Energy Cabinet's Secret Decisions Exposed in Court

State environmental officials letting coal companies off the hook for breaking the law is the inevitable consequence of Governor Steve Beshear turning the former Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Cabinet into the Energy and Environment Cabinet.

That's like creating the Drug Enforcement Agency for Legalizing Cocaine. Or the Immigration, Customs Enforcement and Coyote Services Agency.

Big Coal has been terrorizing Kentucky's environmental protection staff for decades, but they never had an official presence in the agency itself until a "Democratic" governor gave it to them.

Most recently, they've used their new power to get water pollution fines reduced by more than 99.9 percent - from a recommended $720 million to $660,000.

But this time, the environmental groups who discovered the violations - who did the work the environmental protection staff was not doing - demanded their day in court.

From the Courier:

Kentucky environmental regulators on Wednesday were forced to explain in Franklin Circuit Court how they came up with fines of $670,000 for two coal companies instead of $720 million as calculated by environmental groups.

The Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet had originally sought a combined $1.25 million, but agreed to lower that after negotiations with the companies, Jeff Cummins, who oversees enforcement for the cabinet, said in his testimony.

SNIP

A coalition of environmentalists who first brought the alleged violations to the attention of the state have insisted that state regulators were soft on the companies, and Wednesday they got their day in court.

After bringing thousands of alleged water pollution violations by the companies to the attention of the energy cabinet last year, they have been allowed to participate in the court case originally brought by the state as an enforcement action. The trial, which may wrap up on Thursday, pits groups such as Appalachian Voices, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and Waterkeeper Alliance against the energy cabinet and the two coal companies.

SNIP

In her opening statement, the environmental groups’ attorney, Mary Comer, said the agreement was not fair, reasonable or in the public interest. The groups have argued the penalties were too lenient for what they had found, including the companies repeatedly copying and pasting the same water quality discharge data at coal mines in 2009 and 2010.

The case lifted some of the veils that typically surround legal action against violators of laws like the Clean Water Act, despite objections by the energy cabinet that the environmental groups’ court involvement would set a precedent that would lead to “chaos” in the court system.

Information about how the state determines environmental penalties “will be used by defendants (against the state) in every court proceeding from here to doomsday,” said Mary Stephens, an energy cabinet attorney.

Damn fucking straight and about fucking time. Thirty years ago, Big Coal was bribing the John Y. Brown Jr. administration to release performance bonds on strip mines that had not been reclaimed as the law required. But no one knew about it - except for the underpaid, overworked reclamation inspectors who hauled to Frankfort reams of documentation and photographs of "moonscape mining": bare hillsides stripped down to bedrock, leaching acid into freshwater streams and cascading boulders down to crush homes in the holler.

Big Coal has been getting away with murder in the coalfields for more than a century, in part because the government agency taxpayers entrusted to regulate Big Coal kept its decision-making secret from the public.

No more, thanks to Appalachian Voices, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, the Waterkeeper Alliance and Judge Phillip Shephard, who used to run the environmental cabinet and knows what he's dealing with.

Liberals know that corporate criminals pay million-dollar fines out of petty cash, and only monster fines that make stockholders sit up and take notice have any effect whatsoever.