Yeager’s Pollution Violations Persist

By Ken Ward Jr.

kward@wvgazette.com

Muddy slips continue to erode the hillside and dirty water continues to pour off Yeager Airport’s massive construction project overlooking the Elk River and Coonskin Park, state environmental inspectors have found.

Despite a settlement with Yeager, state regulators have cited the airport for nearly a dozen more water pollution violations, according to newly released Department of Environmental Protection records.

Many of the violations were cited before the DEP announced a settlement of previous problems with Yeager in late March, but were not made public by the DEP until this week.

Yeager Director Rick Atkinson said that he is trying to put a stop to the continued environmental violations.

“Can I say we won’t have another violation? I won’t make that guarantee,” Atkinson said Tuesday. “But that is what we have set as a goal, and that’s what we’re spending our time on.”

Atkinson said that Yeager and its contractors from Cast & Baker do not have a “blatant disregard” for pollution rules, and have immediately corrected any problems cited by DEP inspectors.

But the airport’s runway and taxiway projects have had problems since they began, and the latest DEP inspection reports indicate violations have not been corrected in a timely fashion.

For example, DEP inspector Cindy Musser on May 8 found “erosion of several diversions throughout the site,” including at several locations that were cited during a previous inspection on March 12.

“The road is also eroding,” Musser wrote in her report. “Proper ditch lines and water bars need installed.”

Musser also noted that Yeager had previously submitted a plan to fix several massive slips but had not included a timeline for doing so.

Yeager is extending its runway safety overrun areas and relocating a section of the main taxiway. Contractors excavated part of the Barlow Drive hillside for rock and dirt for construction of the runway extension.

The high-profile project – easily visible from Interstate 79 just north of Charleston – has violated environmental laws from the start.

In May 2005, state forestry inspectors shut down two logging contractors who were clear-cutting the area before construction began, citing a lack of drainage controls and failure to seed and mulch skid roads.

The DEP also cited Yeager previously, in April 2005, for two violations of the project’s storm-water control permit. Those violations occurred as contractors were trying to fix taxiway slides caused by heavy rains and flooding in June 2003, according to state records.

Some Coonskin Park users have complained that Yeager did not properly repair those slides, and that more slides associated with the construction damaged the park’s Elk River Trail.

As part of its settlement with the DEP, Yeager agreed to a project to improve the drainage along the trail.

And in a new plan submitted to the DEP early last month, Yeager Assistant Director Terry Sayre said that the airport would now begin to remove the slip material from the top of the slips – instead of from the bottom as contractors had been doing.

“If we do as we have done in the past, and remove the material from the bottom, we are concerned that the material above it will just slip again and we will be back where we started with the trail blocked,” Sayre said in a May 6 letter to the DEP.

In late March, the DEP disclosed that it had reached a deal with Yeager for the airport to pay nearly $37,000 in fines and repairs to resolve violations cited over a six-month period in 2007.

At the time, DEP chief inspector Mike Zeto said, “It appears that that they have gotten things straightened out and are moving in the right direction.”

Zeto could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

The DEP-Yeager settlement was dated March 14, and was announced by the DEP in a public notice issued March 26. It covered violations discovered in a series of inspections from January 2007 through June 2007.

On March 12, 2008, though, DEP inspectors had found more problems at Yeager, and issued eight new notices of violation that were not mentioned in the settlement.

DEP inspectors found sediment traps that required maintenance, silt fences that were overrun with dirt and mud, and “muddy water … leaving the site without first going through an appropriate” pollution control. At one spot, inspectors saw a slip that “has begun major movement” and “some very soupy mud is progressing toward Coonskin Trail.”

Inspectors also found several small petroleum spills and the illegal burning of solid waste in a barrel in a fuel storage area.

To contact staff writer Ken Ward Jr., use e-mail or call 348- 1702.

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