Appalachian Timber Services and the Creosote Stain on West Virginia

Creosote on the Ground. Permits in the Trash.

Appalachian Timber Services operates a wood-treating facility at 393 Edgar Given Parkway in Sutton, West Virginia. The company pressure-treats raw lumber, primarily railroad ties and similar products, using creosote, a chemical mixture derived from the distillation of coal tar. The EPA classifies waste creosote as a listed hazardous waste designated F034, meaning it has a demonstrated history of causing serious harm to human health and the environment.

On September 26, 2019, an EPA inspector walked the facility and found what federal law was designed to prevent: hazardous waste sitting in open drums, creosote dripping onto bare soil and gravel, stained concrete in multiple locations, treated lumber removed from containment before dripping stopped, and a hazardous waste transport document left undated and incomplete. Seven violations. One facility. And for years prior to that inspection date, ATS operated its hazardous waste storage without a permit, without interim status, and without a valid legal exemption.

The route through which ATS avoided formal permitting requirements was a conditional exemption under federal hazardous waste law. Small quantity generators can store certain wastes on-site without a full permit, but only if they follow strict containment rules. ATS failed to follow those rules. The moment the drip pads fell out of compliance, the exemption evaporated. ATS was running an unpermitted hazardous waste storage facility, and the EPA has the documents to prove it.

The 7 Federal Violations, Explained in Plain English

The EPA charged ATS with seven distinct counts under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Each count represents a separate failure to contain, track, or responsibly manage a known toxic substance. Together, they paint a picture of a facility where hazardous waste management was treated as an afterthought.

Count 1 covers the most serious charge: operating a hazardous waste storage facility without a permit. Federal law is clear that you cannot store hazardous waste on-site without either a formal permit or meeting strict exemption criteria. ATS failed to meet those criteria.

Count 2 documents an open 55-gallon drum of flammable hazardous aerosol waste (classified D001, ignitability) left open with no waste being actively added or removed. Federal rules require these containers stay sealed except during active use. The puncturing unit was sitting open at the time of inspection, an open invitation to fire or explosion.

Counts 3, 5, and 6 all document the creosote contamination itself. Hazardous material dripped onto gravel, soil, concrete pads, and asphalt. Treated lumber moved to the storage yard before dripping ceased. No documented procedure existed to determine how long wood should remain on the drip pad. No records were kept.

Count 4 reveals that ATS had no current Professional Engineer assessment of its drip pad, a document legally required to be renewed annually. The drip pad at ATS’s CCA Plant building did not even meet baseline compliance standards at the time of the 2019 inspection.

Count 7 catches a sloppy paper trail: a hazardous waste transport manifest left undated and incomplete. That manifest is the document that tracks where toxic waste goes when it leaves a facility. Leaving it blank is how toxic materials disappear into the system without accountability.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What Money Cannot Repay

Sutton, West Virginia sits in Braxton County, a rural Appalachian community where the median household income hovers well below the national average. The people who live and work near 393 Edgar Given Parkway are not Silicon Valley workers who can relocate when their neighborhood gets contaminated. They are the people who shop at the same grocery store for decades, whose kids grow up in the same school district, whose families have lived on the same land for generations. When a company operating in their backyard allows a federally designated carcinogen to seep into the ground, those people bear the consequences long after any corporate fine gets paid and forgotten.

Creosote is a complex mixture containing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), compounds the EPA recognizes as probable human carcinogens. These chemicals do not stay put. They bind to soil particles and can travel through groundwater. They persist in the environment for years. The EPA’s inspection documented creosote pooling in pans, staining concrete, soaking into gravel, and contacting bare soil. Every one of those contact points is a potential pathway for this substance to move beyond the facility fence line. The workers walking those tram lines daily, the people who live near the facility, and the water table below Braxton County all absorb risk that no $39,681 fine ($39,681, roughly what a minimum wage worker in West Virginia earns in two full years of full-time work) can remediate.

The workers at the ATS facility faced a compounded exposure risk that the consent agreement glosses over entirely. The EPA’s own inspection documents confirm that “staining from drippage on the dirt and gravel at the ends of the tram rails corresponds with pathways used by employees.” This is not background noise. This is the federal government documenting that workers were walking through a hazardous waste spill zone every single day. There is no indication in the source material that employees received enhanced protective gear, formal hazard notification under environmental law, or any compensation for their exposure risk. The company’s primary concern, as reflected in its own consultant’s work plan, was minimizing “disruption to the production schedule as well as financial considerations.”

