Two Environmental Groups Allowed to Join Suit Against Power Company

The Maryland Department of the Environment has told two environmental groups that they can become involved in a state lawsuit filed against one of the region's largest power companies.

In a response filed in Charles County Circuit Court last week, the department supported a motion to intervene from two groups, the Environmental Integrity Project and Potomac Riverkeeper. The motion clears the way for the groups to become plaintiffs in the state's suit against Mirant Mid-Atlantic, which was filed in June by Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler (D).

At issue is Mirant's compliance with environmental regulations at its fly ash landfill near Faulkner in Charles County.

Acting on a request from the environmental groups, Gansler says in his suit that toxic metals are leeching into the environmentally sensitive Zekiah Swamp from the Mirant facility. The Environmental Integrity Project, a Washington-based group, concluded that the levels of cadmium and selenium seeping into the swamp could kill all plants and animals that live there, information that Gansler used in the lawsuit.

"Citizens are often, through sampling streams and rivers, walking their shores and fishing their waters, the first to observe a problem," Assistant Attorney General Jacqueline Russell wrote in response to the groups' motion. "As such, the Department not only welcomes, but actively solicits citizens to come forward with complaints."

In approving the groups' request to be parties in the lawsuit, Russell said they met a four-part test determined by the state. She concluded that the groups have an interest in the outcome of the case that is substantially different from the state's.

As the groups "point out, the Department has a statewide and therefore broader focus of interests than do [the groups], who are concerned with the more narrow geographical area of the Faulkner site and impacted waterbodies," Russell wrote.

The Faulkner site is used as a dumping ground for fly ash, the residue trapped in filters at Mirant's coal-fired power plant in nearby Morgantown. Mirant officials have said that the levels of toxic metals in the swamp are lower than the maximum allowed by the company's permit and that they hope to reach a settlement before the case goes to trial.