U.S. Justice Department Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Justice-Owned Bluestone Coke Sued Over Water Pollution In Alabama

The complaint alleges that Bluestone is in violation of the Clean Water Act by discharging pollutants into a stream that exceed levels allowed by its permit.

Environmental and community groups have sued a company owned by the family of Gov. Jim Justice in federal court in Birmingham, Alabama.

Black Warrior Riverkeeper and a local group called GASP filed the complaint against Bluestone Coke in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.

The complaint alleges that Bluestone is in violation of the Clean Water Act by discharging pollutants into a stream that exceed levels allowed by its permit.

It also alleges that Bluestone has been discharging pollutants not allowed by its permit such as barium, strontium, E.coli, semi-volatile organic compounds and volatile organic compounds.

It further alleges that the company deposited coal, coke, slag and sediment into a tributary of Five Mile Creek, an unpermitted fill into Waters of the United States.

The Bluestone Coke plant in North Birmingham is currently not in operation.

In December, Bluestone reached a consent decree with the Jefferson County, Alabama, Department of Health to pay a $925,000 penalty, the largest in the agency’s history.

In May, Black Warrior Riverkeeper reported that Bluestone had failed to pay $283,000 of the penalty and would owe an additional $1,000 for every day the payment was late.

Bluestone Coke is one of the numerous companies listed on Justice’s annual financial disclosure to the West Virginia Ethics Commission.

Justice, who is not named in the complaint, is a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2024.

Justice faces other lawsuits, including one brought by the U.S. Justice Department over unpaid fines and penalties.

Justice, 2 Coal Companies Face Lawsuit From Bond Provider In Virginia

Western Surety alleges breach of contract and seeks more than $3 million in damages and attorney’s fees.

Gov. Jim Justice and two of his family’s coal companies face yet another lawsuit in Virginia.

Western Surety Co. sued Justice, Southern Coal Corp. and Bluestone Resources this week in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia.

Western Surety alleges breach of contract and seeks more than $3 million in damages and attorney’s fees.

Justice and his family own dozens of coal-related companies, including Southern and Bluestone. Both are based in Roanoke, Virginia.

Justice, who’s running for the U.S. Senate in 2024, faces a multitude of legal challenges.

Another bond provider, Federal Insurance Co., sued Justice and four of his companies in June in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeking $8.1 million in damages.

The U.S. Justice Department sued 13 of Justice’s companies in May over mine health and safety violations. The government seeks to collect $7.6 million in penalties.

Another Justice-owned company, Blackstone Energy, could owe the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality numerous fines of $32,500 per day going back three years.

In a filing last month in Richmond Circuit Court, the Virginia attorney general’s office asked Blackstone to show why it isn’t in violation of a consent order that requires it to clean up contamination at several mine sites.

Justice Coal Companies Must Pay $2.5 Million In Penalties, Court Rules

A lower court found that the companies, owned by the Justice family, were in violation of a 2016 consent decree to resolve nearly 24,000 water pollution violations.

A federal appeals court in Virginia says two coal companies owned by Gov. Jim Justice must pay millions of dollars in penalties.

A three-judge panel on the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, ruled that Southern Coal and Premium Coal must pay more than $2.5 million to resolve Clean Water Act violations in multiple states.

A lower court found that the companies, owned by the Justice family, were in violation of a 2016 consent decree to resolve nearly 24,000 water pollution violations.

In 2020, the U.S. Justice Department issued a notice of default and took the companies to court.

Southern and Premium appealed a 2021 district court ruling that upheld the consent decree.

The consent decree covered violations in five states: West Virginia, Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Alabama. Four of those states joined the Justice Department’s 2016 case.

Only West Virginia did not.

Justice Department Reaches Agreement with W.Va. over Americans with Disabilities Act Violations

West Virginia officials and the U.S. Department of Justice announced they’ve reached a settlement after an investigation found West Virginia to be violating the Americans with Disabilities Act.

The state was found to have too many children with serious emotional or behavioral disorders in out-of-state residential facilities. The settlement will bring those children in state over the next five years.

At a press conference, officials called the agreement “landmark” and said that it will affect generations to come.

“The agreement commits West Virginia to expand services for children with serious emotional or behavioral disorders,” said Eric Dreiband, assistant attorney general for the civil rights division of the Justice Department.

“[This is] so they can remain in their communities and live with their families or foster families while receiving the mental health services they need instead of having to live in segregated residential facilities, often far from home, to receive such services,” Dreiband continued.

