Judge Fines Union Carbide, Orders Landfill Cleanup

Union Carbide will pay a $200,000 civil penalty for violating the Clean Water Act, U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver Jr. ruled on Friday.

That’s far less than the hundreds of millions of dollars the Courtland Company sought for a Union Carbide landfill’s impact on waterways in South Charleston.

Courtland sued Union Carbide first in 2018 over contamination on its South Charleston property, which is adjacent to Union Carbide’s Filmont landfill.

Copenhaver ordered Union Carbide to apply for stormwater discharge permits within six months and to continue a voluntary remediation it began with the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.

“Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) is pleased with the court’s decision, which fully rejected The Courtland Company, Inc.’s demands for excessive penalties and remedial efforts,” the company said in a statement.

Courtland proposed a permanent injunction that appoints a remediation project manager, Marc Glass of Downstream Strategies, an environmental consulting firm. Copenhaver ruled there was no need for the injunction and that the existing remedial plan was sufficient.

Union Carbide is a subsidiary of Dow Chemical. It operated the Filmont site for nearly three decades.

Last year, Copenhaver ruled the site as an open dump under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act and that Union Carbide failed to apply for the stormwater discharge permits required for the facility under the Clean Water Act.

Courtland had pushed for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to supervise the cleanup under the Superfund Program.

The story has been updated to clarify that Courtland proposed the permanent injunction and the appointment of a remediation project manager.