The Governor should issue a ban on open burning, but has not so far ….

From an Article by Chris Lawrence, WV Metro News, November 6, 2023

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The low humidity, warmer temperatures, and the steady wind in recent days has turned the West Virginia forest and the new leaf litter on the forest floor into a potential tinder box.

As of Monday, the West Virginia Division of Forestry reported more than 100 forest fires in the state and Deputy State Forester Tony Evans believed the number was well beyond.

“Over the weekend we’ve had so many fires that have popped up, we definitively know we have more than that,” said Evans. Some of the fires were large in scale.

“We have several big fires. One down in McDowell County is several hundred acres. Raleigh County’s got a big fire Kanawha has a couple. Boone County has several fires that are going to be several hundred acres, same thing with Mingo County,” he explained.

According to Evans, the Southern West Virginia topography lends itself well to a wildfire and they tend to get out of control faster in the steep hills of the coalfields than in other parts of the state. The terrain also makes them more difficult to put out.

The fires are so widespread, Evans said they are asking people to stop calling 911 with just reports of seeing or smelling smoke. Since those kind of reports are too vague to help pinpoint a fire. “Unless they see an actual fire or a big column of smoke coming up from a specific place, don’t call 911 just if they are seeing or smelling smoke in the air,” he explained..

The Kanawha County Commission penned a letter to the Division of Forestry asking for a total burning ban until some measurable rainfall comes. Evans said that decision would have to come from the Governor’s office.

The fall forest fire rules are in effect, meaning that any outdoor burning must be done between 5 p.m. and 7 a.m. However, under the present conditions, Evans said use common sense.

“You know if it’s dry and windy, wait until we get some moisture. It doesn’t take very much for the wind to pick up an ember and put it out into the woods or dry grass and we have a forest fire,” he said.

The Sisters of Mount St. Joseph are approaching 170 years in Wheeling

Op-Ed Commentary by Ellen Dunn, Charleston WV Gazette, March 22, 2022

Gov. Jim Justice has repeated a shocking claim lately: “God will give us time” to solve climate change — if it’s even real — so, in the meantime, “Drill, baby, drill.”

I will not charge the governor with practicing theology without a license, but, as a Catholic religious sister, I do have to teach some lessons from Sunday school.

This month, many of us Christians heard the story of Jesus being tempted by Satan in the desert. The final temptation on the cliff is to “throw yourself down from here” for God will command his angels to save you. With signs of climate disruption all around, Justice says, “Let’s throw ourselves off this cliff. God will save us.”

If you have ever thought, “I really want to do this questionable thing; I’ll just ask for forgiveness later,” clearly you knew you were in the wrong. Some part of Justice knows he is able to help West Virginia transition to a cleaner, healthier economy. His conscience might vex him with each new report of exacerbated flooding in our state because of climate change or each new study on deaths from the pollution we choose to keep pumping into the air. (I remember a recent headline of a Bloomberg article: “Air pollution kills far more people than COVID ever could”).

God’s plan for us and for the world cannot be to keep poisoning our air and water, and to continue destabilizing the climate with worsening floods, hurricanes, heat waves and wildfires. God’s plan is for us to be stewards of God’s environment. Instead, this failure of leadership and lack of heeding nature’s warnings is an immense show of disrespect for God.

I believe God’s influence is at play with our continued innovations for cleaner, healthier technology. Why continue to choose self-destruction? To be sure, we need the will and the commitment to help workers transitioning from the fossil fuel industry — people who have made great sacrifices for all of us. But we must not keep inflicting wounds on them and on ourselves like Black Lung Disease, polluted air and water, and climate disruption. Pope Francis calls this “a sin against ourselves and a sin against God.”

There is a better, more life-affirming way. Jesus’ response to Satan: “You shall not put the Lord God to the test.”

We must not test God by stubbornly choosing to leap off a cliff into greater and greater climate disruption. Yes, we can trust that God will help us in this world. But we must do our part to walk alongside God, listening with humility and finding ways to make the needed changes in our policies and our lifestyles.

Congress now has an opportunity to truly make climate investments for a brighter future, and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., is holding all the cards. I pray for him and all of us: “Be with us, God, when we are in trouble.” (Psalm 91)

It is a great joy to live on God’s abundant earth. It is God’s world, not ours to use and abuse. We show our gratitude to God by living with reverence for God’s creation and honoring our sacred duty to pass onto our children a safe, clean and healthy world.

>>> Sister Ellen Dunn, O.P., is a Dominican Sister of Peace who serves as co-chair of Catholics for a Sustainable Economy. She served on the executive staff of the Catholic Diocese of Wheeling-Charleston for 13 years.

