Gary Southern enters the Robert C. Byrd United States Courthouse, in Charleston, for his sentencing Wednesday. Southern, who was president of Freedom Industries at the time of the January 2014 Elk River chemical spill, was sentenced to 30 days in prison and ordered to pay a $20,000 fine.
CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Gary Southern, the last of six former Freedom Industries officials to face sentencing, will spend 30 days in jail and pay a $20,000 fine for his role in pollution crimes that caused the January 2014 Elk River chemical spill that contaminated the drinking water supply for hundreds of thousands of people in the Kanawha Valley and surrounding area.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Johnston also sentenced Southern, Freedom’s president at the time of the spill, to six months of supervised release by the U.S. Probation Office.
Noting that the three charges Southern admitted to in a plea deal with prosecutors were misdemeanors, Johnston said he might not have given Southern any jail time at all, if he had not been convinced that Southern had lied in U.S. Bankruptcy Court about his role at Freedom’s chemical storage operation, where the spill occurred.
“Like the others, this defendant is hardly a criminal …