Over a decade into retirement, Danny Johnson still considers himself a coal miner. It was such a part of his identity that when his only daughter got married, he walked her down the aisle wearing his hard hat and mining coveralls.

Whenever Johnson dug into a new part of a mountain, he remembers feeling that he and God were the only ones who had ever seen that part of the earth.

“You’re going where nobody’s ever been,” the 69-year-old said while sitting on his front porch in Mercer County.

But his decades of mining had drawbacks as well. He worked long shifts at various mines in Southern West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky — sometimes going over two weeks in a row without a day off. He missed countless birthdays and graduations of his two children, seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.

And the job took a severe toll on his health. When Johnson was 20, a 20-foot-long rock fell on his face, requiring him to get more than 100 stitches through his face and mouth. Later, he broke each of his feet and watched a nail fly straight into his pupil.

“I can see big stuff, but I can’t read nothing,” Johnson said, pointing to a blue artificial lens in his eye.

While those injuries have scarred over, he’s still battling the consequences of the dust that lives in his lungs. Eleven years ago, at the age of 57, Johnson was diagnosed with progressive massive fibrosis, the most severe stage of black lung disease.

The disease has been a known threat to coal miners for over a century — it’s taken the lives of tens of thousands of Americans since 1968. While black lung became less common through the 1990s, it’s on the rise again. Now, even middle-aged miners have been diagnosed with advanced stages of the disease.

Severe black lung continues to disproportionately affect central Appalachia; from 2019 to mid-2023, nearly 30% of Americans diagnosed with progressive massive fibrosis at federally-funded black lung clinics were West Virginians, according to the Black Lung Data and Resource Center at the University of Illinois Chicago.

That trend is widely attributed to more frequent exposures to silica dust. With the easily-accessible coal already mined, workers often grind through rock embedded with quartz to mine thinner and thinner seams. Grinding that quartz creates silica dust, which is 20 times more toxic than coal dust alone.

“It’s the silica dust that’s killing them,” Johnson’s wife Debbie said. As a black lung nurse at Bluestone Health Center in Kegley, she’s used to seeing patients like Johnson — miners who get winded from walking up their front porch stairs, on a daily basis.

“Now they’ve got black lung. He’s got black lung,” she said, gesturing to her husband. “A whole lot of them have black lung.”

By now, coal workers weren’t supposed to get black lung. Half a century ago, 40,000 West Virginia miners went on strike until Congress passed landmark legislation to “eliminate conditions in mines which cause the disease.” Since then, regulators have also enacted federal rules to further limit workers’ overall dust exposure.

But the lingering and now increasing trend of silica-induced lung disease wasn’t directly addressed until this summer. After decades of delay, the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) proposed regulations to set and enforce a stricter limit on silica dust exposure.

Health advocates have expressed mixed feelings about the rule: while many are grateful that MSHA is acting, some are worried about whether the rule as written will actually protect miners.

But most of the people who have worked in coal mines or with coal miners agree: something needs to be done, and it has to be done right. Otherwise, Danny Johnson is confident his fate will be shared by the next generation of miners.

“You work hard for this and that, and everybody’s gonna end up like me — dead,” he said, pointing at his exposed chest. “This stuff is killing me more and more.”

‘It’s horrible to hear him sleep’

At the New River Health Clinic in Oak Hill, 69-year-old retired miner Roy Keith sat across from respiratory therapist Lisa Emery. It was Keith’s first health care visit in years; he was there to see if he qualifies for West Virginia’s black lung benefits program.

Like Danny Johnson, Keith spent decades mining coal underground, and his lungs are a constant reminder of the job’s effect on his health.

“I like to play softball, but I can’t run,” Keith said.

“It’s horrible to hear him sleep,” his partner, Peggy Dickens, told Emery.

In her eighth year at New River Health, Emery said she’s been seeing more and more miners in their 30s and 40s with severe black lung. So many have no choice but to keep working the dusty jobs if they want to support their families, she said.

“It just makes me cry every day,” Emery said.