########+++++++#######++++++++########

See also: Among the top five states dependent upon the fossil fuel industry, West Virginia is among the bottom five in economic and public health, Maury Johnson, Appalachian Chronicle, March 26, 2022

GREENVILLE, W.Va. – In the last several weeks, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., has been touting how we need to ramp up all kinds of fossil fuel infrastructure and production in order to help Ukraine and become energy independent. He is also trying to help his fossil fuel friends from whom he has taken enormous sums of money in the last year. When I say enormous, I mean ENORMOUS! It appears he is willing to even write legislation to advance their cause and spout their propaganda.

Well, Senator Manchin is dead wrong.

There are 90 major wildfires burning in 13 western states

From an Article by Andrea Germanos, Common Dreams, September 11, 2020

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown sounded alarm Thursday that the wildfires ravaging the west are “a bellwether of the future”—a warning that came as half a million people were forced to evacuate her state and become “temporary climate refugees.”

Thousands of firefighters in Oregon are currently battling 36 fires that have scorched nearly 900,000 acres. State officials said Thursday that 500,000 of Oregon’s 4.2 million residents have been forced to evacuate, “and that number continues to grow.”

“Half a million Oregonians are temporary climate refugees (and many of them have lost their homes for good),” author and climate activist Bill McKibben tweeted Friday.

Record wildfires have been devastating other western states as well, including California and Washington, with at least 23 people dead as a result of the blazes.

“One hundred large fires have burned more than 4.5 million acres in 12 states,” the National Interagency Fire Center announced Friday. “Evacuation orders are in place for residents near 42 large fires across the West.”

While President Donald Trump has remained silent about the fires for several weeks, climate activists have pointed to the events as further evidence lawmakers must take urgent climate action including passing the Green New Deal.

In a Thursday tweet, Brown put the wildfires in the context of the climate crisis as well. “I wish the 2020 wildfires were an anomaly—but this will not be a one-time event. Unfortunately, it is a bellwether of the future. We are seeing the devastating effects of climate change in Oregon, on the entire West Coast, and throughout the world,” he wrote.

Brown’s assessment is bolstered by a new resource from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). The science group released an infographic stating that “wildfires are getting worse,” causing more damage, and are fueled by the climate crisis.

The group noted that “ecologically-sound forest and fire management could help limit fire risks” in the near-term. “But in the long-term, climate action is the best tool we have,” UCS said. “When we reduce global warming emissions, we slow the growth of climate risks, including wildfire. Until then, summers will continue getting hotter, forests will get drier, and more and more people will face the threat of wildfire.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Climate conditions in the western states are extreme

Call WV Governor’s Office 304-558-2000

From an Article by Sean O’Leary, WV Center on Budget and Policy, March 10, 2019

On Crossover Day, the West Virginia House of Delegates passed two bills that have the intended purpose of boosting coal production and putting coal miners back to work. Unfortunately, they chose to do so in a very ineffective and expensive way, through cuts and rebates to the severance tax.

HB 3142 would cut the severance tax on steam coal from five percent to three percent. The bill, which had originated in committee just a few days prior to passage, had virtually no analysis. A fiscal note was produced just hours before the bill was up for a final vote, showing a price tag of $60 million in lost revenue, with at best only 500 jobs created, with 100 more likely, meaning the tax cut would cost between $120,000 to $600,000 per job created.

Why so few jobs for such an expensive tax cut? Just look at the math. If every penny of a two-percent reduction in West Virginia’s severance tax on steam coal went to reducing its price, the price would drop by only $1.08 per ton. Currently, West Virginia’s steam coal is currently $7 per ton more expensive than coal from Ohio, $13 per ton more than Pennsylvania, and $10 per ton more than Kentucky. West Virginia steam coal is nearly $15 per ton more than the national average. And there is no guarantee that the coal companies will use the tax savings to lower the price.

Besides that, West Virginia’s biggest competitors in the coal market aren’t our neighboring states, they’re western states like Wyoming and Illinois. Since 2001, eastern states like West Virginia have lost significant market share to western states with greater productivity like Wyoming. And Wyoming’s market share has grown, even with significantly higher taxes than West Virginia.

But beyond competition from coal in other states, West Virginia coal faces even stiffer competition in its own backyard from natural gas. Booming natural gas production, which is subject to the same five-percent severance tax in West Virginia as coal, has hurt the coal industry as well. The Marcellus and other shale plays have led to a glut of natural gas, driving energy prices down, making gas-fired electricity often a better deal than coal.

