CHARLESTON — A lawsuit filed against Union Carbide Corportation alleges toxic chemicals have been seeping into Davis Creek and the Kanawha River from a landfill that no one was aware of until recently.
The Courtland Company alleged in the lawsuit Union Carbide Corporation, whether intentionally or through wanton, willful and callous indifference to the impact on health and the environment allowed the discharge of toxic, noxious, harmful and hazardous pollutants into navigable waters in West Virginia, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia.
The lawsuit claims Union Carbide has done so beginning in the 1950s until at least the 1980s. It alleges that Union Carbide's Filmont Waste Disposal facility, which is on a nearly 31-acre parcel of land that also houses the Massey Rail Yard.
The landfill was previously undisclosed. Courtland alleges that the landfill violates the Clean Water Act. Since 2001, Courtland has owned the land adjacent from the landfill and discovered the presence of the landfill in 2019.
Last year, Dr. David Scott Simonton traveled by kayak on West Virginia waters on Sept. 11 and 12 and observed orange sludge below the waterline that he said appeared to consist of fairly thick deposits of iron hydroxide/oxyhydroxides. In December 2019, Courtland sued Union Carbide, alleging it was leaking harmful pollutants into Davis Creek.
In the complaint, Courtland claims it didn't even know the Filmont Landfill existed until a deposition testimony was taken in a related lawsuit that Courtland had filed against Union Carbide in 2018 for pollutants from the Union Carbide Tech Center that is near Courtland's property. The information regarding the Filmont Landfill was unearthed during depositions for that lawsuit.
Courtland is represented by Michael O. Callaghan of Neely & Callaghan in Charleston.
U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia case number: 2:21-cv-00101
