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CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A woman who set fire to an abandoned house in Kanawha City that claimed a man’s life was sentenced to spend eight years in prison Monday.

Patricia White, 50, of Charleston, pleaded guilty in July to voluntary manslaughter and second degree arson. She started a fire at the house on MacCorkle Avenue in February 2022.

White was mad at her husband but he wasn’t inside. Firefighters later found the body of Dennis Rutledge, 52, on the second floor.

White, who has admitted to a decades long addiction, was high at the time of the blaze. She apologized during Monday’s sentencing.

“I understand that my behavior was unacceptable and it has had a significant impact on the Rutledge family,” White said from the South Central Regional Jail. “I never intended to hurt anyone. May God be with each family during all of the endurance, the sadness this has brought.”

White’s attorney Joey Spano said White has been a model prisoner and wants to help others once she finishes her prison term.

“She has not had any write-ups and done everything she is supposed to do. She actually plans upon getting out to continue with her sober life and to get inpatient treatment,” Spano said.

Rowe sentenced White to 8 years for voluntary manslaughter and 4 years for second degree arson but decided the sentences will run at the same time.

“She is guilty of two crimes but it’s a single act,” Rowe said. “I see no reason given the circumstances to run those back-to-back. So it’s the further judgment of the court that they be allowed to be served concurrently.”

White will be given credit for time served. Restitution will be determined at a later hearing.

There was no one at Monday’s hearing to speak on behalf of Rutledge. Prosecutors said efforts to contact his spouse or any family member had been unsuccessful.

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Jim Justice has filed a federally-mandated financial disclosure for his Senate run, revealing a mountain of assets — with many indicating they produce little or no income — and also a riptide of debt.

Two debts on the filing are promissory notes characterized as between $1 million and $5 million each to Bray Cary, the broadcaster and businessman who served as Justice’s senior adviser, as well as his Cary Foundation Inc. No explanation is provided for the notes, both issued August 31, 2021, shortly after Cary left the administration.

For many years, Justice was described as West Virginia’s only billionaire, but Forbes downgraded him after 2021 debt disputes. He declared his candidacy for U.S. Senate on April 27, facing Congressman Alex Mooney in the Republican Primary and aiming for incumbent Senator Joe Manchin in the General Election.

Mooney, who has millions of dollars in campaign support lined up from the hardcore Club for Growth, already submits required financial disclosures for his position in the House, submitting the most recent one May 25. Manchin, a Democrat, filed his most recent one May 15 for the 2022 financial year.

Justice took 151 days from the time he declared his campaign before finally filing the financial disclosure report. The submission finally went through 134 days after it was first due and took place on the first day a fine of $200 could kick in.

“Governor Jim Justice has created thousands of jobs and saved businesses, like The Greenbrier Resort, and kept companies open in tough economic times. He is a job creator, and his opponent is a self-serving career politician with decades in political office relying on the largest Never Trump group in the country to get him elected to the U.S. Senate,” stated Roman Stauffer, campaign manager for Jim Justice for U.S. Senate.

The DSCC campaign organization representing Democrats in Washington said it wanted to know three things from the release of Justice’s report: Who are any previously unnamed lenders or financers in Justice’s business dealings? Would the filings show any foreign investment in Justice’s financial structure? And is Justice’s personal wealth truly tied up in the businesses themselves?

Justice’s political persona has been as a businessman who can buzz the numbers. His report, like all others, leads with his earned income. In Justice’s case, that’s $250,000 annually as governor, although the report notes he has donated the base pay to the state Department of Education while still paying the income taxes.

Justice’s report also lists his $3,500 wages as basketball coach at Greenbrier East High School.

His list of assets stretches for 147 entries, ranging from checking accounts to the network of companies in his family-owned coal, timber and tourism operations.

The estimated value of the assets was between $37.5 million and more than $1.9 billion.

Yet many of the assets are listed as producing no or little income. The word “none” appears 276 times on the report, sometimes redundantly, to describe what type or amount of income they produce.

A checking account at Bank of Monroe is listed with $1,000 to $15,000. The contents of another checking account at People’s Bank is listed as “none.”

The report indicates Justice has more than $100,000 in People’s Bank stock, more than $50,000 in Caterpillar stock, more than $50,000 in HP stock, along with smaller amounts in other stock accounts.

Line after line lists assets in Justice’s network of family businesses, and many are identified as being of significant value. But the assessment on the filing is that many also do not produce income.

For example, Justice Receivable — one of the James C. Justice Companies, is listed as having value of more than $50 million. But its income is listed as “none.”

Likewise, Justice’s Southern Coal Receivable is listed with a value of more than $50 million but no income.

Virginia Fuel Investment, value over $50 million but no income. Bluestone Resources Investment, value over $50 million but no income. A&G Coal Investment, value over $50 million but income production of “none.”

The report also specifies major debts, with Justice reporting between $37.5 million and $108.1 million in liabilities between promissory notes and lines of credit between 2010 and 2023.

Justice’s companies face waves of financial disputes in court cases, with some now focused on how companies could ever collect. In an $18 million case involving Fivemile Energy Company of Kentucky, lawyers for the Justice businesses have objected that they lack the ability to pay, maintaining that economic headwinds over the past decade have whittled more than 100 coal and farming companies to just a dozen now actively operating.

Lawyers representing the Justice companies, in a federal court filing, noted that depositions by company representatives “painted a consistent portrait of a somewhat disorganized organization whose resources are stretched to the limit with respect to both finances and personnel. The cash that comes in is almost immediately transferred from those entities that have it to those that need it.”