West Virginia coal has already enjoyed a significant tax cut in recent years. A 56 cents per ton tax on coal production went into effect in 2005, with the revenue it generated going to pay down old debts associated with the state-run workers’ compensation system. The tax was terminated in FY 2017. Before its termination, the tax produced $64.4 million, roughly the same value as the reduction in severance tax in HB 3142. But since 2017Q3, coal mining employment has been flat.

There’s little evidence to support a severance tax cut or tax credit for coal as a tool to increase production and employment. Overall, the state has little ability to influence the forces affecting the coal industry, be they competition from natural gas, environmental regulations, productivity, or transportation issues. The severance tax is important to West Virginia’s budget, and it’s important that we keep it.

#########################

Urge Veto of Coal Tax Cut, Urgent Appeal to WV Governor

From the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, March 12, 2019

House Bill 3142 is a massive giveaway to coal company executives that will do little to stop the decline of the coal industry.

Instead of handing more than $60 million to mostly out-of- state coal operators, Governor Justice should veto this irresponsible legislation and invest in things that working families need, like expanded access to child care, an earned income tax credit, and pay raises for our struggling public employees.

Read more in this editorial and this post on why this is such a bad proposal for West Virginia.

Call (304-558-2000) or email Governor Justice today and urge him to veto House Bill 3142.

ACP Pipeline would connect to existing Transco Pipeline (right-of-way shown)

From an Article by Gregory S. Schneider, Washington Post, August 28, 2018

Photo: The Transco Pipeline cuts through the forests of Buckingham County and crosses Route 56 in the foreground. The Atlantic Coast Pipeline would pass through Buckingham County and connect to this pipeline. A compressor station would be built at this intersection.

RICHMOND — An advisory board appointed by the governor has recommended that the state rescind permits for two natural-gas-pipeline projects, putting its members at odds with Gov. Ralph Northam (D), who maintains that the regulatory process is working as it should.

The 15-member Advisory Council on Environmental Justice on Tuesday formally urged Northam to direct state agencies to suspend water and air quality permits for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Mountain Valley Pipeline, separate projects being built through mountainous and rural parts of the state.

[The Baptists and the yogis join to fight a pipeline]

Raising questions about the impact on health and the environment from the pipelines, the council said the governor should appoint an emergency task force “to ensure that predominately poor, indigenous, brown and/or black communities do not bear an unequal burden of environmental pollutants and life-altering disruptions.”

The board, created in October by Gov. Terry Mc­Auliffe (D), has no authority over the process but is charged with providing “independent advice and recommendations to the Executive Branch” on matters of environmental justice, according to Executive Order 73, which established it.

Its members include faculty from several state universities, a representative of state Indian tribes and people from several environmental and social justice groups, such as the Virginia Poverty Law Center, Virginia Interfaith Power and Light, and the Natural Resources Defense Council. All 15 council members were appointed by McAuliffe.

The council has met in recent weeks with the community of Union Hill in Buckingham County, a historically African American area that is the planned site of a compressor station for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

That project will carry natural gas 600 miles from West Virginia through the central part of Virginia and into North Carolina. It’s being built by a consortium of companies led by Dominion Energy.

The Union Hill compressor station faces a key state air-quality permit hearing on September 11th, and the advisory council recommended that Northam suspend that process to give it deeper review.

A spokesman for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline said Dominion has gone to great lengths to accommodate the concerns of Union Hill residents. “We strongly disagree with the Advisory Council’s recommendations,” Aaron Ruby said via email.

Northam casts himself as an environmentalist, but he has drawn criticism from other Democrats for failing to oppose the pipeline projects. He has countered that he is satisfied that state agencies are conducting a thorough review of the projects.

The governor “was instrumental in the advisory council’s formation precisely because he values [its] feedback,” Northam spokeswoman Ofirah Yheskel said via email. “The Governor and his staff will review the letter carefully and respond to the Council.”

Work on both pipelines is suspended in Virginia after federal judges found that federal agencies had issued several permits without adequate scrutiny.

The Mountain Valley Pipeline, a 300-mile project being built by a coalition of companies led by EQT Midstream Partners of Pittsburgh, is farther along because it had secured erosion and sediment control permits from the state. Those permits for the Atlantic Coast Pipeline are still under review.

[Virginia regulators consider revoking pipeline permits, but settle for stricter review]

Last week, the State Water Control Board debated suspending permits for both pipelines and subjecting them to a more detailed analysis of each place where the projects cross a stream or river, but it ultimately pulled back in a 4-to-3 vote. Instead, the board urged state regulators to apply the strictest oversight possible.

