WVDEP has scheduled the online informal conference (public hearing) to hear objections to renewal of Lexington Coal Company's Twilight South surface mine permit, number S502808, for 5:30 PM Tuesday, Sept. 30, 2025. Lexington plans to extract 56 million tons of coal and bury three miles of Appalachian headwater streams on this 1,900-acre (3 square miles) permit. It is so far undisturbed but has $5,410 in delinquent civil penalties, including three violations first cited in 2023. The Twilight South permit is adjacent to another Lexington permit (Crescent #2) with massive destruction, stacks of violations, and over $189,000 in delinquent penalties. Lexington owes well over $3 million in delinquent fines across their many permits."The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s Division of Mining and Reclamation (DMR) is hosting a virtual informal conference on Tuesday, September 30, 2025, at 5:30 p.m. on Renewal Application No. 3 for Permit No. S502808 held by Lexington Coal Company, LLC. The conference can be accessed at the following link:  https://meet.google.com/etu-zkfp-ogh Or dial: ‪(US) +1 414-909-4161 PIN: ‪811 403 278#"  If you'd like to sign on to our comments and add some of your own, please do so by 5 PM at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe-1X9NFENOt5SIwyrXmjypgysQICKid4HWWmmoDPXtfzX9aA/viewform?pli=1. Here's a YouTube of a flyover (courtesy Southwings) of the permit (S502808) and the adjacent permit (S502007). The "disturbed" area is on the adjacent permit and includes a violation for timbering in the "buffer zone" of the stream. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv_uZmwVgw8  

We have several reasons to object to this permit, some of which follow and some of which may be further elaborated during the informal conference:

Make your voice heard about chronic violator Lexington Coal Company’s Twilight South permit in Boone County. They've applied for renewal of their Twilight South surface mine permit, number S502808, which is planned to cover over 1,900 acres and extract over 56 million tons of coal. Coal River Mountai Watch has submitted our objections, and we've requested an informal conference (public hearing) and a site visit. You can sign on to our comments and add some of your own at https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe-1X9NFENOt5SIwyrXmjypgysQICKid4HWWmmoDPXtfzX9aA/viewform?usp=dialog, or you can send your comments to Larry.E.Kade@wv.gov. Your comments will become part of the public record. July 25, 2025 is the technical end of the comment period, but comments after that date and until the hearing date, whenever that is, will still be included. Read more below to see our comments: 

Huge Thanks to the 93 individual donors and a generous grant from the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation's Krakoa NH Fund! We appreciate the support to cover costs of purchasing this rugged vehicle, now hard at work for our Citizens' Enforcement Program keeping an eye on polluters and giving tours to journalists.  

Huge thanks to everyone who has gotten us halfway to our revised goal of $9,000 for a replacement vehicle to monitor the coal operations in our area! We went ahead and bit the bullet and got a 2018 Ford police Interceptor from WV State Surplus. While the price was a good deal, it's still a major expense for our lean, mean organization. We're keeping our fingers crossed for some important grant renewals, but most of those would be in the fall and not guaranteed that we'll get them. So we're asking, if you have the means, to chip in to support this critical part of our work. And while the Interceptor primarily supports our Citizens' Enforcement Program, we also use it for giving tours and taking our message to conferences, festivals, and other events. We're at $4,567 now; could you please chip in to help get us to $9,000 at https://secure.givelively.org/donate/coal-river-mountain-watch/citizens-enforcement-truck? Thanks!

On May 17, 2024, Lexington Coal Company signed a payment agreement with WV Dept. of Environmental Protection to settle the $2,997,067.50 in delinquent penalties they owed the people of West Virginia for hundreds of violations across their coal mining operations. On June 15, 2024, LCC made the initial payment of $299,705.75 in accordance with the agreement. On Sept. 17, 2024, WVDEP and LCC entered into an amended payment agreement that included newer delinquent penalties, for a total of $3,182,510.00. Monthly payments of $144,659.55 were to have been made on the first of each month for the remaining 22 months until the debt was paid in full. WVDEP confirms that LCC only made the initial payment. We are now 11 months after the initial agreement and more than three years past the original violations. When asked about WVDEP's plans to collect this debt and the additional delinquent penalties that have since been assessed, WVDEP states "The alternative enforcement process is ongoing, and we will not provide further comment at this time."   About $2 million worth of these fines have resulted from CRMW's birddogging WVDEP and complaining to the federal Office of Surface Mining, Reclamation and Enforcement about WVDEP's practice of allowing violations to go unabated for months or years beyond the legal limit. Suddenly, WVDEP started assessing the required fines, and then they provided a memo to inspectors and supervisors reminding them of correct procedures.