Feds: Southern Illinois coal mine managers concealed ‘deadly conditions’

Four coal mine managers were indicted this week, accused of concealing an August 2021 underground fire at a sprawling southern Illinois mining operation, lying about hazardous conditions and obstructing the federal investigation that followed.

The fire began on the afternoon of Aug. 13, 2021, when mine personnel, using cutting torches to remove collapsed steel beams, ignited a fire underground, according to court records.

Though no workers died, prosecutors say the mine managers put more than 100 miners’ lives at risk. The indictments allege that federal regulations and the mine’s own emergency plan required an evacuation after the fire could not be extinguished within 10 minutes. Instead, prosecutors say, managers kept miners working underground for portions of three shifts while trying to fight the uncontrolled fire.

“When people in positions of authority conceal deadly conditions and then cover up their actions, they put lives at risk and prevent federal authorities from doing the job the law requires them to do,” U.S. Attorney Steven Weinhoeft said in a news release.

The nine-count indictment charges Ronald Dale Koontz, 69, of Hendersonville, Tennessee; Demitrios George Macropoulos, 38, of Buckeye, Arizona; Randy L. Nowland, 67, of Waltonville, Illinois; and Cory Taylor Humphrey, 37, of Prospect, Kentucky, with conspiracy, failing to evacuate miners and failing to notify the Mine Safety and Health Administration, or MSHA, of the fire.

A fifth mine manager, Brandon Timothy Parsons, was charged separately last year and pleaded guilty in August 2025 to conspiring to defraud MSHA by helping conceal the same fire.

The fire and alleged crimes

As the fire burned on Aug. 13, prosecutors allege, Nowland, the second-shift mine manager, signed a required safety report saying there were no hazardous conditions. Humphrey, the third-shift mine manager, allegedly signed two similar reports that night and the following morning. Both men are charged with falsifying the records.

MSHA still had not been told about the fire. The agency learned about it the following morning from an anonymous tip. Federal officials later ordered everyone out of the mine.

But prosecutors say some managers went back underground anyway.

Macropoulos, the mine superintendent, allegedly went back down without permission on Aug. 15. Prosecutors say he moved ventilation curtains to change the airflow in an attempt to manipulate air samples MSHA was using to determine whether the fire was still burning.

Two days later, prosecutors say Koontz did the same thing. Prosecutors say Koontz then directed another person to delete a record from Parsons’ cellphone showing a call from Koontz.

Prosecutors also allege that when MSHA began collecting the portable gas detectors miners had worn during the fire, an employee directed another miner to get rid of his.

In an interview with Capitol News Illinois on Friday, Weinhoeft said “well in excess of over 100 miners” were underground in “extraordinarily dangerous circumstances.”

“The indictment alleges that there were affirmative acts of concealment and affirmative acts of misrepresentation to keep MSHA from understanding the scope of what was going on, and it put individuals at risk,” he said.

‘Focusing on protecting lives’

The mine complex is owned by Sugar Camp Energy LLC, and operated by M-Clas Mining LLC, both part of St. Louis-based Foresight Energy’s mining operation. Foresight Energy did not return a phone call and email seeking comment on Friday.

The prosecution comes as President Donald Trump’s administration has aggressively promoted coal and other fossil fuel production while pulling back some federal environmental enforcement. That shift has also extended to the Justice Department, which earlier this year shut down a criminal investigation into potential Clean Water Act violations by coal companies owned by Republican U.S. Sen. Jim Justice of West Virginia, a Trump ally, according to an investigation by ProPublica. Career prosecutors and investigators had been examining whether repeated pollution violations warranted criminal charges, but DOJ officials directed that the matter be handled through civil enforcement instead.

Weinhoeft stressed that the Sugar Camp case is “entirely about focusing on protecting lives.”

“We’ve taken a strong stance on this case,” he said.

The indictments, filed this week in federal court in Benton, are the latest in a years-long series of criminal, regulatory and civil actions stemming from the fire at the Sugar Camp mining complex in rural Franklin County.

Sugar Camp is Illinois’ largest coal mine and one of the nation’s largest underground coal operations.

Prosecutors say Parsons, who was charged separately last year, helped keep the fire hidden from workers who did not already know about it. When hourly employees were finally evacuated, prosecutors said Parsons falsely told them that a coal conveyor belt had broken rather than telling them an uncontrolled fire was burning underground. After the workers left, prosecutors say Parsons and others went back underground to continue trying to fight the fire.

Neither Foresight Energy nor its subsidiaries are charged in the new criminal indictment.

“We are pleased to see accountability for actions that threatened the health and safety of coal miners in Southern Illinois,” said Amanda Pankau, director of Energy and Community Resiliency with Prairie Rivers Network. The environmental advocacy organization has pushed for accountability over the fire and its aftermath for years.

Illinois attorney general sues

The federal criminal case does not include charges related to the environmental consequences of the fire. But efforts to extinguish it led to separate state enforcement actions and lawsuits over contamination from firefighting foam containing PFAS, commonly known as “forever chemicals.”

Mine operators used about 46,000 gallons of firefighting foam to control the underground fire, including at least 660 gallons of concentrated PFAS-based foam. Testing by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency later detected PFAS in nearby surface waters.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul sued Sugar Camp Energy in January 2022. The lawsuit, which is pending in Franklin County Circuit Court, alleges the company violated the Illinois Environmental Protection Act by discharging PFAS into waters near the mine. In July 2022, Raoul announced an interim consent order requiring Sugar Camp Energy to test its ponds and wastewater for PFAS, install treatment systems to remove the chemicals and control discharge of PFAS-contaminated water.

Prairie Rivers Network and Illinois Sierra Club joined the attorney general’s lawsuit. Pankau said the PFAS contamination at the mine will “likely remain in the environment for many years to come.”

“This will require continued oversight and monitoring to ensure the PFAS materials do not spread to the nearby Big Muddy River tributaries and groundwater aquifers,” she said.

The contamination also became the subject of private litigation. Among them, Franklin County farmer Dennis Clark sued Foresight Energy and related entities in 2023, alleging PFAS-contaminated water reached his farm about a quarter-mile from the mining complex, resulting in the death of several farm animals who drank from it. The companies denied liability, and an Illinois appellate court ordered the dispute into arbitration.

All four men charged this week are presumed innocent unless proven guilty. If convicted, they could potentially face imprisonment.

MSHA is a division of the U.S. Department of Labor responsible for enforcing federal mine-safety laws. The agency inspects mines, investigates accidents and requires operators to correct dangerous conditions.

MSHA itself faced uncertainty last year. The Trump administration initially moved to terminate leases for 34 agency offices around the country as part of a broader federal cost-cutting effort. The administration later reversed course. The Labor Department announced in May 2025 that the offices would remain open.

In announcing the Sugar Camp indictments this week, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson of the Justice Department’s Energy and Natural Resources Division emphasized the agency’s role in protecting miners.

“As Congress has long recognized, a strong, productive coal industry depends on miners who feel safe and trust that their leaders are not putting them at unnecessary risk,” Gustafson said. “Supporting MSHA’s work to protect coal miners is an important part of ENRD’s mission.”

Separately, MSHA proposed nearly $1.2 million in civil penalties against mine operator M-Class Mining in 2022, issuing 14 citations related to the fire, including two classified as “flagrant.”

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.