The five-year gap between the 2019 inspection and the 2024 settlement is its own form of harm. For five years, the people of Braxton County had no finalized, court-ordered remediation plan. For five years, ATS operated under no formal compliance order compelling it to fix the tram lines, install adequate steel trays, or document its drip procedures. The company’s consultant’s December 2023 site visit, conducted more than four years after the original EPA inspection, found that creosote staining was no longer visible during that particular visit in light rain conditions. But the EPA’s 2019 photographs, cited in the work plan itself, already documented the damage. The question of what crept into the soil and groundwater between 2019 and the start of formal remediation remains unanswered in the public record.

Legal Receipts: They Said the Quiet Part Out Loud

These are direct citations from the federal enforcement documents. Read them slowly.

EPA Consent Agreement — Count 3, Paragraph 42 “Creosote drippage was present at the ends of the tram lines on the ground, off of the concrete, on the gravel and on the surrounding soil. Pools of creosote drippage collected underneath the tram lines in pans and on absorbent pads; [and] The concrete surrounding drip pans was stained from creosote drippage; [and] The concrete pads and asphalt of the Facility Storage area were stained with staining / creosote drippage.”

EPA Consent Agreement — Count 5, Paragraph 52 “Respondent did not have measures in place to minimize waste tracking off the Facility drip pad, as required by 40 C.F.R. § 264.573(j). Drippage and staining were found at the Facility’s storage yard area, storage pads and the asphalt cap of the storage yard. Staining from drippage on the dirt and gravel at the ends of the tram rails corresponds with pathways used by employees.”

EPA Consent Agreement — Count 6, Paragraphs 57–58 “At the time of the EPA Inspection, drippage was apparent on the pads and ground in the Facility’s storage yard, indicating that the treated wood was not kept on the drip pad over the drip pans for a sufficient amount of time for it to cease dripping. The Facility did not have a procedure to determine the amount of time treated wood should remain on the drip pad prior to being moved to the storage area… In addition, the Facility did not maintain records to document that the treated wood was held on the drip pad until the drippage ceased.”

Final ATS Drip Pad Work Plan — Submitted by ATS’s Consultant, EnviroProbe, May 30, 2024 “ATS requests a phased schedule for installation of the trays in order to allow for minimum disruption to the production schedule as well as financial considerations.”

EPA Consent Agreement — General Provisions, Paragraph 8 “Except as provided in Paragraph 7, above, Respondent neither admits nor denies the specific factual allegations set forth in this Consent Agreement.”

Societal Impact Mapping: The Ripple Through West Virginia

Environmental Degradation: Creosote Does Not Stay Where You Leave It

The EPA’s inspection found creosote in at least four distinct locations beyond the drip pad’s contained area: at the ends of tram lines on bare ground, on surrounding gravel, in the soil itself, and across the concrete pads and asphalt of the storage yard. Each of those surfaces represents a different exposure vector. Gravel and soil are porous; liquids do not pool there forever. They infiltrate. The inspection occurred in September 2019, but the work plan submitted in 2024 references facility photographs attached to the original inspection report as evidence of where contamination had traveled. The physical evidence ATS’s own consultant reviewed confirmed the locations documented by the EPA inspector years earlier.

The creosote treatment process at ATS involves heat, pressure, and the forced impregnation of raw wood. The company’s work plan acknowledges that following the pressure treatment, a vacuum is applied for 105 minutes to mechanically recover free creosote and return it to product tanks for reuse. That process creates financial incentive to recover the material, but the inspection documents confirm that material still escaped in meaningful quantities. The facility also uses an air-blow drying step inside the retort chambers before wood is moved onto the tram lines. Despite this multi-step process, creosote still reached the soil of Braxton County.

ATS’s consultant performed a December 2023 site visit and noted that “no drippage of creosote was observed on the ground” at that time. The consultant also noted “a light rain was present during portions of the site visit” but reported no sheens in runoff areas. This observation does not erase the 2019 EPA findings. Creosote’s PAH compounds bind to soil and persist. The absence of visible surface pooling in 2023 does not establish that the soil was clean, remediated, or tested. No remediation data appears in the public record.