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- West Virginia can restrict the sale of the abortion pill, despite federal regulators' approval of it as a safe and effective medication, a federal judge has ruled.

U.S. District Court Judge Robert C. Chambers determined Thursday that the near-total abortion ban signed by Republican Gov. Jim Justice in September 2022 takes precedence over approvals from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

“The Supreme Court has made it clear that regulating abortion is a matter of health and safety upon which States may appropriately exercise their police power,” Chambers wrote in a decision dismissing most challenges brought against the state by abortion pill manufacturer GenBioPro, Inc. in a January lawsuit filed in the state southern district’s Huntington division.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court last year overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that provided nationwide access to abortion, most GOP-controlled states have enacted or adopted abortion bans of some kind, restricting abortion pills by default. All have been challenged in court.

Legal experts foresee years of court battles over access to the pills, as abortion-rights proponents bring test cases to challenge state restrictions.

In West Virginia's case, regulation of medical professionals “is arguably a field in which the states have an even stronger interest and history of exercising authority,” than the federal government, Chambers decided.

GenBioPro, Inc., the country’s only manufacturer of a generic version of the abortion pill mifepristone, had argued that the state cannot block access to a U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved drug.

Chambers dismissed the majority of the manufacturer's challenges, finding there is “no disputing that health, medicine, and medical licensure are traditional areas of state authority.”

In a statement Friday, GenBioPro CEO Evan Masingill said the company remains “confident in the legal strength” of its case and is considering next steps.

“GenBioPro was founded on the belief that all people should have access to evidence-based, essential medication and will continue to use all legal and regulatory tools available to ensure access for all,” he said.

The decision was lauded by West Virginia Republican Attorney General Patrick Morrisey.

“While it may not sit well with manufacturers of abortion drugs, the U.S. Supreme Court has made it clear that regulating abortion is a state issue,” he said in a statement. “I will always stand strong for the life of the unborn.”

Chambers will allow a challenge by the manufacturer concerning telehealth to proceed, however. Congress has given the FDA the right to dictate the manner in which medications can be prescribed, and the agency has determined that mifepristone can be prescribed via telemedicine.

Morrisey said his office looks forward to arguing the telehealth issue: “We are confident in the merits of our case.”

Mail-order access to the drug used in the most common form of abortion in the U.S. would end under a federal appeals court ruling issued Aug. 16 that cannot take effect until the Supreme Court weighs in.

The decision by three judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans overturned part of a lower court ruling that would have revoked the Food and Drug Administration’s 23-year-old approval of mifepristone. But it left intact part of the ruling that would end the availability of the drug by mail, allow it to be used through only the seventh week of pregnancy rather than the 10th, and require that it be administered in the presence of a physician.

Those restrictions won’t take effect right away because the Supreme Court previously intervened to keep the drug available during the legal fight.

The panel’s ruling would reverse changes the FDA made in 2016 and 2021 that eased some conditions for administering the drug.

President Joe Biden’s administration said it would appeal, with Vice President Kamala Harris decrying the potential effect on abortion rights, as well as on the availability of other medications.

“It endangers our entire system of drug approval and regulation by undermining the independent, expert judgment of the FDA,” Harris’ statement said.

Abortion rights advocates said the ruling poses a major threat to abortion availability following last year’s Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade and the nationwide right to abortion.

There is virtually no precedent for a U.S. court overturning the approval of a drug that the FDA has deemed safe and effective. While new drug safety issues often emerge after FDA approval, the agency is required to monitor medicines on the market, evaluate emerging issues and take action to protect U.S. patients. Congress delegated that responsibility to the FDA — not the courts— more than a century ago.

Mifepristone is one of two pills used in medication abortions. The other drug, misoprostol, is also used to treat other medical conditions. Health care providers have said they could switch to misoprostol if mifepristone is no longer available or is too hard to obtain. Misoprostol is somewhat less effective in ending pregnancies.

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In proposing last week to eliminate 169 faculty positions and cut more than 30 degree programs from its flagship university, West Virginia, the state with the fourth-highest poverty rate in the country, is engaging in a kind of educational gerrymandering. If you’re a West Virginian with plans to attend West Virginia University, be prepared to find yourself cut out of much of the best education that the school has traditionally offered, and many of the most basic parts of the education offered by comparable universities.

The planned cuts include the school’s program of world languages and literatures, along with graduate programs in mathematics and other degrees across the arts and pre-professional programs. The university is deciding, in effect, that certain citizens don’t get access to a liberal arts education.

Sadly, this is not just a local story. Politicians and state officials, often with the help of management consultants, are making liberal arts education scarce in some of the poorest states in the union. This trend, typically led by Republican-controlled legislatures and often masquerading as budgetary necessity, threatens to have dire long-term effects on our already polarized and divided nation.

Administrators at West Virginia University devised the plan to restructure the school with the help of a consulting company called rpk Group, which also works with the Universities of Missouri, Kansas and Virginia, among other schools. The stated purpose of the proposal is to address an expected decline in student enrollment at the school that will create a projected $45 million budget deficit.

But the projected deficit is the result of overly aggressive planning more than it is a financial liability created by the humanities. E. Gordon Gee, the president of West Virginia University, once promised that the school would have 40,000 students by 2020, but the figure is still well under 30,000 across three campuses and is projected to drop. Mr. Gee is now covering up his own failures at the expense of his state’s citizens, instead of putting his efforts toward recruiting and obtaining donor money to fund a broad education for West Virginians.