After Emery asked him questions about his breathing, Keith sat in a glass-paneled booth, a machine that tests miners’ lung capacity. In the transparent box, Keith nodded as Emery instructed him to inhale deeply and then exhale as quickly as possible.

In his first few attempts, Keith couldn’t stop coughing, so much so that Emery had to restart the tests. His face vibrated and turned purple as his lungs expelled as much air as they could.

Watching her partner from a seat across the room, Dickens cringed as Keith shook and coughed. Her father was a West Virginia coal miner as well, and he had a silica-caused breathing disease when he died at 49.

“It just reminds me of Daddy,” she said.

Thoughts for a long-overdue problem

On an August morning in Beaver, over 100 people filed into the dimly-lit auditorium of MSHA’s National Mine Health and Safety Academy. The agency was holding a hearing on its proposed silica rule and gathering comments from miners, miner advocates and representatives of mining companies.

It was the best opportunity for coal miners from central Appalachia, people like Terry Lilly, to share their thoughts directly with MSHA officials. The retired miner sat and spoke softly into a microphone.

“I’d like these young [miners] to realize they need to wake up,” Lilly told the panel, pausing between sentences to catch his breath. “One of these days you’ll be like me, and you can’t walk across the parking lot.”

Lilly spent 30 years working underground and now has only 40% of his lung capacity remaining. He knows the way the mines were set up in the 1980s — and the way some are run now — do not make it easy for workers to avoid disease. Lilly remembers how some mine operators would pressure or force miners like him to manipulate dust samples and hide overexposure.

In fact, independent analyses of MSHA’s own coal mine dust samples show its previous silica dust exposure limits failed to adequately protect miners for decades. An investigation by NPR and PBS Frontline in 2018 analyzed MSHA’s data and found 21,000 instances of overexposure to silica dust since 1986.

While the proposed rule, in its current form, does require regular dust sampling, much of its effectiveness will depend on mining companies sampling their own mines and reporting it accurately and honestly. Although some companies may do that, Lilly worries there are still loopholes.

In the back rows of the auditorium, Roosevelt Neal and John Cline sat next to each other. Neal, a 71-year-old former miner from Raleigh County, received his black lung diagnosis when he was in his 50s. Ironically, he first took a job underground so his family would have access to health insurance.

“I know I got a little age on me, but…I’m out of oxygen just walking up steps,” he said.

When the Department of Labor rejected his request for black lung benefits, Neal turned to Cline, a lawyer and longtime West Virginia labor rights advocate who played a key role in reforming the federal black lung benefits system. With Cline’s help, Neal won the money the federal government ultimately said he deserved.

Since the mid-1980s, Cline has worked with hundreds of West Virginia miners disabled by silica dust. While he views this rule-making process as part of a continued effort to keep miners healthy, he doesn’t forget that in the past, it’s been difficult for MSHA to pass and enforce dust regulations that prevent miners from getting this preventable disease.

“I’ve watched so many people decline and pass from this,” Cline said. “Not only the shortness of breath, but the effect it has on mental health and making life such a terrible struggle.”

‘Could be here today and gone tomorrow’

If Cecil Matney Jr. had made it to Beaver, the 49-year-old Logan County coal miner planned to speak, using the half of his lung function he has left, about some of the activities he can no longer do: hunting, going on walks with his family, kicking a soccer ball around with his 12 and 13-year-old sons.

He may have mentioned that he’s still working as a miner: he can’t afford to retire from the mines despite having a disease that’s slowly killing him. Or that multiple pulmonologists have told him he’ll likely need a lung transplant soon.

“It feels like a ton of bricks laying on your chest when you’re trying to catch your breath,” Matney said. “My wife’s woken me up thinking I was dying because I wasn’t breathing.”

He often sees white specks floating in the air underground. The dust continues to cripple many miners like him with progressive massive fibrosis.

Matney recognizes what an effective silica rule could do for the thousands of West Virginia miners like himself. That is, if regulations are strict enough — and if there’s rigorous oversight and enforcement — to keep coal operators in line.

“If you’re not holding the company responsible for something, they’re gonna break that rule,” Matney said. “They could care less. That’s just the facts about it.”

