There’s an important story coming out of Kentucky this week that will be of interest to anyone who has followed the water sampling scandals here in West Virginia (see here and here) — or anybody who has just wondered why so much of our water pollution enforcement process is based on industry self-reported data. Here’s the press release from Appalachian Voices:

Over the course of 2013 and 2014, Frasure Creek Mining – one of the largest coal mining companies in Kentucky – sent the state false pollution reports containing almost 28,000 violations of federal law, and the Kentucky Energy and the Environment Cabinet failed to detect the falsifications, according to a letter of notification served to the company by four citizen groups. It was the second time the groups have taken legal action against Frasure Creek for similar violations.

In a 30-page notice of intent to sue mailed Friday, the groups document that Frasure Creek duplicated results from one water pollution monitoring report to the next, misleading government officials and the public about the amount of water pollution the company has been discharging from its eastern Kentucky coal mines. In some cases, Frasure Creek changed only the values that would have constituted violations of pollution limits in the company’s discharge permits. With a potential fine of $37,500 per violation, the maximum penalty could be more than $1 billion.

The Courier-Journal in Louisville explained:

This all comes, of course, as Sen. Mitch McConnell has accused the U.S. EPA of a war on coal, and promises his own war on the EPA, and as the EPA denies any war on coal — and, according to journalist Ronnie Ellis, some Kentucky citizens are arguing that it’s the coal companies that are waging the war … a war on the health and environment of Kentucky.

And, the C-J’s Jim Bruggers noted this response from Kentucky officials:

Contrary to inaccurate and inflammatory statements directed at the Cabinet … the agency has been actively monitoring compliance with Frasure Creek and other coal mining operations in Kentucky. Since 2011 the Division of Enforcement has reviewed approximately 179,000 (discharge monitoring reports) involving 78 coal companies and over 2,200 mining permits, assessed civil penalties in excess of $3,697,000, and has entered into 67 enforcement settlements with coal companies in Kentucky. The agency has and continues to proactively review and take appropriate enforcement actions to resolve violations identified during the inspection and review of coal mining operations.

We’ve covered previous discussion of the Kentucky situation here, and there’s a good summary of the background here, but this time, the story also made The New York Times:

In a state where coal-country creeks run red with iron, Frasure Creek Mining has been unusually clean of late: Amid tens of thousands of measurements that it submitted to Kentucky regulators in 2013 and early 2014, fewer than 400 exceeded the state’s limits for water pollution from coal-mine runoff … The disclosure could embarrass the state, not least because environmental activists caught Frasure and two other coal companies in the same scheme in 2010. Then, regulators promised to tighten their scrutiny of pollution reports and the laboratories that conduct pollution tests.