What’s more, cutting humanities programs — which make up a sizable minority of the majors slated to be cut, alongside pre-professional and technical programs — is not necessarily the best way to save money. There is substantial evidence that humanities departments, unlike a majority of college athletics programs, often break even (and some may even subsidize the sciences). In defense of its proposed cuts, West Virginia University has cited declining interest in some of its humanities programs, but the absolute number of students enrolled is not the only measure of a department’s value.

The finances aren’t the point, anyway. The humanities are under threat more broadly across the nation because of the perceived left-wing ideology of the liberal arts. Book bans, attempts to undermine diversity efforts and remodeled school curriculums that teach that slavery was about “skill” development are part of a larger coordinated assault on the supposed “cultural Marxism” of the humanities. (That absurd idea rests in part on an antisemitic fantasy in which left-leaning philosophers like Theodor Adorno and Herbert Marcuse somehow took control of American culture after the Second World War.) To resist this assault, we must provide broad access to a true liberal arts education.

The campaign to overturn the liberal arts is politically motivated, through and through. The Democratic Party has lost the working class, while the Republican Party has made electoral gains among the least educated. With the help of consultants, Republicans seek to gut the (nonprofit or public) university in the name of a “profit” it doesn’t even intend to deliver. The point instead is to divide the electorate, and higher education is the tool.

I grew up in rural upstate New York. I was lucky: My parents put a liberal arts education above all other goals. But I know what it looks like when people are told they can’t have nice things, and it’s ugly. Taking liberal arts education away from the least privileged — implying that they are future laborers and nothing else — helps ensure that they develop a resentment of “elites.” That’s an animus whose political consequences should be uncomfortably familiar by now.

The resentment fostered by cuts like those at West Virginia University won’t be aimed at the true culprits. The long-term effect will be bitterness toward those who have access to the liberal arts education that remains on offer in many blue states and at elite universities — what the scholar Lisa Corrigan calls a “two-tier educational system.” This outcome is likely to fortify many Republican voting strongholds.

Democratic politicians need to fight back in these culture wars, defending the humanities (rather than disparaging them) and loudly dissenting from the view that education is just job training. College presidents like Mr. Gee should promote and recruit rather than cutting and running. An unholy alliance of far-right ideology and mercenary venture capitalists has politicized the classroom. We must reject their vision of America and insist that a liberal arts education accessible to more than just the elite is one of the great foundations of a democracy.

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The sale of the Pleasants Power Station is complete.

Richard Hulme, president and chief operating officer of Santa Barbara, California-based Omnis Fuel Technologies, said in a phone interview Wednesday an Omnis subsidiary closed on a deal to buy the coal-fired plant Tuesday.

Terms of Omnis’ deal with an affiliate of Houston-based Energy Transition and Environmental Management were not disclosed, but Hulme estimated his company would invest hundreds of millions of dollars into retrofitting the four-decade-plus-old Pleasants County power plant and building a new hydrogen facility on adjacent property.

“This is certainly gigantic,” Pleasants County Commissioner Jay Powell said in a phone interview Wednesday.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission approved the sale of the plant, which had been slated for closure, last week. Powell previously said the deal was contingent upon FERC approval and agreement with a FirstEnergy subsidiary regarding an adjacent piece of property.

But Hulme said the sale was finalized without the latter condition in place as Omnis continues talks with FirstEnergy subsidiary Mon Power and Solvay, a global chemical company, to acquire property adjacent to the power plant on Willow Island. The property would be required to accommodate Omnis’ plan to construct a hydrogen production facility, according to Hulme.

FirstEnergy spokeswoman Hannah Catlett declined to comment, calling company discussions confidential.

“While Solvay continually explores options, we do not comment on market rumors or speculations,” Solvay spokesperson Kim Bratanata said.

Omnis intends to have the Pleasants plant run coal-fired for the next 12 to 24 months, starting this month, while it’s retrofitted and a hydrogen production facility is constructed, Hulme said.

The Pleasants plant, which began operating in 1979, has been inactive in recent months as sale negotiations ramped up.

Omnis intends to double the amount of coal that traditionally has been consumed at Pleasants as a hydrogen-run plant, Hulme said. Under Quantum Pleasants, technology would convert coal to hydrogen through an ultra-high-heat process that doesn’t burn the coal.

Instead, hydrogen produced by vaporizing coal particles at high heat — around 3,000 degrees Celsius — will be piped into the power plant, with electricity generated from burning the hydrogen, according to Hulme.

Hulme estimates roughly 60% of the coal mass would come out as graphite, yielding 3 million-3.5 million tons of graphite per year.

“We’re going to be producing a lot of graphite out of this plant,” Hulme said.

Hulme projected a roughly 95% reduction in greenhouse gases at the site, with water vapor resulting from the use of hydrogen as burner and boiler fuel.

Omnis plans for the site to use gas to fuel ultra-high-heat reformers that convert coal to hydrogen, Hulme said. But Hulme added Omnis is researching and developing a transition from gas to oxygen at the planned hydrogen production facility.

Hulme noted that graphite is a key material in battery production — and that it’s in short supply amid the rapid growth of the electric vehicle industry.

Kearney, a global management consulting firm, predicted in May electric vehicle demand will absorb all graphite output by 2030.

A 2021 International Monetary Fund report found graphite to be the metal with the greatest potential shortage in a net-zero emissions scenario among 15 metals modeled.

