Last official charged in West Virginia chemical spill pleads guilty

Dennis Farrell, a former executive with bankrupt Freedom Industries Inc, was among four company officials charged in the January 2014 leak of a coal-washing chemical into the Elk River near Charleston.

Farrell pleaded guilty in federal court on August 18 to charges steaming from the chemical spill.

Wheeling businessman Mark C. Busack, 51, admitted billing customer accounts for more than $400,000 in charges they didn’t authorize. Southern appeared unsympathetic when he spoke to the public a day after the spill, telling reporters he had a “long day”, while trying to leave a news conference multiple times.

Southern’s property was given back to him in a trust, and Goodwin said it’s up to the court system to determine how to use it. Former company president Gary faces felony charges over the spill.

Judge Thomas Johnston, anxious about the impact on the U.S. Attorney’s Office, created a 19-question survey for three members of Goodwin’s office, including himself, to answer. Five other sentencing hearings are already scheduled for December.

The plea deal said some assets could go toward claims in Freedom’s bankruptcy case, a class-action lawsuit or court-ordered restitution. The company had proposed paying out $2.7 million to spill victims in a larger bankruptcy plan, but a federal bankruptcy judge rejected the proposal over concerns about paying to clean up Freedom’s contaminated headquarters.