The Courtland Company sought, but did not receive, a number of corrective actions from a U.S. district judge last year over water pollution from a Union Carbide landfill in South Charleston.
Courtland this week filed a 93-page brief with the Fourth U.S Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia.
It asks the appeals court to reconsider Judge John T. Copenhaver Jr.’s decision last year to not impose a permanent injunction ordering Union Carbide to cease the discharge of pollutants.
It asks the appeals court to reject a voluntary remediation agreement between Union Carbide and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection for cleanup of the site.
And it asks the court to consider increasing the civil penalties of $200,000 Copenhaver applied for violations of the Clean Water Act.
Courtland’s attorneys requested the court hear oral arguments.
Courtland filed its first lawsuit in 2018, seeking to stop water pollution from Union Carbide’s Filmont Landfill. The facility operated for nearly three decades, and as court testimony showed, it never was properly permitted.
Testimony showed some local officials knew about the landfill for years, but its existence was not widely known until the judge unsealed documents in 2019 as part of Courtland’s lawsuit.
Cortland had asked Copenhaver to impose tens of millions of dollars in Clean Water Act penalties on Union Carbide, but he only fined the company for one day of violations.
It was the day an expert witness for Courtland went to the site to take samples and observed contaminants leaching from the landfill. The landfill is adjacent to property Courtland owns as well as Davis Creek, a tributary of the Kanawha River.
Courtland maintained the contamination was taking place every day for decades.
Courtland also wanted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to bring the landfill under its Superfund program and oversee the cleanup.
Union Carbide asserted that it could achieve compliance with a voluntary cleanup under the supervision of state officials. Copenhaver agreed.