving 78 coal companies and 2,200 mining permits. They said they have assessed more than $3.6 million in penalties and entered 67 enforcement settlements with coal companies in Kentucky.

The complaint focused mostly on mining operations in Floyd County, but also Pike, Magoffin, Knott and Perry counties, the groups said. The impacted waterways include tributaries of the Big Sandy, Licking and Kentucky rivers.

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The company has no active mines in Kentucky, said Steve Hohmann, commissioner of the Kentucky Department of Natural Resources.

Eric Chance with Appalachian Voices, said the company still has about 60 mining permits at about a dozen mining complexes in the state. Even when mining stopped, he said, the company still was obligated to track water quality flowing from its properties, where rock was blasted away to get at coal underneath.

The issue of faked discharge monitoring reports first came up in 2010, when the groups found their first evidence of faked test results. After they threatened to take citizen action under the Clean Water Act, state regulators brought their own enforcement case against the International Coal Group, now part of Arch Coal, and Frasure Creek.

The environmental groups were allowed to be a party in that case, and in 2012, the groups and the state reached an agreement with Arch, where Arch was to pay $575,000 in penalties with money directed to environmental improvement projects.

But neither the cabinet nor the groups reached an agreement with Frasure Creek involving those claims.

State officials said at the time that Frasure Creek was in financial difficulty, and that the cabinet needed to make sure it could meet its reclamation obligations.

State officials this week said a reorganized Frasure Creek company was placed under the requirements of previous cabinet enforcement actions, and under those, Frasure Creek performed some reclamation work and posted new reclamation bonds of $7.4 million.

Kentucky Secretary of State records shows Frasure Creek owned by Trinity Coal Corp. of Oak Hill, West Virginia. State officials said the company also has business ties to the Indian conglomerate Essar. Efforts to reach Frasure or Trinity Coal were not successful.

Under the act, the company has 60 days to respond.

Reach reporter James Bruggers at (502) 582-4645 or on Twitter @jbruggers.