By John McFerrin, West Virginia Highlands Conservancy

The West Virginia Highlands Conservancy has joined with the West Virginia Rivers Coalition in a letter to Amsted Graphite Materials near Clarksburg, informing Amsted that the groups believe that it is in violation of the Clean Water Act. The groups say that if the violations are not corrected by the end of sixty days, the groups will take legal action.

Under the federal and state Clean Water Act, this company was issued permits that allow them to discharge water with limited amounts of pollutants. A permit might say, for example, that the water leaving the site may contain up to three parts per million of iron, .5 parts per million of aluminum, etc. If the concentrations are greater, then the company is in violation.

In the case of Amsted, the alleged pollutants are copper, lead, zinc, aluminum and nitrite nitrogen. The pollutants are entering a tributary of Anmoore Run approximately two miles from its confluence with Elk Creek, a tributary of the West Fork River.

At this point, referring to the violations as “alleged violations” is just a formality. The way the system works, companies are required to sample the water leaving their operations and report the results to the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection. Some grumble that having companies do their own sampling and reporting is the osprey guarding the koi pond or the locust guarding the wheat field. When, as here, that sampling shows violations, the proof (moving from alleged to proven) is much more straightforward. The company can hardly deny the violations; it’s its own data.

The law makes the cheery assumption that, once the company has been shown the error of its ways, it will fix the problems and all will be right with the world. The more likely result will be that the company will not correct the problems within 60 days, and the groups will sue them in federal court. There, the company faces the possibility (and given the source of the data that establishes the violations, the probability) of orders to correct the problems and civil penalties.

The groups are represented by attorneys with Appalachian Mountain Advocates.