WV Gov Jim Justice's Son - Coal CEO - Facing Contempt Charges In AL For Refusing To Appear At Bankruptcy Hearing

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Chief U.S. District Judge David Proctor is fed up. “I’m not fooling around anymore,” Proctor said Wednesday in a federal court hearing in Birmingham. “This has gotten past the point of any good faith in this case.” But the target of Proctor’s ire is not around to hear it.

Jay Justice—son of West Virginia governor and now U.S. Senate candidate Jim Justice—was a no-show at a federal court hearing Wednesday in a Clean Water Act lawsuit over pollution from a long-idled coking plant in north Birmingham. In the hearing, Proctor scolded Bluestone Coke, the plant’s owner, and Justice, the company’s president, for “thumbing their nose” at the court. “What’s even more significant than a pattern?” Proctor asked the courtroom when considering the defense’s conduct. “This has permeated every aspect of this case.”

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Proctor filed an order Thursday finding Justice and Bluestone in civil contempt for ignoring the court’s instructions. “Defendants have violated three separate court orders requiring them to produce responses and negotiate, in good faith, dates for depositions,” the order said. Jay Justice took over several of the family’s companies when his father entered politics, including Bluestone Coke. He and facility manager Donald Wiggins were named as defendants alongside Bluestone Coke in a lawsuit alleging violations of the Clean Water Act.

Bluestone is the latest owner of the coking plant, which has been shuttered almost three years due to earlier air pollution violations and is listed as a potentially responsible party for a Superfund site that covers three Birmingham neighborhoods. The Clean Water Act suit, filed last year, alleges that runoff and waste left behind at the plant continues to pollute groundwater and a local creek that eventually runs into the Black Warrior River. The plaintiffs, Black Warrior Riverkeeper and the Greater Birmingham Alliance to Stop Pollution (GASP), say the plant is “continually discharging unpermitted pollutants” into Five Mile Creek, including barium, strontium, E. coli, volatile organic compounds and “staggering amounts” of “coal, coke, slag and associated sediments.”

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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24082024/alabama-court-abandoned-bluestone-coke-plant/