The Department of Justice and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reached a deal with Chesapeake Appalachia whereby it pays a $3.2 million penalty to resolve Clean Water Violations in West Virginia wetlands. The subsidiary of Oklahoma-based Chesapeake Energy, the nation’s second largest natural gas producer, will also spend $6.5 million to restore 27 sites damaged by discharges of fill material into streams and wetlands. The scofflaws also now promise to comply with federal and state water-protection laws at the company’s natural gas wells in West Virginia, many of which involve controversial hydraulic fracturing operations.
No criminal charges against executives were pursued, however. So the environmental rhetoric of the Obama Administration is put aside in the latest corporate friendly deal under Eric Holder, his politically appointed Attorney General.
Critics note that the Democratic Party is facing a tough challenge in next year’s Senate race where voters in West Virginia are clearly disgusted by Washington politics. Moreover, while Democrats have safely held both West Virginia Senate seats since the 1950s, all West Virginia counties, repeat all, voted Republican in the 2012 election.
The civil penalty of $3.2 million, is one of the largest ever levied by the federal government for violations of Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, which prohibits the filling or damming of wetlands, rivers, streams, and other waters of the United States without a federal permit.
The federal government and the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection allege that the company impounded streams and discharged sand, dirt, rocks and other fill material into streams and wetlands to construct well pads, impoundments, road crossings and other facilities related to natural gas extraction.
The alleged violations occurred at 27 sites located in the West Virginia Counties of Boone, Kanawha, Lewis, Marshall, Mingo, Preston, Upshur and Wetzel, including 16 sites involving hydraulic fracturing operations. The government alleges that the violations affected 2.2 miles stream, and more than three acres of wetlands.
In a related case, in December 2012, the company pleaded guilty to three violations of the CWA related to natural gas extraction in Wetzel County, at one of the sites subject to the latest settlement. Chesapeake Appalachia was sentenced to pay a $600,000 penalty to the federal government for discharging crushed stone and gravel into Blake Fork, a local stream, to create a roadway to improve access to a drilling site.