But for him, the damage has literally crystallized in his lungs. Embedded silica particles and fibrotic tissue sap his ability to breathe. His disease, and his struggle for breath and continued life, is the result of the government’s past failure to act on silica dust.

Matney wants to live long enough to see his sons become adults, to teach them how to act and to watch them have children of their own. But he knows his decades of dust have made these aspirations ambitious at best.

“At the rate I’m going, that’s just something you don’t know,” he said. “I mean, I could be here today and be gone tomorrow. It’s just the way it works.”

Howard Berkes of Public Health Watch and Justin Hicks of Louisville Public Media contributed to reporting this story.

‘This stuff is killing me’: After decades of delay, new black lung protections come too late for some West Virginia coal miners appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

Two weeks ago, lawmakers gathered in Charleston to finalize Gov. Jim Justice’s plan to funnel $21 million to increase salaries for corrections officers and address the growing crisis with West Virginia’s dangerous jails and prisons.

Earlier this year, lawmakers also put $75 million towards long overdue repairs within the system, an amount the governor said he’s going to slightly increase.

On the same day, just an hour’s drive away in Beckley, a federal lawsuit was filed that made it clear the new money is a drop in the bucket of what is needed to fill large staff vacancies and complete important repairs at the state’s jails and prisons.

In the lawsuit filed on behalf of current and former inmates, officials who run or previously ran West Virginia’s jails and prisons system said that at least another $39 million is needed to get enough people working the cell blocks and at least $150 million is required to make those cell blocks habitable.

The problem isn’t new — back in 1946, the West Virginia Supreme Court recommended a regional jail system because county lockups had become “totally unfit for human habitation,” according to the suit. It took until 1985 before the Legislature did anything about it and another 20 years for the state to completely switch over to regional jails, the suit states.

Even Moundsville, the very first state prison, was taken to task in the early 1980s when a county judge found the conditions unconstitutional, per the suit.

The current staffing and facility issues have been going on for at least a decade, and state officials running the system said they have repeatedly told lawmakers and the governor about the dire needs.

“Prior to every legislative session, we have a meeting with the budget office,” said then-Secretary of Homeland Security Jeff Sandy in a deposition earlier this year. “We provide them with our needs.”

“We told them,” he added.

Officer vacancies are a long-standing issue

With a little more than 700 vacancies in correctional officer positions, prison commissioner Billy Marshall told lawmakers this month that one jail in the Eastern Panhandle was “operating on smoke and mirrors” with a dozen officers working the floor, assisted by National Guard and civilian employees.

The raise, which would jump starting pay from $35,000 for new officers to $40,000 (about a $4 an hour raise), should help fill the ranks, according to Marshall. By an officer’s third year, they would top out at $48,000.

This isn’t the first-time correctional officers have had their pay increased; in 2017, base salary was hovering around the poverty line, at $24,000 a year. The following year, lawmakers raised the starting pay to $32,000 – officers later received a few small raises alongside other state employees.

Sen. Jason Barrett, a Republican from Berkeley County who sits on the jails and prison oversight and finance committees, said the latest bump doesn’t put the system “right where we need to be or want to be.”

He said this session was more or less an attempt to fill vacancies among low-rung officers, often in their first couple of years, who are day-in and day-out working the floor. Prison officials told lawmakers this month these workers account for 95% of vacancies.

“The way the system is currently set up, it’s capped out for those groups, so the only option they have is either to move into an administrative role or go find another job,” Barrett said.

In order to help fill the hole, Justice called out roughly 350 National Guard personnel to work the floor in August 2022. Marshall said the stop gap is costing the state more than filling the vacancies and raises across the board.

Guardsmen working jails aren’t new either — a little more than 100 worked at 18 facilities in 2018.

Del. David Kelly, R-Tyler, who chairs the House Jails and Prisons Committee, said the funding package also allows facilities with high vacancies to pay an additional $5,000 a year. Kelly said this will target border counties, such as in the Eastern Panhandle, where nearby Maryland prisons offer starting pay at $10,000 more than West Virginia’s new pay.

