September 13, 2025 - South Fork Coal Company may be gone (more or less) from the Cherry River watershed, but the mess it left behind is only getting worse. As we learned in August, the company’s management had so badly overextended its finances and personnel that it had to lay off all of its workers and functionally abandon the 3,600 acres of surface mines and related infrastructure it is responsible for. As a result, we are now seeing a new rash of environmental violations impacting the South Fork of Cherry River and the mountains that surround it.

South Fork Coal declared bankruptcy way back in February. Often, corporate officers use the bankruptcy process to shed liabilities, and reorganize profitable assets in such a way that they can remain in business. This was not the case for South Fork Coal. As we previously reported, the company failed to secure buyers for its mines, and collapsed under the weight of its own gross mismanagement, ultimately accepting that it would have to totally liquidate and cease to exist as a company.

A court-appointed trustee is now overseeing that process, while South Fork’s owners and managers sit on the sidelines. They’ve abandoned their workforce, and they’ve left massive scars on the land that continue releasing pollutants into the watershed just upstream of the small but mighty community of Richwood.

On Sept. 2, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection issued two violations against the massive Rocky Run Surface Mine for failing to build berms and ditches that prevent sediment caused by mining from running into waterways and for failing to gain the legally required state approval to cease operations. This is on top of five violations and two cessation orders issued against the mine in August, for a myriad of issues related to mine cleanup and water pollution. The problems cited in August included placing mine spoil adjacent to a stream, failing to grade, stabilize and revegetate mined out areas, and for allowing erosion gullies to form on the mine, which contribute to the threat of sedimentation of the Cherry River and its tributaries.

Rocky Run is not the only one of South Fork’s mines experiencing problems. State regulators cited the Lost Flats #2 mine on Sept. 4 for failing to maintain a valid Clean Water Act permit, after also violating sediment and drainage control requirements in August. They cited the Laurel Creek Contour Mine for idling without prior notice and approval in August and again in September. Mine operators in the state are required to notify and gain approval from the Department of Environmental Protection before idling operations as an assurance that unreclaimed areas will not simply languish over time. The Lost Flats #1 mine was cited three times in August — twice for water pollution issues, and once for losing its Clean Water Act permit entirely. The company’s loadout facility at Clearco was also cited in August for failing to control sediment and for going idle without approval.

Lastly, the infamous Haulroad #2, which lawlessly crosses the Monongahela National Forest, received a violation, and a later a closure order in August, as the impacts of massive coal trucks very predictably led to excessive erosion.

With South Fork Coal now under Chapter 7 bankruptcy, these issues will almost certainly go unaddressed in a timely manner. If the DEP does its job, it will have no choice but to issue show cause orders as a result. This is when the regulator gives a mining company one last chance to “show cause” why its permits should not be revoked. Unless the court-appointed trustee wants to get involved in that process, the company will fail to show any cause, at which point the DEP should initiate permit revocation and bond forfeiture, where it would take the company’s bond money to fund reclamation and accept the task of cleaning up these mines itself.

That’s what the DEP should do, but if past is prologue, the agency will kick the can down the road, and allow the treasured Cherry River to continue to languish under the ongoing pollution South Fork Coal unleashed.