Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Pace Environmental Law Students Take on Big Coal

Student interns at the Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic, under the supervision of law professors Karl S. Coplan, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Daniel Estrin, took the first step today in bringing a lawsuit against three mining companies in Kentucky for violations of the Clean Water Act.

Representing a coalition of environmental and social justice organizations and private citizens, including Appalachian Voices, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, Kentucky Riverkeeper, and Waterkeeper Alliance, they filed a sixty-day notice letter alleging that the companies ICG Knott County, ICG Hazard, and Frasure Creek Mining, a subsidiary of Trinity Coal, exceeded pollution discharge limits in their permits, consistently failed to conduct the required monitoring of their discharges and, in many cases, submitted false monitoring data to the state agencies charged with protecting the public. Joining in the lawsuit were several local residents impacted by the dumping of mining waste into Kentucky’s waterways.

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