BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) A company owned by the family of West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice is paying a $925,000 fine to an Alabama health agency, after it shut down a coke plant it said was leaking polluting gases.

Under a consent decree approved Wednesday by a state court judge , Bluestone Coke will pay the fine to the Jefferson County Health Department for air pollution violations at its coking plant north of downtown Birmingham.

A coking plant heats coal at very high temperatures in what are supposed to be closed, oxygen-free ovens, cooking off impurities while not burning the coal.

The process creates coke, which is used as fuel to fire blast furnaces for metal and cement makers.

Coke ovens have long polluted sections of Birmingham, once a smoky center of coal mining and steelmaking and one of Alabamas biggest cities. But increasing attention has focused on the impact of pollution in the predominantly Black neighborhoods that surround Bluestone Coke and other industrial sites.