Judge Cuts Mine Firm’s Pollution Fine by 90%
A judge has reduced by 90% the federal fine for a mining company whose waste pond leaked millions of gallons of gooey coal sludge into eastern Kentucky waterways in 2000.
Martin County Coal Corp. faced $55,000 in fines for the spill, which sent an estimated 306 million gallons of sludge with the consistency of wet cement into parts of eastern Kentucky and West Virginia.
But a ruling by Irwin Schroeder, an administrative law judge with the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission in Washington, cut the fine to $5,500.
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