One group left largely out of the mix are support staff, such as counselors, cooks and maintenance employees. While they will get two bonuses, Elaine Harris, representative for the Communication Workers of America District 213 which represents corrections workers, said that’s not nearly enough.

“The bonuses for support staff will help, but we all know that bonus will get spent immediately on things they need,” she said.

Due to the chronic staffing shortage, support staff are asked from time-to-time to work the floor as an officer for a shift. For Kenny Matthews, who served time for the better part of a decade in West Virginia, that means inmates stay locked up longer.

“I got paroled in February 2020, but my institution parole officer had to work the floor and couldn’t get my home plan finished to be released until April,” he said. “That happens all the time.”

The staffing shortages can also increase the potential for violence — while serving at Mt. Olive, the state’s maximum security prison, Matthews said 60 to 70 men were kept in the same housing unit.

“Rec time was a crapshoot,” he said. “If there’s not enough staff to let guys out to take a shower, go work out or go to their educational program, that frustration builds, that anger builds and that leads to violence.”

Prisons and jails still need work 

The physical state of prisons also creates unsafe conditions — Matthews recalled seeing an officer at a regional jail lock himself inside a room, requiring inmates and guards to pull open the door to cut him loose.

Stuck doors are one thing, but Matthews said cell doors that don’t lock at all can lead to assaults.

Annual funding requests from corrections officials to the governor and lawmakers over the last few years paint a dire picture of the system.

The top priority for this year was replacing locks and doors and fences. At two prisons in the northern part of the state, officials asked for a couple million dollars to repair fences that are threatened by hill slips – when a land starts gradually falling off a hill – and rust.

In Randolph County, the Huttonsville Correctional Center needs a sprinkler system to  comply with state code — in the most recent funding request, the division said the prison was facing fines from the fire marshal’s office.

Down the road in Pocahontas County, the Denmar Correctional Center has needed elevators dating back to at least 2019 — the prison is four stories tall and one request stated handicapped prisoners must walk up stairs. Like Huttonsville, it too needs a sprinkler system because the heads are painted over.

Right off the Ohio River in Mason County, the state’s women’s prison needs a heating and cooling unit as well as a “lightning suppression system” so the facility’s electronics can still work after being struck in thunderstorms. According to its request, this issue dates back to 2006.

“They’re not asking for money. They’re just asking for better conditions.”

Stephen New, a lawyer suing to fix living conditions in jails and prisons.

The federal lawsuit filed earlier this month seeks for a judge to compel the state to significantly increase funding to fix the facilities.

While both Justice and Marshall have stated the lawsuit is “just lawyers taking advantage of a situation,” attorney Stephen New, who filed the lawsuit, said no one is looking for a pay out.

“They’re not asking for money,” he said. “They’re just asking for better conditions.”

The lawsuit pegs the division’s list of repairs at $277 million as of April 2022, about in line with the $259 million cited in the fiscal year 2024 budget proposal.

Matthews said it’s just half measures.

“Look, they put up about $100 million — that’s only a third of the bill,” he said. “You want to know what happens if I pay a third of my bills? I end up homeless. But the DCR can just keep going on.”

Last week, Justice sat in a chair underneath a canopy tent, flanked by Babydog, the current Homeland Security Secretary Mark Sorsaia and Commissioner Marshall.

After a long winded spiel about getting his daddy’s shotgun fixed, Justice was ready to sign off the pay raise and other corrections bills — but the sun canopy was wreaking havoc on the photo op. So Marshall started moving the desk out into the sunlight when a uniformed officer said, “Why don’t we just move the tent?”

“That wasn’t our greatest moment there,” Justice said.

Another official joked, “Give that man a raise.”

After inking the bill, Justice, known for pumping up every piece of legislation he signs, said this wouldn’t be the silver bullet for corrections.

“Will this fix everything?” he asked. “Maybe not. Maybe not.”