Public Health: A Carcinogen in the Employee’s Footsteps

The specific pathway the EPA documents in Count 5 of the consent agreement deserves direct focus: creosote drippage on “dirt and gravel at the ends of the tram rails corresponds with pathways used by employees.” Workers at this facility walked through this contaminated material. Dermal contact with creosote, meaning skin exposure through walking in contaminated areas or handling creosote-treated materials without full protective barriers, is a recognized exposure route for PAH compounds. The EPA’s own hazardous waste classification of creosote as an F034 listed waste is grounded in this toxicological evidence.

The consent agreement does not reference any worker health monitoring program, any notification to employees about hazardous material exposure under applicable occupational health law, or any screening of workers who may have been exposed. The remediation work plan addresses the infrastructure failures but not the human health monitoring gap. ATS did schedule a “Hazardous Waste Training class on February 20, 2024” covering “hazardous waste handling practices, rules, regulations, and requirements.” This training, conducted more than four years after the inspection, is the only worker-facing response documented in the source material.

The open 55-gallon drum of aerosol can contents, classified as D001 flammable hazardous waste, adds a fire and explosion risk to the public health picture. The puncturing unit was left open and unattended at the time of inspection. Flammable vapors from aerosol contents accumulate in enclosed or semi-enclosed spaces. A wood-treating facility, where heat and pressure equipment operate continuously, is not an environment where open flammable waste containers represent a minor procedural lapse.

Economic Inequality: The Cost of Justice in Appalachia

The $39,681 penalty ($39,681, roughly what a full-time worker earning West Virginia’s state minimum wage takes home across 2.5 years of work) resolves 7 federal violations involving a probable carcinogen. That math is not obscure. The Resource Conservation and Recovery Act authorizes penalties of up to $70,117 per day per violation for certain hazardous waste violations. The EPA’s penalty here reflects downward adjustments based on the company’s “good faith efforts to comply” and the specific formula in EPA’s RCRA Civil Penalty Policy. The result is a fine that functions as a rounding error for a commercial wood-treating operation with retort equipment, multiple tram lines, and a multi-building facility.

West Virginia ranks among the lowest states in median household income in the United States. Braxton County is rural, with limited municipal resources, a small tax base, and residents with limited ability to hire environmental lawyers to independently investigate contamination near their homes. The federal enforcement system here is the primary and often only protection these communities have. When that system resolves cases with no admission of wrongdoing, a penalty below the cost of a new pickup truck, and a multi-year remediation timeline driven partly by the company’s desire to limit “disruption to the production schedule,” the protection it provides is thin.

The Cost of a Life Metric

What Now? Your Next Move.

The People Running This Facility

The consent agreement documents list Rick Gibson as President of Appalachian Timber Services, LLC. His email address, rgibson@atstimber.com, appears in the EPA’s Certificate of Service. He signed the consent order on behalf of the company. The company’s legal representative is Jennifer Hughes of Steptoe & Johnson PLLC in Charleston, West Virginia.

The Watchlist: Who Has the Power to Act

• U.S. EPA Region 3 Enforcement and Compliance Assurance Division (Philadelphia) — holds monitoring authority over the work plan
• West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) — the state-authorized hazardous waste regulator
• EPA Office of Inspector General — receives complaints about enforcement adequacy
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) — jurisdiction over worker exposure to hazardous substances in the workplace
• Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) — tracks community health near hazardous waste sites
• West Virginia Bureau for Public Health — state-level environmental health monitoring

The Compliance Order Is Active. Watch It.

ATS is under a court-ordered Drip Pad Work Plan with specific deadlines for steel tray installation on all three tramlines and annual professional engineer reassessments. The EPA retains the right to enforce every term of this order. If ATS misses a deadline, the EPA can pursue additional penalties, suspend business privileges, or refer the matter to the Department of Justice. These remedies exist on paper. The question is whether anyone applies public pressure to ensure they get used if ATS falls behind.

If you live in Braxton County or nearby: contact the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection and ask whether any soil or groundwater testing has been conducted near 393 Edgar Given Parkway. Request public records from the EPA under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to track ATS’s work plan compliance status. Connect with Appalachian environmental justice organizations, including Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center and the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, both of which track industrial pollution in the region and can connect you with legal resources and community organizing networks. Mutual aid and neighborhood-level environmental monitoring, including citizen water testing and documented health surveys, have repeatedly proven more effective at forcing accountability than waiting for agency timelines to catch up with corporate pollution.