Wendy Radcliff - X- Environmental Advocate

New secretary fires WVDEP environmental advocate Wendy Radcliff

From an Article by Ken Ward, Jr., Charleston Gazette-Mail, January 27, 2017

West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Austin Caperton on Friday fired Wendy Radcliff, the leader of the DEP’s Office of Environmental Advocate.

The move immediately drew strong criticism from West Virginia citizen groups and environmental organizations that were already wary of how Caperton, a longtime coal industry consultant, would run the agency charged with regulating mining, gas drilling and other industries.

“I’m really almost speechless,” said Cindy Rank, the longtime mining chairwoman for the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy. “If they wanted to alienate the citizens and the environmental community, this is the way to do it.”

Angie Rosser, executive director of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, said it is shocking that Caperton made the move prior to a newly scheduled meeting the week after next with representatives of her organization, the Highlands Conservancy, the West Virginia League of Women Voters and the West Virginia Environmental Council.

“This is troublesome news,” Rosser said. “Wendy Radcliff has been the direct line for citizen concerns to help make sure the agency is accountable to the public. It’s concerning this decision seemingly was made without input from the people who the environmental advocate is designed to serve.”

Caperton, who is just finishing his second week on the job for Gov. Jim Justice, also fired Kelley Gillenwater, the DEP’s communications director.

Gillenwater and Radcliff declined to comment Friday, but their firing was confirmed by numerous DEP sources who asked not to be identified.

Radcliff, an attorney, has filled the environmental advocate post for more than six years during two stints at the agency. Gillenwater had been communications director for nearly three years and, while emphasizing the DEP’s position on various issues, also had developed a reputation for pushing to make agency officials more responsive to news media requests.

The Justice administration offered no complete explanation for the shakeup at the DEP, and it was not clear what — if any — other changes Caperton planned to make among the top leadership at the agency.

Caperton did not return phone calls and, on orders from the Governor’s Office, has rejected interview requests from the Gazette-Mail. Caperton, an engineer and an attorney, previously worked for A.T. Massey Coal and for his family’s company, Slab Fork Coal. He’s worked as an energy industry consultant since 1989, but a list of his clients has not been made public.

Jake Glance, an assistant to Gillenwater in the DEP public information office, provided a one-sentence statement via email, but did not return phone calls or answer emailed questions about the statement.

“We are restructuring to make our operation more efficient by consolidating roles,” the statement from Glance said.

Under state law, the DEP is required to have an environmental advocate and a public information officer. There was not a clear answer on Friday about whether Caperton plans to fill either post or combine their functions, or what his timeline is for either option.

And, the DEP’s rules for the environmental advocate office specifically state that the advocate “may not in any official capacity organize public campaigns” either to oppose or support “positions taken” by the DEP “on environmental matters,” a prohibition that would seem to create a roadblock to combining the advocate and communications director roles.

Friday also was the deadline for Caperton’s internal request that each of the more than 800 DEP employees submit to him “at least one cost-saving idea for the agency.” In a memo to DEP employees, Caperton had said Justice “has directed that we do everything in our power to eliminate waste and find savings.” Caperton asked that the ideas be provided through an online survey or provided to Gillenwater.

An exact breakdown of the environmental advocate office budget was not available, because its spending is combined within the total for the DEP’s executive offices. But in addition to Radcliff, the office had two other employees and shared a secretary with a separate DEP Office of Small Business Ombudsman, whose stated role at the agency is to “safeguard small business’s rights and help them when they have problems with regulatory agencies.”

The DEP environmental advocate office was created by the Legislature in 1994, at the behest of then-state Sen. David Grubb, D-Kanawha. Grubb had threatened to hold up passage of a 1,400-page, industry-backed bill to consolidate the state’s various environmental agencies unless language was added to create a position aimed at helping everyday citizens navigate the DEP’s complex regulatory system.

Early on, the office faced repeated but unsuccessful efforts by some Republican lawmakers to eliminate it. And various industry trade groups tried during a public comment period on the rules governing the advocate office to narrowly define the position’s role at DEP.

The West Virginia Manufacturers Association, for example, opposed giving the office additional staff and argued against the idea that citizens needed help getting more of voice in state environmental policymaking.

Radcliff, though, served as environmental advocate under five different top DEP leaders — including two whose backgrounds were in the coal industry — and in both Democratic and Republican administrations. She began in mid-1994 under then-DEP Director David C. Callaghan during the Democratic administration of Gov. Gaston Caperton, who is Austin Caperton’s cousin.

Among other projects, Radcliff helped DEP officials organize a Citizens’ Strip Mine Tour in 1997 that provided one of the first close-up glimpses of the impact of mountaintop removal on residents in some coalfield communities. During the administration of Republican Cecil Underwood, Radcliff lasted for about 18 months, before resigning in June 1998, citing differences in philsophy and other career opportunities.

