$54 Million Settlement for Gambrills Families Whose Drinking Wells Were Poisoned by Coal Ash

For roughly twelve years, Constellation Energy worked with a contractor to deposit billions of pounds of waste ash from its Brandon Shores coal-fired power plant into an unlined former gravel mine in Gambrills, Maryland. Liner failure allowed metals to leach into surrounding groundwater. When Anne Arundel County tested private wells in the neighborhood, 23 came back positive for arsenic, cadmium, and thallium, all components of coal combustion fly ash.

Residents near the former quarry site had no idea what was in their water. Some had been drinking from those wells for years. The contamination raised direct cancer and health risks, and property values in the area collapsed as news of the testing results spread through the community.

In November 2007, Hassan Murphy of The Murphy Firm, working alongside the Law Offices of Peter G. Angelos, filed a class action in Baltimore Circuit Court on behalf of the affected households. The case alleged property damage, personal injury, and loss of use arising from Constellation's dumping practices.

After nearly a year of litigation, the parties reached a settlement estimated at $54 million in total value. Judge Alfred Nance approved the deal, which was finalized on December 31, 2008. The agreement required Constellation to connect 84 households, those on private wells at the center of the contamination zone, to the public water system at a cost of $7.5 million. A $9.5 million trust fund was established for those same residents to cover personal injury and property damage claims and to fund site enhancements. A second fund of $500,000 was set up for adjoining property owners. Separately, Constellation committed $10 million to environmental remediation of the former quarry dump site and agreed to halt all future coal ash deliveries there, a practice that had already stopped in 2007.

The settlement covered roughly 600 people across the affected properties. Attorney fees of $9 million were allocated to the Murphy and Angelos firms combined.