Joe Manchin's Business Legacy: Filthy Coal, Air & Water Pollution, Workplace Deaths, Ash Dumps
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Though Manchin’s motivations are often ascribed to the conservative, coal-friendly politics of West Virginia, it is also the case that the state’s senior senator is heavily invested in the industry — and owes much of his considerable fortune to it. For decades, Manchin has profited from a series of coal companies that he founded during the 1980s. His son, Joe Manchin IV, has since assumed leadership roles in the firms, and the senator says his ownership is held in a blind trust. Yet between the time he joined the Senate and today, Manchin has personally grossed more than $4.5 million from those firms, according to financial disclosures. He also holds stock options in Enersystems Inc., the larger of the two firms, valued between $1 and $5 million.
Those two companies are Enersystems Inc. and Farmington Resources Inc., the latter of which was created by the rapid merging of two other firms, Manchin’s Transcon and Farmington Energy in 2005. Enersystems purchases low-quality waste coal from mines and resells it to power plants as fuel, while Farmington Resources provides “support activities for mining” and holds coal reserves in the Fairmont area. Over the decades, whether feeding tens of thousands of tons of dirty waste coal into the power plants in northern West Virginia or subjecting workers to unsafe conditions, Manchin’s family coal business has almost entirely avoided public scrutiny. Manchin did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
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The workers endangered on the job at coal sites represent a fraction of the population impacted by the coal fields and power plants that prop up Manchin’s business. While racking up workplace safety violations, Enersystems’ two largest suppliers of coal have discharged significant amounts of toxic material into local waterways. Type Investigations and The Intercept found that Enersystems sold coal from mines that not only violated the Clean Water Act but also served as dumping grounds for carcinogenic coal ash. Enersystems has also sold coal to an energy producer pumping acid mine drainage into the mine system running below the greater Fairmont area. The Barrackville mine was cited by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2018 and 2019 for failure to file quarterly reports on the effluents discharged during the process of coal extraction. When the mine did file in 2020, it reported levels of the toxic heavy metal manganese exceeding Clean Water Act limits by over 600 percent. Excess exposure to manganese has been linked to neurological and fertility impairments and infant deaths. The Buffalo Creek into which the Barrackville mine discharges is listed by the EPA as impaired by over a dozen different heavy metals.
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Manchin has been one of coal ash’s most vocal supporters in Congress. In 2016, he sponsored and secured legislation to ease states’ abilities to deregulate the toxic coal byproduct. In a 2016 press release heralding the bill’s passage, he wrote, “The overregulation of coal ash by the EPA would threaten vital industries and unnecessarily cost West Virginia and the nation more jobs.” The Grant Town plant could have been one such casualty: Subject to long-standing financial precarity, the plant would likely be unable to maintain its business without the option for cheap and unrestricted ash dumping. According to West Virginia Public Service Commission documents, between 2001 and 2017 the Grant Town plant disposed of 9,422 tons of coal combustion residue, or CCR, per acre at the Barrackville mine site; 108,922 tons per acre in Idamay, an unincorporated town just south of Farmington; 63,919 tons per acre in Grant Town; 3,154 tons per acre at the Wilson site located between Grant Town and Barrackville; and 37,085 tons per acre at the Ralph Six site in Grant Town.
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https://theintercept.com/2021/09/03/joe-manchin-coal-fossil-fuels-pollution/
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