Longtime Kanawha Valley chemical plant safety activist Pam Nixon took over as environmental advocate later in 1998. Nixon retired at the end of 2013 and then-DEP Secretary Randy Huffman convinced Radcliff to come back in June 2014.

Huffman, who left earlier this month for a full-time position with the West Virginia Air National Guard, made Radcliff part of the DEP’s senior staff, which provided access to regular meetings of the agency’s division directors. Among other things, Radcliff organized a program that helped find and better train emerging leaders within the agency’s ranks.

“I really got to know Wendy well over past few years when she agreed to come back to [the] DEP and serve as our state’s environmental advocate,” Huffman said Friday. “Her enthusiasm and passion for West Virginia is contagious. I appreciate how she understands the nexus between environmental protection and economic growth and how faithfully she supports the role of [the] DEP in that mix. She is selfless in all she does and she makes everyone around her better. I consider her a friend of mine and a friend of West Virginia.”

Bill Price, senior organizer for the Sierra Club in West Virginia, said he is troubled by Radcliff’s dismissal.

“Wendy Radcliff is a person that people trusted when they felt unheard,” Price said. “Is this a sign of how the people of West Virginia will be shut out by the Justice administration?”

“For many who have well water woes or who are worried about another coal slurry spill, have questions about an oil and gas or coal permit or have any number of questions about how to interact with [the] DEP, Wendy’s the first point of contact,” said Vivian Stockman, vice director of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition. “She’s friendly, helpful and competent. She does the agency proud, so her dismissal is confounding.“

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Caperton "Dancing with Stars" in WV

Coal exec Austin Caperton, cousin of former Gov. Gaston Caperton, to oversee environmental agency

From an Article by Brad McElhinny, WV MetroNews, January 13, 2017

Charleston, WV — Austin Caperton, a longtime coal executive and cousin of former Gov. Gaston Caperton, has been named the new secretary for the Department of Environmental Protection in Jim Justice’s administration.

In the announcement, both Caperton and Justice issued statements about balancing the need to protect the environment with the needs of businesses in West Virginia. “Austin Caperton has the management experience to make the West Virginia DEP run efficiently,” Justice stated in his transition team’s announcement.

“Austin understands the energy sector of our state, and he will strike a balance between protecting our environment and getting rid of needless red tape that hurts job creation. He has the private sector experience I want to help me make state government operate with business-like accountability.”

Justice himself has significant coal holdings, inheriting his family’s mining business, Bluestone Coal Corp., selling some of it to the Russian company Mechel in 2009 before buying it back in 2015. Justice says he has turned over day-to-day operations of the coal holdings to his son Jay.

Earlier this fall, the federal Environmental Protection Agency reached a $6 million settlement with Justice’s Southern Coal Corp. and affiliates over pollution allegations. The settlement included $5 million for improvement measures and another $900,000 in penalties.

Caperton will replace Randy Huffman, who came up through the ranks at DEP before serving as secretary starting in 2008. Huffman announced last month that he would leave the agency to take a position at the Air National Guard.

For the past 27 years, Caperton has served as the president of Caperton Inc., a strategic business consulting company. The Justice administration’s announcement notes, “Caperton has experience working with companies to create jobs in the energy industry.”

Those experiences included executive positions with West Virginia coal operations, including A.T. Massey Coal Co. and its subsidiaries.

Caperton’s experience as a coal executive began in 1976 as assistant vice president of operations with Slab Fork Coal Company. By 1980, he served as president of Slab Creek, a position he held for three years. He became corporate counsel for Massey Coal Services, starting in 1983 and remained with various branches of Massey, including serving as vice president of development for one year until 1989.

“The Price of Justice: A True Story of Greed and Corruption,” a 2013 book about Massey Energy, briefly mentions the relationship between Caperton and Don Blankenship, who eventually became CEO of the company and who is now serving time in federal prison on a conspiracy charge following the fatal explosion at the company’s Upper Big Branch mine.

In that book, Blankenship is quoted as saying, “I knew Austin Caperton pretty well because he worked for quite a while at Massey and, at one time, was a candidate, I believe, to be president of Massey, back in the eighties.”

Caperton also has served as the director of the Beckley – Raleigh County Chamber of Commerce, United Bank WV, the West Virginia Council for Community & Economic Development and the vice chairman of the West Virginia Public Energy Authority.

He graduated with an engineering degree from Virginia Tech and a law degree from West Virginia University.

“This is a tremendous opportunity to serve the state I love so much,” Caperton stated in the announcement. “Just like Governor-elect Justice, and others in his cabinet, I’m walking away from a successful business career to play a part in turning around West Virginia. I look forward to working with the governor-elect to grow jobs while protecting our land, air, and water.”

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NOTE: Austin Caperton and Michelle Rotellini hold up the trophy after winning the judges and people choice award during the United Way of Southern West Virginia Dancing with the Stars event held at the Beckley-Raleigh County Convention Center in September 2014.