“So that’s one of the primary markets for the graphite that we will be producing at this plant, is the battery market,” Hulme said.

Sean O’Leary, senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute, a Pennsylvania-based pro-renewable energy nonprofit think tank, said it’s misguided to think of the plant’s sale as a power generation play.

“[I]n fact it has to be about the graphite and the margins it is expected to earn,” O’Leary said in an email.

O’Leary predicted the site could produce graphite cost-competitively and with a profit, but not hydrogen or hydrogen-generated electricity, which he anticipates would be sold at a loss to offset or recover as much of the manufacturing cost as possible. O’Leary cited hydrogen’s high energy cost.

“H2 doesn’t have much of a future in the power generating sector ... that is unless, like Omnis, you’re simply stuck with [a lot] of the stuff and need to make the most that you can out of it,” O’Leary said.

But O’Leary called Omnis’ planned annual graphite output of 3 million to 3.5 million tons “one hell of a stretch,” citing a Canadian government estimate that global consumption of graphite only reached 3.5 million tons in 2021.

“Not plausible,” O’Leary said, adding that he has “significant questions” about Omnis’ planned project scope and business model.

The federal government has sought to scale up the production of hydrogen. Last year, Mitsubishi Power Americas and energy storage provider Magnum Development announced the closing of a $504.4 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy to develop a facility in Utah that runs on renewable energy-powered hydrogen by 2045.

Powell called Omnis’ plan to retrofit the Pleasants plant to run on hydrogen a “game-changer for the energy market.”

“You’re talking about something incredible,” Powell said.

The Inflation Reduction Act passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress without Republican support last August includes investment and production tax credits for hydrogen.

Hulme said the Pleasants plant’s new ownership is eyeing tax credit subsidies for the production and use of hydrogen and graphite.

Hulme said Omnis has partnered with Zeeco, an Oklahoma-based combustion technology company, to convert the Pleasants plant into a hydrogen-run facility.

Zeeco supplies what it calls ultra-low-emission hydrogen-fired burners and related technologies used to decarbonize utility and industrial plants.

Carter Clancy, marketing manager for Zeeco, said Zeeco experts visited the Pleasants Power Station to confirm the viability of converting it to hydrogen use. The company plans to keep supporting a retrofit that shifts the plant to hydrogen operation, Carter said.

Hulme predicted the process planned for the plant will allow it to deliver power at a reduced cost to ratepayers relative to other hydrogen-based power systems.

Powell noted the plant’s transfer from Energy Transition and Environmental Management to Omnis control takes FirstEnergy ratepayers off the hook.

Mon Power and fellow FirstEnergy subsidiary Potomac Edison had asked the West Virginia Public Service Commission for a rate increase of at least $3 million per month for 12 months starting June 1 to maintain the plant while they decided whether to acquire it. The plan would have resulted in a 2.2% increase in total average monthly rates for residential and commercial customers, who would pay $2.67 and $8.44 more, respectively.

The PSC withheld approval of the requested rate hike in April while negotiations to determine the plant’s future continued.

In December, the commission ordered Mon Power and Potomac Edison to evaluate buying the Pleasants Power Station, which then-owner Energy Harbor LLC announced in March 2022 was to be closed or sold in 2023. Energy Harbor, an independent power producer, said the move was required as it transitioned to carbon-free energy.

In 2019, the Legislature approved an estimated $12.5 million in annual tax breaks for the struggling Pleasants plant, a “merchant plant” that doesn’t sell electricity to retail customers.

The Pleasants site will be Omnis’ first electric production location.

Hulme said the Pleasants plant was “perfectly situated” for Omnis because it was scheduled to be decommissioned.

“[T]he timing was perfect for us,” Hulme said.

Hulme credited support from state and local leaders. He singled out Senate Bill 609, a measure signed into law by Gov. Jim Justice in March designed to stave off closures of fossil fuel-fired plants by requiring state Public Energy Authority approval before such plants can be decommissioned or deconstructed.

Hulme said Energy Transition and Environmental Management was planning to tear down the plant before SB 609. Mon Power and Potomac Edison said in a PSC filing the law made ETEM reevaluate a plan to demolish the plant and the remediate the site.

“[S]o instead of tearing down the plant, they decided to sell the plant and we became aware of it right then,” Hulme said.

ETEM did not respond to a request for comment.

Hulme said the Pleasants plant is in “good condition,” minimizing the amount of required plant investment.

The Pleasants plant sale grows Omnis’ footprint in West Virginia.

In November, Justice announced Omnis Sublimination Recovery Technologies, an Omnis Fuel Technologies affiliate, would invest $60 million in a new site in Wyoming County to extract rare earth metals used for making electronic devices from coal waste impoundments. Hulme declined to give an update on the site, noting he has been focused solely on the Pleasants plant acquisition.

Last year, another company under the Omnis umbrella, Omnis Building Technologies, broke ground in Mercer County on a $40 million, 150,000-square-foot manufacturing facility that will produce housing materials for residential construction.

Omnis Global Technologies LLC, Omnis Fuel’s parent company, and affiliates said in a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission filing they specialize in developing, licensing and commercializing technologies focused on sustainable energy, affordable housing, organic farming and biodegradable plastics.

“Omnis deserves a lot of credit,” Powell said. “The state of West Virginia deserves a lot of credit. But let’s give the good Lord credit above for allowing something like this to happen so quickly and in miraculous fashion.”

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Speaker after speaker cleared the air because they had lost so much time gasping for it.