West Virginia lawmakers pour around $100 million into improving the jails system. It’s not nearly enough. appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

When Ric Cavender’s house caught fire on May 5 in the Edgewood neighborhood of Charleston, the capital city’s fire department was on the scene within minutes to knock down the blaze. 

However, when firefighters hooked up to the hydrants in the area – literally yards down the street from the home – they found not one, not two, but three didn’t work, according to a lawsuit. 

While Cavender saw his earthly possessions burn up, he also lost a best friend: Duke, the family dog. 

Now, state regulators are trying to see if Cavender’s tragedy is a warning of a bigger problem plaguing communities. On June 30, the West Virginia Public Service Commission launched a statewide investigation into the number of working fire hydrants, but it turns out that’s easier said than done.

More than a week after the initial deadline, a little more than half of the state’s 301 water districts have responded.  

Now, regulators have extended the deadline to Aug. 25, threatening up to one year in jail and $1,000 in fines for anyone who defies it. Most of the largest systems have submitted responses, with the notable exception of the Berkeley County Public Service Water District, which serves one of the fastest-growing counties in the state. 

As hydrant data trickles in, West Virginia ranks among worst states for fire deaths 

Fire protection is a huge problem in West Virginia; the state was ranked second in the nation from 2015-2019 in fire deaths per capita, according to the National Fire Protection Association. In 2022, at least 19 West Virginians died in house fires — the death rate of house fires is roughly double that than the rest of the nation, according to FEMA. 

But Paul Calamita, the general counsel for the West Virginia Municipal Water Quality Association, said the data requests are a bit overwhelming for small water districts, who he said might have to hire consultants to figure it out. He said the less than a month turnaround for data was an arbitrary timeline that didn’t give enough time for districts to respond. 

“We just think this move is tone deaf and it’s just the PSC seeing how quickly they can make people jump,” Calamita said. 

The association sent a letter asking for an extension for large systems (defined as serving 10,000 or more residents) until Sept. 15 to submit, followed by mid-sized systems submitting in November and small systems at the end of the year, Calamita said. 

In its extension order, the PSC stated information on fire hydrants are already supposed to be filed by the water utilities to the commission in an annual report. Those reports describe each  system’s inventory in broad strokes, like the number of fire hydrants and their size and capability. 

But the current 27-question survey sent to water districts dives deeper, asking questions about the age of the system, details on inspections and problems relating to the hydrants. 

A PSC spokesman declined to state whether the timeline has caused a disparity in information, citing its Aug. 7 order as “speaking for itself.”

However, Del. Daniel Linville, R-Cabell, whose Joint Standing Committee on Technology and Infrastructure heard PSC testimony on the issue earlier this week, said he doesn’t think it will be an issue. 

“We’re working on a very aggressive time frame, but I wouldn’t view this as the end of our fact gathering process,” Linville said. Linville said the investigation isn’t about “finger pointing” at the water districts, but a fact-finding mission to inform lawmakers come the January 2024 regular session. 

Meanwhile, up on Chester Road in Charleston, Matt McKinney tinkers in his garage, directly across the street from the now-vacant lot where Cavender’s house once stood. 

He said on the night of the fire, his newborn woke him up – when he walked down stairs to fix a bottle, he saw the flashing red lights of the engines and the smoking billowing in the street. In the weeks following the blaze, McKinney said he saw West Virginia American Water trucks come and go in the neighborhood; he even saw workers dig up a line. 

“It’s definitely scary that it happened,” he said. 

Down the street stand two fire hydrants — one looks relatively new, while the other has an orange placard hanging off it stating, “not in service.”  A West Virginia American water spokeswoman said the broken one is being kept out of service due to an ongoing lawsuit over the fire. 

Regulators asked water districts across West Virginia if their fire hydrants work. Only half responded appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

As students prepare to return to campus, painful cuts to degree programs and faculty positions at West Virginia University are on the horizon as administrators work to fix a $45 million budget deficit.

At this moment, almost half of the faculty are waiting to find out whether they will still have a job in a year or need to find work elsewhere. 

Based on enrollment trends and revenue, many degree programs across the campus are having to prove to administrators that they will be able to attract students and valuable tuition dollars in the years to come.