WV, OH, PA announce renewed “cooperation” on shale gas development

From an Article by Paul J. Gough, Pittsburgh Business Times, March 21, 2018

An effort started by the governors of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia to boost the development of shale gas resources has been extended for another three years.

The Tri-State Shale Coalition began life in 2015 with a memorandum of understanding between Gov. Tom Wolf, Ohio Gov. John Kasich and then-West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin. It’s designed to market for local use the natural gas resources in the Marcellus and Utica shales to boost manufacturing, including petrochemical plants like the one that is being built in Beaver County by Shell Chemicals and another considered in Belmont County, Ohio, by PTT Global Chemical and Daelim.

The new agreement runs annually through December 31, 2021. The amendment to the agreement released Wednesday appears to have no other substantive changes, and the three states’ earlier agreement outlines ways the states can co-operate to market growth in natural gas and liquids.

RELATED: Why Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Ohio are working together to build a petrochemical industry based on shale gas

“I’m proud to continue our successful collaboration with Ohio and West Virginia to ensure that we are doing everything we can to support additional development — and the jobs and economic growth that goes with it — in a region with an unprecedented natural resource,” Wolf said in a statement.

The three states have held a Tri-State Shale Summit every year since 2015, with the most recent one held in November in Canton, Ohio. Working with the three states are three economic development and philanthropic organizations in the region, the Pittsburgh Regional Alliance, the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation and TeamNEO in Ohio.

Breaking News — Governor Announces End to Strike

Breaking News from The 74 Million, February 27, 2018

Update: At a press conference Tuesday night, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice announced an end to the four-day teachers’ strike that had closed schools across the state. Teachers and school personnel will receive a 5 percent raise next year, he said, and all other state employees will get a 3 percent increase.

Schools will be back in session Thursday; Wednesday will be a “cooling-off day,” because some schools had already canceled class. Justice also said he will create a task force to evaluate the teachers’ insurance program, which, in addition to low pay, was a cause of the walkout. Union leaders said they reserve the right to pull teachers out of class again if the state legislature does not sign on to the plan.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos had chimed in on the West Virginia teachers’ strike on its fourth day, saying that good teachers “deserve better pay” but students should not miss school due to adult disagreements.

Across the state, teachers had refused to work since Thursday, affecting about 270,000 students.

Teachers called for higher pay and better benefits, NPR reported. The teachers also oppose laws they say would make it harder for the state to hire good teachers. Teachers have rallied at the capitol in Charleston, West Virginia, and at their schools.

Union leaders demanded to meet with the governor and legislative leaders to discuss the teachers’ concerns. The state’s two teachers unions had rejected a proposed 2 percent pay raise with further 1 percent increases for the next two years, calling it insufficient when health care costs for teachers are on the rise.

“Our issues are clear — our commitment to finding a solution has been consistent; we stand together for our students, our community, and our state,” Christine Campbell, president of the West Virginia chapter of the American Federation of Teachers, said at the rally. “We challenge the House leader, the Senate leader, and the governor, to bring us to the table today.”

The strike, which some called a “work stoppage,” could be against the law. State Attorney General Patrick Morrisey tweeted last week that the work stoppage is “unlawful and should come to an end.”

Average teacher pay in West Virginia ranks near the bottom nationally, at $44,701, according to the West Virginia Education Association.

Access roads & land disturbances are real problems

From the WV Rivers Coalition, January 16, 2018

A bill to allow commercial logging in West Virginia’s State Parks, Senate Bill 270, was introduced in the WV Legislature at the request of Governor Justice. This bill would end an 80-year ban on logging in West Virginia’s State Parks. Contact the Governor now, tell him you oppose lifting the logging ban!

Send a Letter

The bill is an ill-conceived plan to log our parks, presented as a way to pay for park maintenance — but it risks destroying the Wild & Wonderful places we love.

Take action now! ASAP send the Governor a letter. After you’ve sent your letter, amplify your voice by calling the Governor’s Office at 304-558-2000 and share your concerns about logging our state parks.

For more information, check out the Save Our State Parks webpage, and email info@wvpubliclands.org.

Gov. Tomblin can stop attempt to strangle W.Va. solar industry

Letter to the Editor by Bill Howley, Charleston Gazette, March 8, 2015

Things started well. When the West Virginia Legislature repealed the 2009 Alternative and Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard law early in this year’s session, legislators wisely kept the part of the law that authorized the West Virginia Public Service Commission to regulate net metering for retail electric customers who send electricity back through their electric meters.

Net metering is a system used in 44 U.S states that allows small scale solar power producers to get a one-for-one credit for the kilowatt hours they produce to offset electricity they use from a power company. Since 2009, more than 600 residential and small business customers in West Virginia have invested millions of dollars in new electricity generation with the understanding that net metering would be there for the 30-year lives of their systems.

