Environmental Lawsuit
By: Ben Manning
Updated: May 26, 2010
JOHNSTOWN, CAMBRIA COUNTY - Several environmental groups, including PennEnvironment, the Sierra Club, and the Environmental Integrity Project, are planning to sue RRI. They made their announcement Monday overlooking the Conemaugh River, the river they say RRI and their Seward Station Plant in New Florence, is poisoning.
Kurt Limbach has been kayaking on the Conemaugh for 15 years. He doesn't see many fish when he's out he says most of the river is dead. That's why he's helping the environmental groups in their lawsuit against RRI. The company formerly called Reliant Energy owns the Seward Station Plant.
The environmental groups say they are trying to force the company to pay for what they did to the ecosystem in Western Pennsylvania. The group announced they're going to sue RRI because of 12 thousand violations. More than five thousand are violations where the chemical levels were too high in the discharge into the Conemaugh River. They also reported another six thousand violations of dumping illegal metals from the coal refuse pile.
The group says the chemicals the Seward Station has dumped into the river contribute to a film that coats the rocks and everything in the river. RRI reported their own violations, but the group says the DEP doesn't have the resources to go after every violator.Limbach says that is evidence of the pollution because the red stains never come out of clothes the film touches. Limbach says he got involved with the group because he cares about his community and he doesn’t like what he sees when he kayaks down the river.
RRI says they have not received anything on the suit and can't comment on it until they do.
