The Sierra Club, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Coal River Mountain Watch and the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy has formed a coalition and taken action against Massey to hold the company accountable for more than 12,000 Clean Water Act and surface mining violations.

“Massey continues to illegally dump pollution into Appalachian waterways despite a massive $US20 million fine already placed on the company for thousands of previous violations,” the groups said.

"Massey has operated outside the law for far too long. There is a history here, not only of Massey ignoring the law, but of state officials ignoring Massey's violations," CRMW spokesperson Judy Bonds added.

She referred to the claimed violations as “very real crimes against the people of Appalachia".

OVEC representative Diane Bady said environmental groups were forced to do the job of the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, as it felt the agency was allowing Massey to violate laws under a “long history of environmental and social irresponsibility”

Sierra Club West Virginia chapter spokesperson Jim Sconyers added: "Their permits are not just pieces of paper – they are solemn commitments to protect the waters and people of West Virginia. Unfortunately the company has shown time and again that it is unwilling to take its obligations seriously."

Massey officials told ILN on Monday that it had received information of a threatened lawsuit from the groups and was reviewing the allegations.

“On first review, the data and conclusions in the notice appear to be significantly incorrect,” company spokesperson Jeff Gillenwater said, noting that Massey’s compliance rate was well above 99%.

“The threatened suit is but another attempt by out-of-state extremists to attack the coal industry, which works hard to provide domestic energy and domestic jobs,” Gillenwater said.

“The company is evaluating its legal options with respect to the inaccurate statements from these groups.”

The challenge by OVEC is not the group’s first stand against a coal company.

It was recently involved with Consol Energy, filing an appeal of the company’s mine permits for the Fola complex in West Virginia that led to the producer’s decision in December to idle the mines and furlough almost 500 workers.

About 104 workers at the Little Eagle Coal Company and approximately 378 at the Fola Coal Company received notice under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act – a federally mandated communication – that the mines near Bickmore would begin layoffs at 12.01am local time on February 7, over a 14-day period.

“Subsequent to that appeal, Judge Robert Chambers of the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, Huntington Division, recently issued an order suspending Fola Coal Company's Clean Water Act Section 404 permit for the Ike Fork portions of Fola operations effective January 23, 2009,” Consol said at the time.

“Without this permit, neither Fola Coal Company nor Little Eagle Coal Company can satisfy the required specifications of its coal sales contracts.”

Earlier this month, however, the operator received some reprieve when Judge Robert Chambers ruled the mine could continue to operate and use its six valley fill areas past his previous deadline of January 23.

The coalition’s arguments centered on a lack of public consultation in the mine’s permit approval process. More legal action is expected and the future of the operations remains unclear.