Samantha Schmitz of Washington, D.C., recalled asthma attacks that ended in hospitalizations and struggles to breathe during doctor visits that upset her parents.

Shaina Oliver of Denver recalled her grandmother taking her to an emergency room over breathing concerns when she was a baby, followed by another emergency room trip when she was 9 — after which she learned she had asthma.

J. Drake Hamilton, senior director of science policy at Minnesota pro-clean energy nonprofit Fresh Energy, recalled nearly dying from asthma when she was 2.

Those women and dozens of other clean air advocates were sounding off in a June virtual public hearing held by the Environmental Protection Agency on its proposal to strengthen carbon pollution standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants. The agency estimates the proposal would prevent over 300,000 asthma attacks in 2030 alone.

Asthma prevention would go an especially long way in West Virginia, which was surpassed in asthma prevalence by percentage only by Maine in 2021, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Most of West Virginia ranks in the 80th percentile or above in asthma disparity, according to EJSCREEN, a screening and mapping tool designed to give the EPA environmental and demographic data.

In the American Lung Association’s 2022 ranking of new lung cancer cases, West Virginia ranked 50th among all states, enduring the highest per-capita rate of age-adjusted lung cancer incidence.

The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, which enforces laws to protect the state’s air, isn’t on board with the EPA’s rule proposal.

The agency’s Division of Air Quality asked for a 30-day extension to the comment period beyond the 15-day extension the EPA already granted. That extension expires Aug. 8.

The Division of Air Quality, or DAQ, recently objected to another pending EPA proposal championed by air quality advocates: strengthening its standard for fine particulate matter, also known as soot. Fine particulate matter can pierce the lungs and lead to asthma attacks, heart attacks and premature death.

The EPA has proposed strengthening the primary standard for fine particulates, called PM2.5 since their diameters generally are 2.5 micrometers or smaller, from the current 12 micrograms per cubic meter of air to between 9 and 10 micrograms per cubic meter. The agency says strengthening the standard would prevent up to 4,200 premature deaths and 270,000 lost workdays per year, with as much as $43 billion in net health benefits in 2032.

The DAQ said failure to consider natural fugitive particulate matter emissions and provide credit for “exceptional events” could have an “unintended negative effect” on industrial and agricultural investment. The EPA defines such events as those that affect air quality but aren’t reasonably controllable using common techniques.

But it’s the DEP’s own oversight that has drawn concern from West Virginia environmentalists — and the EPA.

“[T]he human health impacts of what this mine is going to do to the surrounding communities — and I know y’all don’t factor that in to your decision-making process, or what have you, but I sure as hell factor it into my living life process around here when I got to watch all my friends and neighbors get sick and die of preventable cancers and heart diseases and all kind of other things,” said Junior Walk, a member of Raleigh County-based anti-mountaintop removal mining group Coal River Mountain Watch.

Projects in vulnerable areas

Walk was speaking during a DEP conference held Tuesday on a proposal from Tennessee-based Republic Energy LLC to renew a coal surface mining permit in Raleigh County covering 2,039 acres.

Walk, a longtime Raleigh County resident, has been among the community advocates who have objected to adverse air quality impacts from blasting and other mining operations.

Studies have found substantially higher mortality and cancer rates around mountaintop mining areas, which have been common in West Virginia, versus non-mountaintop mining areas.

Tuesday’s conference was held at Marsh Fork Elementary School. The school’s Rock Creek address ranks in the 95th to 100th percentile nationally in EJSCREEN’s asthma category.

The DEP denied only 1.57% of mining permit applications it received from the start of 2016 to August 2021, according to DEP spokesperson Terry Fletcher. The agency approved 7,035 applications during that span.

“You’re going to rubber-stamp whatever permit they want you to rubber-stamp,” Walk told DEP officials.

Ranking near the 90th percentile in EJSCREEN’s asthma category is the site of a proposed biohazardous waste-to-energy facility in Jackson County the DAQ has issued a notice of intent to approve.

Facility-wide annual emissions proposed by Virginia-based permit applicant Thunder Mountain Environmental Services include 1.83 tons of fine particulate matter, 1.3 tons of carbon monoxide and 3.26 tons of hazardous air pollutants, a group of air toxics known or suspected to cause cancer or other serious health impacts.

Heather Sprouse, Ohio River coordinator for the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, said emission limits for the proposed site should be lowered during a DEP virtual meeting to take questions and comments on the permit proposal July 20. Leatra Harper of the FreshWater Accountability Project, an Ohio-rooted clean water advocacy group, also expressed concern about air emissions.

Regulators don’t know the potential location where fly ash, which contains toxic chemicals, would be disposed of from the proposed site. A DAQ engineering evaluation says Thunder Mountain plans to transfer the ash residue to an EPA-approved landfill.

EPA spokesperson David Sternberg said the agency doesn’t keep a list of landfills that receive fly ash, indicating any landfill to be used would be a state-managed landfill under Subtitle D of the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, a class established through the law that regulates nonhazardous waste. Fletcher said Thunder Mountain would need a separate permit from the DEP’s Division of Water and Waste Management if it plans to dispose of ash residue in the state.

Fletcher said the DEP doesn’t know where the fly ash would be disposed of because the company hasn’t submitted a permit application proposing such a disposal.

The DAQ also announced its intent to approve an air quality permit modification requested by a Kanawha County chemical facility operator that federal investigators said was responsible for safety failures contributing to a fatal 2020 explosion there.

The permit update was requested by Optima Belle LLC to add new hazardous air pollutants, new equipment and a new process at its 901 W. Dupont Ave. chemical site in Belle.

