http://www.mariettatimes.com/news/story/new98_76200585053.asp
July 6, 2005
The Marietta Times (Ohio)
Around town
Environmental Quality Board hears DuPont
case
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The West Virginia Environmental Quality
Board conducted a hearing Tuesday and decided not to dismiss an
appeal of the permit issued to DuPont for an industrial waste
dump in Wood County.
The board also suspended some of the conditions for the permit
until it can get more comments from the public on the permit for
the Dry Run landfill near Lubeck, W.Va, said Jessica Greathouse,
chief communications officer with the West Virginia Department
of Environmental Protection.
In May, the state DEP and DuPont proposed to rewrite portions
of the water pollution and waste management permits for the company’s
landfill. The Environmental Quality Board is a five-member body
that hears all proposed appeals of permits, Greathouse said a
date would be set for public comments before a final decision
is made.
The dump was opened in 1984, and DuPont has disposed of large
amounts of C-8 containing wastes at the site, according to The
Associated Press. By April 1990, DuPont tests confirmed that C8
was leaching from the landfill into Dry Run Creek at concentrations
as high as 1.6 parts per million, more than 100 times the company’s
limit for C-8.
C-8 is a trade name for a chemical used at DuPont’s Washington
Works plant in the production of Teflon.
At the Tuesday hearing, Greathouse said there was little public
comment with only about two citizens attending.
Clean Air Act violations trial against AEP
to begin
COLUMBUS — The federal government’s lawsuit against
American Electric Power for allegedly spewing chemicals harmful
to human health and the environment was scheduled to go to trial
today in U.S. District Court.
At stake are billions of dollars in pollution controls and millions
of dollars in penalties.
The government claims Columbus-based AEP rebuilt nine coal-fired
power plants, including four in West Virginia, without installing
pollution controls as required under the Clean Air Act.
AEP argues the work done on its power plants was routine maintenance,
which doesn’t trigger the requirements for pollution controls.
Ohio Edison made the same argument in its trial over the W.H.
Sammins plant in Jefferson County in 2003.
It lost and is paying more $1.1 billion to install emission scrubbers
and $33.5 million in fines and environmental initiatives.
The nine plants are Muskingum River, Cardinal and Conesville
in Ohio; Tammers Creek in Indiana; Amos, Kammer, Mitchell and
Sporn in West Virginia, and Clinch River in Virginia.
