Regulator's Motto: If You Don't Do It Right, It Doesn't Take As Long

Regarding the $3.25 million fine for 300 million gallons of sludge released by Massey Energy subsidiary Martin County Coal Co. - that’s roughly $1 per hundred gallons of sludge released/disposed. Fines like these may mean it’s cheaper to dump sludge into our rivers than to build impoundments. When could average citizens find such cheap neighborhood stream disposal, say for their own sludge?

Of course, previous fines of Massey/MCCC levied by federal and state regulatory agencies probably won’t pay for the true costs it took to substantiate violations and process the paperwork. It took 20 months to levy the latest fine. What a testimony to the razor’s edge of enforcement. By the time whatever fines are actually collected, the costs for the process may well dwarf the amount recovered.

Worse, once a watershed is devastated (i.e. the Tug Fork River), the need for cleanup of future releases could be argued, by good neighbors such as Massey and Don Blankenship.

Of course, legislators who minimize fines for such violators are at the root of the enforcement problems. And of course, regulators as the branches of enforcement want us to trust that they will punish violators, yet may administer that punishment on geologic time scales and for fines that are laughable when put into perspective.

This $3.25 million fine for one of the worst environmental disasters in the history of the southeastern U.S. is less than one year of Massey CEO Don Blankenship’s salary and compensation.

You tell me – who’s in charge of this system?