West Virginia’s junior Republican senator’s Bluestone Coal Corp. has received six notices of delinquent penalties from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection since April 14, according to DEP records.
The penalties total $4,425 and cover penalties for violations the DEP cited ranging from October 2024 to February 2025 across four mine permits that span a collective 646 acres in McDowell and Wyoming counties.
The DEP issued eight new civil penalty assessments to the Justice family’s Bluestone Coal Corp. on April 14 totaling $7,513 for violations across six mine permits in McDowell County spanning 42 acres from July 2024 to March 2025.
Those penalties follow a show-cause order the DEP issued to Bluestone on April 9 mandating the company explain why one of its McDowell County mine permits shouldn’t be suspended or revoked in response to what the agency said was its failure to properly maintain a haulage way. That failure cited by the DEP in July 2024 resulted in water not passing through ditches or sumps, discharging off a haul road undergoing washouts from water runoff instead.
The DEP enforcement action comes a month after the DEP told federal authorities they were out of line in issuing a pending threat to take over enforcement on Bluestone’s No. 45 Mine in McDowell County.
Bluestone has long been a chronic violator of environmental regulations in West Virginia’s southern coalfields.
Justice coal company attorney Steve Ruby and Will O’Grady, Senate communications director for Justice, did not respond to requests for comment.
Justice firm delinquent in paying for wide span of violations
The DEP on Monday issued notices of delinquent penalties for the following violations:
Failing to maintain an approved drainage system or provide blast logs, inventory records and seismic data for compliance for the 596-acre Payne Branch Surface Mine in the Upper Guyandotte River watershed in Wyoming County
Not submitting a permit renewal within 120 days of expiration for Mine No. 59 in the Tug Fork River watershed in McDowell County
The DEP issued notices of delinquent penalties on April 14 for the following violations:
Ceasing mining and reclamation operations for 30 days or more at the No. 45 Mine in McDowell County’s Tug Fork River watershed
Not providing an annual sediment control certification or maintaining an approved drainage system for a haul road in McDowell County’s Tug Fork River watershed
DEP letters detailing civil penalty assessments to Bluestone indicated they were for:
Not responding to DEP requests for endangered species consultations on four McDowell County mine permits
Not having bond posted for a stream channel for the No. 48 Deep Mine in McDowell County
Stopping mining and reclamation operations for 30 days or more and not constructing a diversion ditch or pond for Mine No. 59 in McDowell County
Not applying for permit renewal at least 120 days before expiration of a permit for the Mill Creek Mine in McDowell County
DEP asked feds to back off in Justice mine oversight
The DEP’s April 9 show-cause order for a McDowell County loading facility permit follows a cessation order in October from the agency in response to what it says was Bluestone’s failure to maintain an approved haulage way.
The order gives Bluestone 30 days to request a DEP hearing to show why the permit shouldn’t be suspended or revoked, or to request a consent order with the agency. Failure to respond to the order will result in a permit suspension or revocation or forfeiture of bond for the permit, per a DEP notice to Bluestone.
The DEP has issued Bluestone 10 violation notices and two cessation orders on the permit since the start of 2023, according to DEP records, including for reported failures to submit surface water monitoring and rain gauge data, maintain a drainage system and apply for a permit renewal.
The DEP defended its oversight of Bluestone’s No. 45 Mine in a March 24 letter to the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, or OSMRE.
The DEP told the federal agency it was “arbitrary and capricious†in issuing a notice to the DEP in January that cited reasons to believe Bluestone failed to apply for inactive status, obtain a reclamation cost bond and start backfilling and regrading within 180 days as required by state statute on the mine permit in the Tug Fork River watershed.
The OSMRE had issued a Ten-Day Notice, an enforcement tool that gives state regulators 10 days to respond to the agency if the OSMRE determines there’s reason to believe a violation exists after the federal agency gets information about a potential violation.
If a state regulatory authority fails to respond within 10 days or the OSMRE determines a state’s response is “arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion,†it will inspect and take enforcement action.
The OSMRE threatened in December 2024, under the Biden administration, to seize enforcement authority from the DEP over another Bluestone mine in McDowell County, the Poca No. 11 Contour Auger No. 2 Mine, through a separate Ten-Day Notice. The OSMRE indicated it suspected the DEP had violated its own regulation by not revoking the mine’s permit due to the Justice coal company’s failure to start abatement measures for 15 cessation orders.
But in February, under the Trump administration, the OSMRE backed off, concluding the DEP’s response to its December notice was “reasonable and appropriate.†The OSMRE cited patterns of violations the DEP said it identified and show-cause orders it issued after the OSMRE’s threat to assume enforcement authority.
Notice response review times vary based on issues raised, OSMRE spokeswoman Judith LaVoie has told the Gazette-Mail.
Justice business woes building
Justice’s financial and business woes keep growing.
Five of his coal companies, including Bluestone, were again failing to provide retirees health care coverage in violation of a collective bargaining agreement, retirees and the United Mine Workers of America said in an April 2 court filing.
The reported failures were the latest in a yearslong string of intermittent lapses in contractually promised health care and prescription drug coverage that retirees have said resulted in the loss of critical medications.
In another April 2 court filing, a Kentucky tobacco warehouse company and an affiliated firm said two Justice coal company executives, including Justice’s son, James C. “Jay†Justice, stopped paying a daily contempt fine amid their noncompliance with a court order to share evidence in the case.
The filing alleged the defendants’ tax returns and other documents prepared from a general ledger show Jay Justice owes James C. Justice Companies nearly $32 million for shareholder loans made to him.
The filing cites two April 2022 ledger entries the plaintiffs say show that despite James C. Justice Companies entered a what appeared to be a Virginia land transfer as a total loss in a 2016 asset disposal report, its affiliate sold the property six years later for a $10.1 million profit.
James C. Justice Companies then used the proceeds as its own to pay down Virginia-based Carter Bank and falsely entered a corresponding entry increasing its debt to Sen. Justice by roughly $9.6 million, the filing alleges.
Carter Bank scheduled an auction of Greenbrier Sporting Club property last year to help satisfy a nine-figure Justice family debt to the bank.
The auction was later canceled, and the Justice family and the bank announced the settlement of the dispute, in which the bank has sought $300 million-plus in debt admitted by the Justices.
The Justice family’s Greenbrier Hotel Corp. was accused last August of being four months delinquent in contributions to a health insurance fund serving union workers by the Greenbrier Council of Labor Unions before a settlement agreement was reached between the health fund and the company.
Last year, federal marshals seized a helicopter owned by Justice’s Bluestone Resources in response to Bluestone not paying any of a roughly $13 million 2021 judgment against it.
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