Optima Belle plans to return to full operational status with new equipment following the 2020 explosion that killed chemical facility worker John Gillenwater, 42, of Hurricane, and caused two other plant workers to be evaluated for respiratory irritation, per the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board. The facility hasn’t been in operation since the incident, according to the DEP.

The board, which investigates industrial chemical incidents, found Optima Belle and South Charleston-based specialty chemical maker Clearon Corp. contributed to the incident through ineffective process safety management and failure to follow industry guidance in a report released July 6.

In its permit modification application, Optima Belle reported a potential to emit 21.88 tons of volatile organic compounds (chemical compounds that can harm human health), 10.7 tons of hazardous air pollutants and 6.49 tons of PM2.5 in controlled emissions annually.

Optima Belle has requested increases in the potential to emit volatile organic compounds of 820 pounds per year and hazardous air pollutants of 1.98 pounds per year.

DEP officials have frustrated residents and conservationists at recent public meetings by saying there’s little they can do about potential human health effects from planned industrial projects.

“[W]e are somewhat limited in our jurisdiction as it relates to human health impacts,” Fletcher said during a May virtual public meeting on a proposed log fumigation facility in Hardy County that drew widespread opposition before air permit applicant Allegheny Wood Products withdrew the application. “That’s not something that, as an agency, we specialize in. We have engineers, chemists and things like that. We don’t have medical health professionals that can speculate or be able to determine the human health impacts of a certain facility.”

The DEP regulates pollution by enforcing standards for individual pollutants from individual facilities, an approach detractors say allows adverse health impacts from high amounts of pollution in an area if no one standard is violated.

Optima Belle’s proposed facility is on a Chemours Company-owned site with other chemical operations in an area that already ranks in the 80th-90th percentile nationally in toxic releases to air — and in the 95th-100th percentile in low life expectancy.

St. Albans native Maya Nye, federal policy director for Coming Clean, a nonprofit environmental health collaborative, has touted the potential of legislation like a law New Jersey adopted in 2020 requiring the state to evaluate cumulative environmental and public health impacts when reviewing permit applications.

“We would just urge the agency to look at these kind of permit renewals from a cumulative and environmental justice aspect,” West Virginia Rivers Coalition Executive Director Angie Rosser said during Tuesday’s conference.

EPA disapproval

The EPA in May disapproved a DEP revision to a state air quality implementation plan, finding it didn’t comply with federal Clean Air Act requirements. The revision allowed sources that couldn’t meet emission limits during startup and shutdown events to apply for alternative emission limits.

Source emissions can exceed limits during periods of startup, shutdown and malfunction.

In a separate, concurrent action, the EPA found the DEP failed to timely submit a Clean Air Act-required state implementation plan revision to address deficiencies identified by the EPA in 2015 findings of “substantial inadequacy” and calls for provisions applying to excess emissions during facility startup, shutdown and malfunction periods.

The EPA said in the Federal Register, the official journal of the U.S. government, that it disapproved of the DEP’s plan revision submittal in part because the new alternative emission limits didn’t specify that any such limits granted by the state would be submitted on a case-by-case basis.

The EPA also attributed its disapproval to the limit regulations allowing sources to request alternative emission limits on a case-by-case basis, rather than adopting limits for a narrow category of sources with similar characteristics and controls.

In its Federal Register action, the EPA noted any alternative emission limit that revises a limit that is EPA-approved as part of the West Virginia state implementation plan must be submitted as a plan revision under the Clean Air Act.

The DEP’s proposed move, the EPA said, would create the potential for confusion by allowing for non-state implementation plan alternative emission limits that conflict with limits in the plan.

In a response published by the EPA, the DEP said it was confused by an EPA argument that West Virginia should rely on a case-by-case analysis regarding the use of alternative limits allowed under certain hazardous air pollutant standards, saying it contradicted previous EPA concern about DEP use of case-by-case analysis.

The EPA responded that it believed the DEP was conflating EPA concern that existing startup, shutdown and malfunction exemptions in stationary source standards for hazardous air pollutants shouldn’t be relied upon with another EPA-expressed concern that those standards may not be focused on addressing criteria pollutants. Criteria air pollutants are common pollutants for which the EPA sets national ambient air quality standards.

The EPA, under the Biden administration, in 2021 announced a return to an Obama-era 2015 policy stating that startup, shutdown and malfunction exemption provisions would generally be viewed as inconsistent with Clean Air Act requirements. In 2017, the Trump administration had asked that pending litigation on the 2015 policy be held in abeyance while it reviewed the policy. In 2020, the EPA established a new policy allowing certain provisions governing startup, shutdown and malfunction periods in state implementation plans.

The EPA’s finding that the DEP failed to timely submit a Clean Air Act-required state implementation plan revision due in May 2017 triggered Clean Air Act deadlines for the EPA to impose sanctions if the state doesn’t submit a revision addressing the outstanding requirements.

The DEP has responded by proposing to amend air quality rules to address EPA-identified deficiencies.

One of those proposed rules establishes criteria and permit application requirements for establishing an alternative emission limit during startup or shutdown periods. The proposed rule requires the DEP to submit any new alternative emission limitation established under the rule to the EPA for approval with a justification including the potential worst-case emissions that could occur during periods of startup or shutdown.

The proposed rule’s revisions don’t address alternative emission limits during malfunctions.

West Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club Conservation Chair James Kotcon urged the rule be revised to incorporate monitoring and reporting requirements and enforceable limits for emissions during malfunctions in comments submitted on the chapter’s behalf this month. Kotcon said the rule should explicitly state that excess emissions resulting from malfunctions should be treated as a violation.

West Virginia is home to the “Chemical Valley,” the common nickname for the Kanawha Valley’s high concentration of chemical facilities.

Only Texas has been the focus of more completed Chemical Safety Board investigations since 2006. Safety advocates say West Virginia’s history of chemical incidents heightens the stakes for stronger malfunction regulations.

“The failure to include emissions during malfunctions would expose citizens to air pollution that may threaten their health, and leaves these citizens with few options other than ‘hold your breath,’” Kotcon wrote.

Air monitoring network under scrutiny

More breath has been belabored in West Virginia and throughout the country in recent months by blankets of smoke from Canadian wildfires. Wildfire smoke is expected to become a more frequent health hazard as climate change fuels longer, stronger fire seasons.

The DEP and the state Department of Health and Human Resources have issued statewide air quality advisories in response to the smoke.

But West Virginians living near mining operations and their advocates have urged the DEP to expand its air quality monitoring network that monitors particulate matter, the main pollutant of concern in wildfire smoke.

The network monitors particulate matter pollutants across 13 sites in 11 of West Virginia’s 55 counties. None of those sites are located in the state’s southern coalfield counties, where coal operations have driven long-lingering air quality concerns.

The DEP has said its PM2.5 monitors are sited near higher-population areas to capture ambient air near where the most people live.

Two of those sites are in Brooke County, which hasn’t been among the state’s top 25 most-populous counties in recent population rankings.

Fletcher has cited the Northern Panhandle’s historically dense manufacturing base as a reason for the DEP’s high concentration of agency-operated monitoring sites there.

The Maryland Department of the Environment operates 24 air monitoring sites, a fourth more than West Virginia, despite the state not being nearly as emissions-intensive and covering roughly half West Virginia’s land size.

Complaining they were dealing with daily clouds of fugitive coal mine dust, 17 residents of the tiny Raleigh County community of Eunice signed comments to the DEP last year urging it to place particulate matter monitors in Eunice and other communities facing similar problems.

Neighborhood members have said particulate matter blows off a permitted area for the Alpha Metallurgical Resources-controlled Black Eagle underground coal mine roughly a thousand feet from the nearest home in Eunice.

Eunice ranks in the 95th-100th percentile range nationally for asthma, low life expectancy and people with disabilities, according to EJSCREEN data.

The DAQ responded to the Eunice community-approved comments by saying locating a monitor in more rural areas was difficult due to lack of power supply, property to place a monitor and adequate resources to maintain the equipment. The DAQ said onsite DEP inspections didn’t identify any dust.

“This lack of comprehensive monitoring causes the state’s implementation of clean air statutes to be insufficiently protective of the thousands of West Virginians who live in close proximity to coal mines and associated infrastructure,” Willie Dodson, Central Appalachian field coordinator for Appalachian Voices, wrote in the comments.

Hoping for a better standard

It wasn’t close proximity to mines but 37 years of working in them that left Jerry Coleman, 70, of Dawes with a lifetime of black lung — a disease whose prevalence in West Virginia is growing as miners cut into thinning coal seams that emit toxic dust.

The Kanawha County Black Lung Association president says he can’t hunt anymore because of the disease. Coleman says the affliction leaves him drawing only half a breath.

“It’s hot outside to start with, and my lungs are messed up,” Coleman said. “It just takes everything away from you. Your lungs work so hard.”

Coleman sees coal in West Virginia’s long-term future, predicting it’ll still be needed to make steel. He thinks stronger air quality regulations should be part of that future, too.

“The air quality in the future should be cleaned,” Coleman said. “We should have a better standard.”

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FAYETTEVILLE, West Virginia -- For much of this summer, I’ve had to nag my 12-year-old out of the basement and away from his Xbox. But on a 2-mile hike through New River Gorge National Park, he talked nonstop – about camp, friends, baseball stats and lacrosse. Topics flowed as quickly as the river rapids 876 feet below.

“You know, Mom, I don’t hate nature,” he said, as we tromped to the end of the Endless Wall trail, a fairly easy out-and-back trail with a gorgeous overlook of the country’s longest single-span steel arch bridge.

Yet, at home, if he’s not chasing a ball or hanging out with friends, he often fights back on my refrain to “Go outside and play.” Which is why I was so thrilled he agreed to go adventuring with me for a spontaneous weekend in West Virginia.

New River Gorge had been on my bucket list even before it was declared a national park in 2020, ever since I glimpsed a photo of the mammoth arch-truss bridge braced against an endless span of leafy green. (Probably in a magazine; I get most of my bucket list dreams from magazines.)

In 2021, 1.6 million people visited the 114-square-mile park, the nation’s newest, which offers hiking on dozens of trails through the Appalachian Mountains, rock climbing, mountain biking, ziplining and kayaking and rafting on Class I-IV+ whitewater rapids on the Gauley and New rivers.

When I found myself with the gem of an entirely open summer weekend, I figured, why not?

Here were my caveats: Since this trip was spontaneous, my budget was pretty much as cheap as possible, in two days. Since my husband was out of town with our daughter, we had to bring the dog.

Thankfully, the park is free, and its trails, as well as the surrounding town of Fayetteville, is Fido-friendly.