After the Legislature passed House Bill 2001, repealing the 2009 AREPS law and preserving net metering, a bipartisan group of delegates introduced HB2201 to reinsert a definition of net metering into the new net metering law created by HB2001. That’s when the problems started.

Strangely, HB2201 did not use the definition of net metering found in either the Alternative and Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard law or the current Public Service Commission rules. Instead, HB2201, by changing an “or” to an “and,” eliminated a whole category of West Virginia citizens from having access to net metering. Many observers suspected that lobbyists from AEP and FirstEnergy, the two Ohio-based holding companies that control our state’s electrical system, started manipulating HB2201 even before the bill was introduced.

And things got worse from there. Each time solar advocates pushed legislators to change HB2201, power company lobbyists inserted more and more attacks on net metering. Just three years ago, both AEP and FirstEnergy agreed to net metering rules at the West Virginia Public Service Commission in a voluntary settlement. Now, with vague and misleading language about “cross-subsidization,” the power companies tried to get the Legislature to dictate new terms to solar power producers. The power companies also pushed many PSC net metering rules into law, removing control of net metering that was passed to the PSC in 2009, and reauthorized in the newly passed HB2001.

The result of all this meddling and manipulation is that HB2201 is now a mess that casts a cloud of regulatory uncertainty over business investment and innovation in West Virginia. Solar installers in West Virginia are already seeing current orders being canceled or postponed as customers fear for the future of their investments. Large installed projects, such as those as American Public University in Jefferson County or the Morgantown Transit Authority, are now looking at much longer payoff periods on their investments of taxpayer funds. Most disturbing of all, Yeager Airport’s planned project to invest $15 million to $20 million in the largest solar power array in the state may not happen.

HB2201, vetoed once by Gov. Tomblin, is back on his desk a second time. The bill is aimed straight at killing West Virginia’s small, but growing, solar power industry. This industry includes residential electric customers, installation companies and large institutions. HB2201 has already cost our state jobs and new business.

Gov. Tomblin simply cannot allow AEP and FirstEnergy, through the West Virginia Legislature, to dictate the direction of West Virginia’s energy future. He needs to veto HB2201 a second time to show that West Virginia means business when it comes to innovation and investment by West Virginians, for West Virginians.

>>> Bill Howley lives on a farm in Chloe, where he shares his net metered solar electricity with his neighbors and edits The Power Line, the View from Calhoun County, a blog about energy issues in West Virginia.

The NIMBY Well Pad -- In Your Back Yard?

PETITION — “No Drilling Under the Ohio River”

Petition by Robin Mahonen, Ohio County, WV

The Wheeling Water Warriors and multiple other concerned groups call on you to stop plans to drill under the Ohio River.

The Ohio River provides drinking water to over 3 million people, and 10% of the population of the United States lives in the Ohio River Valley. The Ohio River is 981 miles long, and runs through six states: Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois, and is the largest source of water for the Mississippi River, which flows to the Gulf of Mexico. This intracoastal waterway needs to be kept safe from hydraulic fracturing, which has caused the contamination of numerous water sources in our region, and which is also implicated in increased seismic activity and earthquakes.

West Virginia is already overrun with fossil fuel extractive industries which pollute our air, land and water and negatively disrupt our lives. Our state is unparalleled in its natural resources, and yet we are among the poorest states in the country. We believe that corporate interests have prevailed over the best interests of the citizens of this state. We are told there is an economic crisis which requires us to drill under the river. Clearly, if our communities are polluted, our public health is ravaged, our environment devastated, and we are not reaping the economic benefits which we were promised for this sacrifice, it is not a sacrifice we are willing to make.

In the wake of the recent MCHM water crisis and other contaminations in our state just this year, we must act now to prevent wild, wonderful West Virginia from becoming an industrial wasteland, preserve our river, and our precious water resources.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

NOTE: Over 3,570 individuals have already signed this Petition, with a target for 5,000 likely to be achieved within a few days.  This is a great risk to the people of the Ohio valley and to the environment if such drilling and fracking takes place.  Already, there has been the incident at Natrium where gas well drilling has interrupted a salt well of Axiall Chemical, formerly PPG Chemicals.  The earthquakes of the Youngstown area in Ohio are another indicator of trouble.  If the WV Governor and WV-DNR persist, then an environmental impact assessment would be an essential first step, but none has been done!  DGN

The Petition is here —  https://www.change.org/p/randy-c-huffman-no-drilling-under-the-ohio-river

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net