Kanawha River Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

EPA, For Now, Defers To State Officials On Union Carbide Landfill Cleanup

Union Carbide is working with the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) on a voluntary remediation of the Filmont landfill. The site is the subject of an ongoing federal lawsuit over water pollution and was listed by EPA as a Superfund site.

This story has been updated to clarify the nature of the relationship between WVDEP and a licensed remediation specialist who is paid under contract by Union Carbide.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said it is letting state officials supervise the cleanup of a South Charleston landfill and has no immediate plans to conduct an investigation of the site.

It was not, though, placed on the National Priorities List, which includes 1,300 of the nation’s most contaminated places, 11 of which are in West Virginia.

An adjacent property owner, Courtland Company, is seeking a $1.4 billion civil penalty against Union Carbide in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia. It also seeks an injunction that requires EPA supervision of the cleanup.

Senior Judge John T. Copenhaver Jr. has yet to rule on Courtland’s proposals. Union Carbide has asked Copenhaver to dismiss them.

Last September, Copenhaver ruled that the Filmont site was an illegal open dump under the Resource Recovery and Conservation Act and that the company violated the Clean Water Act by not seeking a wastewater discharge permit for the facility, which operated for three decades.

Filmont is adjacent to Davis Creek, a tributary of the Kanawha River.

At the time, Mike Callaghan, an attorney for Courtland, called the ruling a “David versus Goliath victory.” At its peak, the company employed 12,000 workers in West Virginia, making it one of the state’s largest.

Though some state and local officials knew about the landfill for more than a decade, its existence wasn’t publicly revealed until 2019 after Courtland first sued Union Carbide.

Union Carbide, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical, has said the site poses no imminent or substantial harm to the environment or human health. Union Carbide did not respond to a request for comment.

Terry Fletcher, a spokesman for the WVDEP, said the inclusion of Filmont in the Superfund database does not affect the ongoing voluntary remediation of the site. He added that the agency is coordinating with the EPA.

Kelly Offner, a spokeswoman for the EPA’s Region 3, which includes West Virginia, said the agency added Filmont to the Superfund Active Site Inventory in 2022, working with DEP.

She said the EPA has no immediate plans to conduct a preliminary assessment of the site.

“The EPA will continue to support the WVDEP on their site investigation,” she said.

The WVDEP is working closely with Union Carbide.

David Carpenter, a licensed remediation specialist who testified that WVDEP could complete the work faster than the EPA, works for a company called ERM. His work on the Filmont remediation is paid for by Union Carbide under contract with the state. He also testified that the Filmont site does not meet the criteria to be placed on the National Priorities List, which the EPA oversees.

Additionally, WVDEP project managers who perform oversight of the remediation work are paid by Union Carbide.

Fletcher said the arrangement is required by state law. He said the structure ensures that the financial burden of the remediation is kept off taxpayers, while keeping the Voluntary Remediation Program viable.

Civil Penalty Of $1.4 Billion Sought In Union Carbide Landfill Case

Union Carbide has asked a federal judge to reject the proposed penalty, as well as Courtland’s proposed injunction under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

Union Carbide has asked a federal judge to reject a proposed settlement over a landfill site in South Charleston.

Courtland, a real-estate company, has proposed that Union Carbide pay a civil penalty of $1.4 billion to settle a series of lawsuits over an inactive waste disposal site.

Last year, U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver Jr. ruled that the Filmont Landfill in South Charleston was an illegal open dump under federal law and that Union Carbide violated the Clean Water Act by failing to seek a permit for the site.

Union Carbide has asked Copenhaver to reject the proposed penalty, as well as Courtland’s proposed injunction under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.

That injunction would mean the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency would supervise the cleanup of the site.

Union Carbide is working with the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection on a voluntary remediation plan. The company says Courtland’s proposal would delay the cleanup of the site.

Union Carbide cited testimony from David Carpenter, a licensed remediation specialist, that the voluntary program under DEP could get the site remediated by the end of 2026.

Carpenter testified that Courtland’s proposed injunction would extend the process by five to eight years.

The EPA’s program, the National Contingency Plan, is meant for sites that pose an imminent danger to the public, Carpenter said, and that the Filmont Landfill was not such a site.

Union Carbide operated the landfill for about 30 years, but its existence wasn’t widely known until a 2018 lawsuit in federal court in Charleston.