So I packed our lifejackets and my stand-up paddleboard in the trunk of our Honda Accord, loaded our 3-year-old, 90-pound golden retriever in the backseat and woke my son to leave as the sky began to lighten on a Saturday in the height of July. “Hockey early” was how I sold a 5:30 a.m. start.

We stopped at Tudor’s Biscuit World outside of Charleston (another bucket list item, after seeing the highway signs for years on previous Southern road trips) for delicious, giant breakfast sandwiches. And by 10:30 a.m., we arrived at the Canyon Rim Visitor Center overlooking the massive bridge. It was just as impressive in person.

The 3,000-foot-long open-spandrel bridge is built of steel called COR-TEN B, which rusts after several years and eliminates the need for painting. When it opened in 1978 carrying U.S. 19 over the gorge, the engineering feat “reduced from a 45-minute drive on winding and often treacherous roads to less than a minute,” according to the National Park Service.

On the third Saturday of October every year, the road is closed for Bridge Day, when tens of thousands of people walk the bridge, and jump and rappel from it. But on any day, you can get harnessed and walk the catwalk 25 feet beneath the bridge with a guide.

We saw the bridge walkers, along with rock climbers and river rafters, when we drove down to the bottom of the gorge, on a one-way set of switchbacks called Fayette Station Road. (The drive down and back up took about a half hour.) There’s a parking lot, kayak launch and plenty of places to stop and marvel at the steel structure overhead. We skipped stones and waded with the dog while watching boatloads of rafters scream in delight over the whitewater.

I would have loved to raft. We did some gentle, self-guided rafting a few years ago near Ohiopyle, Pennsylvania, and while I totally want to try the big stuff, I want to save the activity for a trip when we had more time, and our whole family.

This exploring weekend, we scouted for a bigger trip.

That included checking out Adventures at the Gorge resort, one of many camping and cabin properties nearby. The space is charming, with a swimming hole pool that overlooks the bridge, plus a playground, cornhole, restaurant and shop. I considered booking a $109, six-bunk cabin, with no bathroom or linens, but in July there’s a two-night minimum, and you have to book an adventure, such as whitewater rafting. So I’m marking it for a return trip.

Here’s what we did do in roughly 24 hours in wild, wonderful West Virginia.

Hike

The national park area is divided into nine sections, spread out along the Gauley, New and Bluestone rivers. We chose the Endless Wall trail a little over a mile from the Canyon Rim Visitor Center, one of several centers sprinkled throughout. The trail parking lots are generally small and may fill up fast. You can’t park on the street.

Thankfully, we found a spot, and we took off with the dog down a path surrounded by rhododendrons. The path was narrow enough at places that we stopped to let families in the opposite direction pass. Everyone was friendly. And the hike was easy enough that my son didn’t regret wearing his slides instead of running shoes.

We reached the far point, the overlook at Diamond Head, with spectacular views of the bridge – and no fence. I tied up the pup so he didn’t get too curious.

Eat

For lunch, we drove up the road to the Burrito Bar at Breeze Hill, a tucked-away old house with good Mexican food and a big patio where dogs are welcome.

Fayetteville has a collection of restaurants downtown, as well as cute spots nestled along the hilly, curvy highways.

Everyone was incredibly nice, and welcomed the dog in their shops, where they offered him water and biscuits. He was happy; he got a lot of pets.

Shop

My son bought a flat cap (because baseball hats with curved brims are something his mom wears), and I bought a silver wave necklace in downtown Fayetteville, which has antique and thrift stores, outdoor gear outfitters and gift shops.

SUP

While adventurers kayak the New and Gauley rivers, I wondered if I could stand-up paddle on them. Probably not a good idea. The outdoor companies run trips to nearby Summersville Lake, the largest in West Virginia. The serpentine-shaped lake was created in the 1960s when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dammed the Gauley River.

It’s 2,800 acres, with 60 miles of shoreline and a maximum depth of 327 feet. With jaw-dropping sandstone cliffs, it’s a hotspot for rock climbers and scuba divers, as well as recreational boaters. I used the kayak launch at Battle Run Campground and paddled into a rainstorm on a serene Sunday morning. But unlike my usual Lake Erie, I didn’t have to deal with waves.

If you need a board, you can rent one nearby.

The original "Old White" section of the Greenbrier Hotel, which opened in 1858, was rebuilt in 1930, with a main entrance designed by Cleveland architect Philip Small. The refurbishment doubled the number of hotel rooms to 500.

Tour

We stayed in a strip mall hotel in Summersville, with my son’s favorite vacation amenity: free breakfast. It was cheap, but nothing fancy. For fancy, I wanted to visit the Greenbrier, another destination I’d long dreamed of seeing.

The Greenbrier isn’t exactly close to New River Gorge. It’s 60 miles, many of them on twisty highways I had trouble even reaching the 55 mph speed limit on. But since neither spot is close to anywhere else I’d ever been, I seized the evening.

The Greenbrier is a National Historic Landmark that has welcomed guests – including 28 U.S. presidents -- since 1778, initially for the healing properties of natural mineral springs. It’s now an 11,000-acre luxury resort in White Sulfur Springs, centered around the opulent, old-fashioned, massive hotel. Outside, the building resembles the White House. Inside, it’s a riot of oversized pattern and outlandish color, designed by the famous Dorothy Draper after the resort was used as a hospital during World War II.

The stripes and florals remained delicious decades later, as I wandered the hotel’s 10 – 10! -- lobbies. (My son was absorbed in his phone.)

The vibe reminded me of the Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan, which was designed by Draper protege Carleton Varney. Both are places I’d love to return to, probably without the kid and dog.