Justice coal firm owes $916K in delinquent DEP fines as he backs debt-adding megabill

The debt extends the Justice family business empire’s lengthy history of unmet financial obligations in deals with its partners and its own workers.

The DEP disciplinary actions were violation notices and cessation orders, which the agency hands down to stop operations until a violation is abated, for 37 mining permits across in West Virginia's southern coalfields.

Senate spokespeople for Justice and a Justice coal company attorney did not respond to requests for comment.

Bluestone’s debts to the DEP persist following Justice’s vote Tuesday for a Republican budget reconciliation bill the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said would add at least $3.3 trillion to the national debt, making projected deep cuts to Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program spending to support extending 2017 tax cuts that have benefited the wealthy.

Justice business empire struggles have cost state and local governments in recent years.

Nearly 300 West Virginia properties owned by Justice or his businesses — on which they owed almost $400,000 in delinquent taxes — went up for sale in public auctions in June 2023.

The properties in McDowell, Raleigh and Wyoming counties were included in public auctions held in those counties. Property taxes are a source of revenue for local tax bases, helping fund infrastructure, libraries, parks, public safety and schools.

McDowell County’s tax base has dwindled sharply amid the decline of the coal industry there. The county’s 37.6% poverty rate in 2023 far exceeded the national poverty rate of 11.5% the year before.

“Passing President Trump’s agenda out of the Senate provides lasting tax relief, establishes common-sense reform to our social programs while protecting those who are most vulnerable, and represents a refocus on placing the American dream back in reach for all Americans,� Justice said in a Tuesday X post about his vote for the reconciliation bill.

Long history of fines becoming delinquent

Violations for which delinquent fines persist include those issued in:

• March 2021 for failing to maintain a sediment ditch on the permit for the Red Fox Surface Mine in McDowell County, causing erosion on a downslope and washing debris onto a county road
• February 2023 for failing to submit a renewal application for a McDowell County mining permit that has drawn nine more violation notices since then for drainage system maintenance, surface water monitoring and other failures
• April 2025 for not responding to a DEP request for an endangered species consultation on the permit for Mine No. 56 in the Tug Fork River watershed in McDowell County

Bluestone Coal Corp. owes $583,288 for 46 disciplinary actions on its 579-acre permit for the Poca No. 11 Contour Auger No. 2 Mine in Wyoming and McDowell counties.

Bluestone mine drew federal attention 

The DEP came under federal scrutiny last year for its oversight of the 579-acre Poca No. 11 Contour Auger No. 2 Mine, the mine whose permit has by far the highest agency delinquent penalty total attached to it.

In a December 2024 notice to the DEP, the federal Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement indicated it had reason to believe the DEP failed to comply with its own regulation by not promptly reviewing and acting on patterns of violations at the Bluestone Coal Corp. mine site, noting that 13 cessation orders the DEP issued since February 2024 were still unabated.

But in a February 2025 follow-up letter to the DEP, the OSMRE concluded the DEP’s response to its December notice that threatened to take over enforcement at the Poca No. 11 Contour Auger No. 2 Mine was “reasonable and appropriate, with no apparent deviation from the approved program.� The OSMRE told the DEP it planned no further action and would monitor a DEP show-cause hearing process for 12 outstanding show-cause orders on the mine permit.

The OSMRE cited “relevant facts� of enforcement actions the DEP had taken against Bluestone, including patterns of violations the DEP said it identified and show-cause orders it issued after the OSMRE’s December 2024 threat to assume enforcement authority.

Conservationists have objected to the DEP’s oversight of the mine permit given Bluestone’s long history of wide-ranging environmental violations onsite.

Willie Dodson, coal impacts program manager for regional environmental nonprofit Appalachian Voices, has said the OSMRE had made the right call under the Biden administration in pressuring the DEP to revoke the permit.

Dodson, in a February email, called the Poca mine a “gash on the mountain� that “needs to be healed.�

The DEP has issued Bluestone Coal Corp. 13 violation notices and 16 cessation orders for the Poca mine since the start of 2024, according to agency records. The agency issued the orders for a wide range of violations, including expired permits, runoff from a coal stockpile area and failures in surface water and groundwater monitoring, drainage control, diversion ditch and sediment control maintenance.

Justice family businesses woes have mounted 

Justice’s business and personal finances have mounted in recent months.

In May, a ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä-based insurance provider, BrickStreet Mutual Insurance Co., told a federal court that Justice’s Southern Coal Corp. hasn’t complied with a 2023 court order to pay $503,985 or a settlement agreement from last year under which the Justice company agreed to make payments to BrickStreet to satisfy its debt.

Five of Justice’s coal companies again failed to provide retirees health care coverage in violation of a collective bargaining agreement, retirees and the United Mine Workers of America union said in an April 2 court filing.

The reported failures were the latest in a yearslong string of intermittent lapses in contractually promised health care and prescription drug coverage that retirees have said resulted in the loss of critical medications.

In another April 2 court filing, a Kentucky tobacco warehouse company and an affiliated firm said two Justice coal company executives, including Justice’s son, James C. “Jay� Justice, stopped paying a daily contempt fine amid their noncompliance with a court order to share evidence in the case.

The filing alleged the defendants’ tax returns and other documents prepared from a general ledger show Jay Justice owes James C. Justice Companies nearly $32 million for shareholder loans made to him.

The filing cites two April 2022 ledger entries the plaintiffs say show that despite James C. Justice Companies entered a what appeared to be a Virginia land transfer as a total loss in a 2016 asset disposal report, its affiliate sold the property six years later for a $10.1 million profit.

New London Tobacco Market and Fivemile Energy brought the case in 2012 after Justice’s Kentucky Fuel Corp. failed to mine coal under an agreement following the plaintiffs’ assignment of rights to mine coal in eastern Kentucky to the defendants in exchange for a cut of the mined coal.

Martinsville, Virginia-based Carter Bankshares Inc., holding company of Carter Bank, reported in April that Justice entities had paid $56.8 million of a $301.9 million debt as of March 31, 2025.

Carter Bank scheduled an auction of Greenbrier Sporting Club property that featured prominently in the Justice business empire last year to help satisfy a nine-figure Justice family debt to the bank. The auction was later canceled, and the Justice family and the bank announced the settlement of the dispute, in which the bank has sought $300 million-plus in debt admitted by the Justices.