West Virginia had one of the highest rates of youth in out-of-state residential treatment programs when the Justice Department investigation began. That’s partly because there weren’t enough local services to serve the kids who needed them. The agreement is intended to return those kids to their home communities while also beefing up local resources to provide care for them.

Dreiband said the state will do that by increasing in-home and community-based mental health services. The agreement stipulates that children who are currently in residential treatment programs be reintegrated into their family homes and communities, if that is what the family, guardian, or older, legal teen desires.

The settlement will completely overhaul the way West Virginia approaches child mental and behavioral health.

Any young person who enters the state youth services through the child welfare or juvenile justice system will be screened with a yet-to-be-developed standardized mental health screening tool. Children who need counseling or support services are to be immediately referred. However, the Justice Department acknowledges that building up that network will take time.

“We don’t expect West Virginia to do the impossible here,” Dreiband said. “On the other hand, what we have found – and several studies have found – is these community-based settings tend to be more efficient and less expensive than these residential treatment centers. So our hope is that the state will be able to bring these children back closer to their families and closer to their communities rather than remotely located.”

The state has five years to reach the goals outlined in the settlement. To pay for the new initiative, the state is in the process of applying for a Medicaid waiver. More funding for wraparound mental health services is also expected to be discussed in the upcoming legislative special session.

Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from Marshall Health and Charleston Area Medical Center.

DOJ to Support Lawsuits Against Companies Selling Opioids

The Justice Department said Tuesday it will support local officials in hundreds of lawsuits against manufacturers and distributors of powerful opioid painkillers that are fueling the nation’s drug abuse crisis.

The move is part of a broader effort to more aggressively target prescription drugmakers for their role in the epidemic, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said. The Justice Department will file a statement of interest in the multidistrict lawsuit, arguing the federal government has borne substantial costs as a result of the crisis that claimed more than 64,000 lives in 2016.

The Trump administration has said it is focusing intensely on fighting drug addiction, but critics say its efforts fall short of what is needed. Trump signed off this month on a bipartisan budget deal to provide a record $6 billion over the next two years to fight opioids, but it’s not yet decided how that will be allocated.

The statement of interest was the latest move by the Justice Department, which has also sought to crack down on black market drug peddlers and doctors who negligently prescribe.

It could increase the role of the federal government in talks aimed at reaching a settlement between government entities, drugmakers, distributors and others. A federal judge in Cleveland is overseeing the talks as an attempt to resolve the case rather than hold a trial involving more than 370 plaintiffs, mostly county and local governments. The talks also include a group of about 40 states that are conducting a joint investigation of the crisis but which have not yet sued, as well as states that have sued in state courts.

Any deal could include billions of dollars in payments that could be used for treatment programs, abuse prevention and to cover some of the costs incurred by government dealing with the crisis. A filing could also put the federal government in line to receive some of the payouts in a deal. But any settlement is not likely to cover the cost of the crisis. A White House report last year estimated the annual cost at about $500 billion, including deaths, health care, lost productivity and criminal justice costs.

“It’s a game-changer,” Ohio’s attorney general Mike DeWine said of the Justice Department’s involvement. “It’s a real realization of what has been going on.”

The latest effort by the Justice Department targets powerful, but legal, prescription painkillers OxyContin and Vicodin, which have been widely blamed for ushering in the drug crisis. But prescribing of those drugs has been falling since 2011 due to policies by government, medical and law enforcement officials designed to reverse years of overprescribing.

The majority of opioid deaths now involve illegal drugs, especially the ultra-potent opioid fentanyl. Deaths tied to those fentanyl and related drugs doubled in 2016, to more than 19,000, dragging down Americans’ life expectancy for the second year in a row.

Associated Press writer Matthew Perrone contributed from Washington.

Federal Grant Supports West Virginia Drug Courts

U.S. Rep. Evan Jenkins says West Virginia has received a $1.4 million federal grant to support the state’s drug courts.

The Justice Department funding supports existing courts that focus on drug cases and helps expand them to counties that don’t have them.

Jenkins says they have a proven track record in West Virginia.

The state has been struggling with an opioid addiction crisis.

The National Institute of Justice says there are more than 3,000 operating across the country with a model that focuses on offender screening and assessments, drug testing, treatment, monitoring and graduated incentives and sanctions.

A state map shows them in all but 10 of West Virginia’s 55 counties.