A landfill that discharges stormwater into navigable U.S. waterways must seek a permit under the Clean Water Act. Filmont is adjacent to Davis Creek, a tributary of the Kanawha River.

Union Carbide is a subsidiary of Dow Chemical.

Warmer Climate In W.Va. Equals More Rainfall And More Floods

Curtis Tate spoke with Nicolas Zegre, an associate professor of forest hydrology at West Virginia University, about what’s behind this trend.

Flood events are becoming more frequent and severe in West Virginia, causing millions of dollars in damage to property, disrupting communities and displacing lives.

Curtis Tate spoke with Nicolas Zegre, an associate professor of forest hydrology at West Virginia University (WVU), about what’s behind this trend.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tate: What makes West Virginia and Appalachia so vulnerable to severe, frequent floods?

Zegre: When we think about floods, in particular West Virginia, we have to think about them two ways. One is what we call a riverine based flood. So the larger rivers that flood when they spill over the stream, the riverbanks onto the floodplain, which of course are normally dry areas. And so when we look at flooding in West Virginia and we see that riverine flooding, there are hot spots in the Eastern Panhandle, where we see a lot of that riverine flooding, and that’s associated with the ridge and valley, the large rivers like the Potomac, that the ridge and valley topography kind of creates these really wide river valleys that provide a floodplain and we certainly have that in other parts of the state. But when we think about hot spots in the state, the Eastern Panhandle, the riverine flooding is a big problem.

But the other type of flooding we’re concerned about in West Virginia is flash flooding. And flash flooding can happen anywhere. It can happen, certainly in our small streams and our heavily dissected headwater valleys where 85 percent of our streams in West Virginia are small streams. And, of course, we know we have people living up and down just about every hollow in West Virginia.

And so we actually have two hot spots, we have a hot spot in the West Fork watershed in that Clarksburg-Bridgeport Harrison County area. And then we also see a flash flooding hot spot kind of central to Kanawha and what we refer to as kind of the southern coalfield counties. Now, that said, flash flooding and riverine flooding does happen everywhere throughout the state. But if we’re thinking about a higher propensity for flash flooding, or for riverine flooding, we do see these emerging trends on where there is a greater probability of them happening.

Tate: So for example, in the 2016 flood disaster in southern West Virginia, was it more the second type?

Zegre: It was actually both. When they started collecting stories of what the 2016 flood looked like, and from the community and the first responder perspectives, and then when we started looking at what the floods look like from a hydrology perspective, what became clear was it was a different type of flood in different parts of the Greenbrier watershed. So around Richwood and Rainelle, for example, that was more a flash flood, a wall of water moving very, very quickly downslope.

Whereas, when you were in the White Sulphur Springs and kind of Lewisburg area, it was more of a riverine flood, where the water, the river level rose and kind of spilled over and filled the wider valley. And what’s interesting, Curtis, is when you start thinking about where the damage was, and vulnerability, and also recovery, we saw very different damage and very different approaches to response and recovery in Rainelle versus White Sulphur Springs. And we can tie that back to the different types of floods. But I should say that, in the case of the 2016 flood, there were a lot of flash floods that routed downstream that also contributed to the larger riverine flood. And so we can have multiple types of floods occurring in the same event, which is going to be related to the topography and the stream channel and what all that looks like.

Tate: What’s driving the heavier rainfall?

Zegre: So heavy rainfalls are the result of a warmer atmosphere. We think of the atmosphere as like a balloon, and if you blow up the balloon in your house in January, and it’s warm inside your house, the balloon is expanded. And if you walk outside, on that cold winter day, that balloon is going to contract, walk back inside to that warm house and then the balloon is going to expand. So that’s what’s happening with warming temperatures in the atmosphere.

With a warmer temperature, the atmosphere expands, which means it can store more water. But with warmer temperatures, there’s more evaporation of water from our soils, in our trees and our rivers and our lakes. And so, more water has been put into the atmosphere and more of that water can be stored in the atmosphere. And once the atmosphere reaches saturation, we have these very heavy intense rainfalls, and so heavy rainfall and air temperature is very clearly related. In fact, for a single one degree temperature increase, a one degree Fahrenheit increase in air temperature, the atmosphere can hold 4 percent more water. And so, as the atmosphere warms, that holds more water, and it creates more rainfall.

Tate: How much does land use, whether commercial, residential or industrial, contribute to the problem?