The process is expected to be finished by mid-fall and will result in some tenured professors being laid off as programs are downsized or eliminated.

“Please understand how demoralizing, heartbreaking, and scary it is to think you are secure in your faculty position only to now live in fear every day that it will be cut,” wrote a faculty member in a public comment — one of almost two hundred submitted in response to a recently proposed rule changes that will make it easier to lay off faculty. 

In one letter to the board, dozens of professors said that the way in which the layoffs are being done will make it difficult to recruit faculty, undermine academic freedom, imperil WVU’s research efforts and ultimately hurt students.

Here’s what you need to know.

Why is there a budget crisis at WVU?

Student enrollment, the single biggest source of revenue through tuition, has steadily declined over the past decade and is expected to continue going down. Today, around 5,000 fewer students are enrolled – and paying tuition – than in 2014.

The enrollment decline started before the COVID-19 pandemic but was exacerbated by it. Both in West Virginia and nationwide, fewer high school seniors are choosing to attend college than before the pandemic. 

At WVU, a long-term budget problem became an immediate budget crunch after the university enrolled smaller freshmen classes during the pandemic and administrators underestimated how many students would graduate in spring of 2022. More students left than were coming in, and tuition revenue went down.

WVU’s budget situation is also closely tied to actions by state lawmakers. Public funding has gone down over the last decade, forcing the university to become more dependent on tuition revenue, according to analysis from the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. 

While both enrollment and state funding have declined, expenses have increased. Changes made by lawmakers earlier this year to the state health insurance plan will cost the university $10 million more next year. Inflation and higher wages have also affected the budget, according to administrators.

“At the end of the day, we’ve dropped enrollment,” Rob Alsop, vice president for strategic initiatives, said during a meeting with faculty earlier this summer. “Our expenses are up. Our state appropriations are not going to save us. And we’ve got to figure out a pathway collectively forward.”

What is WVU going to do about its budget deficit?

In March, WVU administrators announced the $45 million budget shortfall and quickly began a review of degree programs. By mid-summer, almost half were placed “under review” based on enrollment and revenue.

The list includes the law school, the education program, the creative arts college, the public health school, the pharmacy school, the math program, some engineering programs and more.

Faculty and leaders have defended their programs and made the case for why they should be kept. In light of the enrollment and revenue data collected by top administrators, leadership from each program have recently submitted plans detailing current and future efforts to increase enrollment and reduce costs.

Closing or shrinking programs and the resulting layoffs are the latest — and most drastic — cost-cutting measure that WVU has asked faculty to go through.

Since 2020, administrators have been looking to cut costs through a process that they’ve called “Academic Transformation.” Prior to the current review, they have merged two pairs of colleges and restructured other programs.

At the beginning of this year, budget officials implemented a hiring freeze and stopped spending on supplies, employee hospitality and travel in most situations. Printing on physical paper was specifically discouraged.

Who is to blame for the budget crisis? Who will fix it?

In a state with a declining college-going rate and poor economic conditions, several external factors have contributed to the crisis. 

President E. Gordon Gee, who just had his contract renewed through 2025 by the university’s governing board and says he plans to step down afterwards, has presented the budget cuts as a necessary step to continue attracting students to a smaller institution. 

“My friends, we have been overgrown for a very long time,” he said in a March address to faculty and students. 

After Gee was chosen as WVU’s president in 2014, he pledged to increase enrollment to 40,000 students, an increase of several thousand students. Enrollment has steadily gone down since and is now around 26,000. 

Administrators have been in the driver’s seat during this crisis. They’ve decided when to release information, changed rules to make it easier to lay off faculty members and, ultimately, will decide who to cut. 

Faculty acknowledge that the budget crisis must be dealt with but have sharply criticized the speed and manner in which cuts are being made. Several times, faculty members have asked why highly-paid senior administrators are not taking pay cuts to help with the crisis.

Alsop, who oversees much of the university’s business operations, has said that this would be bad for morale and make it difficult to recruit future job candidates.

How does this change what WVU will be in a decade?