Zegre: Whether it is, you know, what we would call an old growth forest, or a Walmart parking lot, if you drop eight to 10 inches of rain in a couple of hours, like what was experienced in eastern Kentucky, two summers ago, there’s going to be flooding in it. Our systems just aren’t designed to handle that much water. But land use activities very much affect how quickly water runs off. And so impervious surfaces associated with industrialization, associated with urbanization, and associated with the result of surface mining, all of this routes water more quickly, more water is routed more quickly off that landscape.

And so when we think about how we mitigate these effects of extreme rainfall and flooding, putting our landscape back into forests is a really important part of this conversation. But land use is a really important driver of flooding. But I should also say that, it’s really hard to detect the effects of a single neighborhood or single mine, or a single clear-cut parcel and the effect that, that has on flooding. And so we often think about this, we know how water cycles through the atmosphere and through the earth. And so what happens when you remove forests and remove soils, that water can’t be stored and that water is not removed from runoff, so all of that goes downstream.

Judge Sides With Union Carbide On Inspection, Testing Of Landfill

As part of its ongoing lawsuit against Union Carbide, the Courtland Company asked U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver Jr. to collect soil samples at UCC’s Filmont Landfill in South Charleston.

A federal judge has denied a company’s request to inspect and test property owned by Union Carbide.

As part of its ongoing lawsuit against Union Carbide, the Courtland Company asked U.S. District Judge John T. Copenhaver Jr. to collect soil samples at UCC’s Filmont Landfill in South Charleston.

This week, Copenhaver denied the request, siding with UCC. UCC had argued that Courtland would have access to the data it has collected as part of its voluntary remediation of the site, under the supervision of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.

The trial is now in its penalty phase. In September, Copenhaver ruled that UCC violated the federal Clean Water Act by not having permits for stormwater discharge and that the landfill was an illegal open dump. UCC could face fines of $64,618 per day per violation.

The parties participated in an 18-day bench trial last year in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, where Copenhaver is a senior judge.

Union Carbide, now part of Dow chemical, operated the Filmont landfill from the 1950s to the 1980s. The property borders Davis Creek, a tributary of the Kanawha River, and Courtland’s property in South Charleston.

Both companies may have to pay remediation costs, but only UCC faces potential civil penalties.

The case has been active since 2018. The general public had no knowledge of the Filmont Landfill until Copenhaver unsealed documents the following year that revealed its existence.

According to testimony in the trial, a handful of local officials and the state DEP were previously aware the landfill existed and was possibly contaminating soil and water in the area.

The next phase of the trial could take place early next year.

Candy Darter Among Endangered Species To Receive Federal Funding

The candy darter is a small fish that lives in the upper Kanawha River Basin in West Virginia and Virginia.

An endangered fish in West Virginia is among 32 species that will benefit from federal funding.

The candy darter is a small fish that lives in the upper Kanawha River Basin in West Virginia and also in Virginia. It’s been listed as an endangered species since 2018.

On Friday, the 50th anniversary of the Endangered Species Act, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced $62 million in funding to help the candy darter and other species recover nationwide.

Rival species are the biggest threat to the candy darter. Unused live bait, when dumped into the streams it inhabits, can breed and outcompete the candy darter for food, habitat and even mates. Pollution and habitat loss have also put pressure on the candy darter.

Last fall, the federal fish hatchery in White Sulphur Springs achieved a milestone when it released hatchery-raised candy darters into the wild, marking the first time that it was done successfully.

Volunteers Needed To Help With Annual Kanawha River Cleanup

The beautification project is part of the 32nd annual Great Kanawha River Cleanup and the Make It Shine program.

An annual clean up along the Kanawha River is about two and half weeks away.

Organizers are looking for volunteers in three counties.

The beautification project is part of the 32nd annual Great Kanawha River Cleanup and the Make It Shine program.

The river runs from Gauley Bridge to the Ohio River at Point Pleasant. Clean up will be in Fayette, Putnam and Kanawha counties. Volunteers can register with the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection.

Volunteers will receive a t-shirt and the WVDEP Rehabilitation Environmental Action Plan (REAP) will haul away the garbage and supply participants with bags and gloves. The clean up is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 10.

Find more information about how to register, volunteer or suggest a cleanup location, contact Make It Shine coordinator Chris Cartwright at christopher.j.cartwright@wv.gov or at 1-800-322-5530.