In a decade, there will likely be fewer faculty, fewer staff and fewer students at WVU. 

Gee has presented a vision of a smaller institution that is focused on programs that students want. He has also frequently emphasized WVU’s health care and research wings as significant parts of the university’s future.

Those areas have grown in recent years with more grant revenue to do research and WVU Medicine’s expansion across the state.

Some high school seniors may find that the program they want to attend no longer exists at WVU. But it’s not clear yet exactly what programs these could be.

On August 14, WVU is expected to release information about which academic programs are on the chopping block and could be downsized or discontinued. Final decisions will be made in September.

West Virginia University faces budget cuts and layoffs. Here’s what to know appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

Lawyers were nearly half-way through their arguments in a federal courthouse Thursday in Richmond, Va. when one of the presiding judges informed the court that the Supreme Court had issued an order allowing construction to resume on the Mountain Valley Pipeline. 

The brief, unsigned order added another layer of complexity to the already-complicated case, leaving the future of a $6.6 billion controversial natural gas pipeline, endangered species and a national forest hanging in the balance. 

Here’s where things stand.  

How the Supreme Court got involved

The 4th Circuit issued two stays — temporary holds — on the project earlier this month after environmental groups filed motions requesting the pipeline’s construction to stop. The groups argued that, without a stay, the pipeline’s construction would cause “irreparable harm” while the current legal challenges worked their way through the courts. 

Lawyers for the pipeline responded by filing an emergency petition with the Supreme Court to get the holds removed and the two pending cases dismissed, citing the need for quick action in order to meet the project’s winter deadline.

They got some of what they wanted: the high court, in an unsigned order Thursday, threw out the stays, which means construction can resume on the last section needed to finish the 303-mile natural gas pipeline: a controversial 3.5-mile section that snakes through the fragile terrain of the Jefferson National Forest. But the Supreme Court didn’t weigh in on the pending cases, leaving the 4th Circuit to decide whether to move forward with the lawsuits.

The role of the 4th Circuit Court

The Supreme Court’s decision came down right as pipeline lawyers, environmental lawyers and judges were all gathered in the federal courthouse in Richmond, Va., to hear arguments on a motion to dismiss the current legal challenges against the pipeline. 

Those lawsuits, all filed by environmental groups, argue the pipeline’s plan doesn’t follow federal environmental law. One challenge stems from the U.S. Forest Service’s move in May to amend its land management plan: as proposed, the project violated several standards of the national forest’s original plan. Attorneys for the Wilderness Society petitioned the 4th Circuit Court to review the amended Land and Resource Management Plan, arguing that it violates several environmental laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act. 

The lawsuit also argued that the permit granted to the pipeline by the Bureau of Land Management violated the National Environmental Policy Act.

The other pending lawsuit, filed by a coalition of environmental groups, including the Sierra Club and Appalachian Voices, challenged the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s 2023 report that concluded endangered species wouldn’t be jeopardized by the pipeline. 

Thursday’s arguments revolved around a motion to dismiss the environmental groups’ cases. Backers of the pipeline argue that the 4th Circuit Court no longer has jurisdiction over the legal challenges, after Congress passed a debt ceiling bill that included a provision to fast track the remaining approvals needed to complete the pipeline and stripped the court’s power to review permits given to the project by federal departments. 

The provision also gave the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals sole judiciary authority over any legal challenges against the pipeline. 

While the pipeline says the 4th Circuit Court no longer has authority, the environmental groups disagree. As the news of the Supreme Court decision allowing pipeline construction to resume came down on Thursday, it was right as Kym Meyer of the Southern Environmental Law Center was arguing that Congress didn’t have the constitutional authority to reassign authority over the pipeline.

“You can’t use jurisdiction stripping, as Congress has intended to here, as a means to an end,” she said. Instead, the groups are arguing that Congress overstepped and violated the separation of powers doctrine, which is meant to prevent a governmental branch from having too much authority. 

Now, the court has to determine whether Congress overstepped its constitutional authority and if it even has jurisdiction to rule on the constitutionality of the pipeline provision enacted by Congress. 

The fate of the Mountain Valley Pipeline

Ultimately, the future of the pipeline is still uncertain. Its completion can’t be guaranteed as it still waits for the 4th Circuit Court to decide whether to dismiss the pending two cases challenging the project. 

If the court decides to dismiss the cases, the environmental groups could potentially pursue legal recourse through the D.C. Circuit Court, which was the court Congress granted jurisdiction through the debt ceiling bill. But if the court decides not to dismiss the lawsuits, the environmental groups could try to halt construction again as their cases continue to work through the court. 

For now, what comes next will be determined by how the 4th Circuit Court rules over the motion to dismiss the cases. Until then, construction on the pipeline can continue.

What Thursday’s Supreme Court order means for the future of the Mountain Valley Pipeline — and for West Virginia appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

PARKERSBURG — Brightly colored doodles, poetry and character sheets for role-playing games line the walls of the teen section in the Parkersburg and Wood County Public Library. Each month, several groups of teenagers gather here to create characters, battle monsters and explore fantasy worlds as a part of the branch’s long-running Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

“D&D is a hobby of mine,” said teen librarian Edain Campbell, who takes on the role of Dungeon Master. “Getting to share that with these kids and see how stoked they get, especially about really ridiculous stuff — there’s nothing more satisfying to me.” 

The library’s Dungeons & Dragons campaign and other role playing games have become so popular that there’s even a waiting list to get in.

Getting teenagers to the library is a win. With games, crafts and other activities, they have a place to express themselves in an environment where being different is encouraged. And it’s all working. Teen participation in library programs is up 500%, Campbell said.

Still, a small, but vocal group of local residents sees something more dangerous among the books. On a nearby shelf, two sex education books — Let’s Talk About It by Erica Moen and This Book Is Gay by Juno Dawson — are sandwiched between other titles. 

Both books have recently been at the center of controversy for the library, as concerned parents and residents urge library administrators to remove these titles from public collections that children have access to.

As some have tried to get books removed from West Virginia libraries, a group of people in Wood County is eying a more forceful approach. They’ve taken aim at library funding, urged elected officials to restrict books and are seeking to seat a supporter on the boards that oversee public schools and libraries.

They have even worked with a local state senator to propose a sweeping bill to regulate books — and tried to have library leaders thrown in jail.

To librarians working with the Parkersburg and Wood County Public Library, the most valuable aspect of the library is free access to information. They say the library exists to educate — even when the conversation gets tough.

“Just because something frightens you or is uncomfortable or makes you upset doesn’t mean it doesn’t have value,” Campbell said. “In fact, I would argue that things that are upsetting and difficult are even more important.”

Book bans and police reports

On a weekday afternoon in April, Wood County residents Jessica Rowley and John Davis walked into the Parkersburg Police Department carrying a stack of library books and documents. 

They sat in the police chief’s office and complained that they had evidence of a crime:  The Parkersbug and Wood County Public Library and its director Brian Raitz were violating state law by showing obscene material to minors. 

This wasn’t the first attempt by Rowley, Davis and other Wood County residents to restrict access to certain books in the library’s collection. In fall of last year, a display for “Banned Books Week” that included the adult graphic memoir Gender Queer almost caused the library’s censure by the Parkersburg City Council. 

In the following months, members of the small but vocal Mid-Ohio Valley Citizens Action Coalition spoke about Gender Queer and other books at public meeting after meeting, unsuccessfully campaigning against levy votes that provide crucial funding to the library and pushing public officials to restrict the books to adults only. Rowley and Davis are both members of the citizen action group. 

In January, Sen. Mike Azinger, R-Wood, introduced a bill that the group helped craft to expand the definition of obscene material and ban it in public schools and nearby facilities  – such as libraries. It would also criminalize “any transvestite and/or transgender exposure, performances or display to any minor.”

He said the bill, which did not get out of committee during this year’s session, was intended to prohibit three specific books from Wood County libraries and schools.

In March, Rowley lodged a challenge, the library’s formal process for objecting to material, against Let’s Talk About It, saying the book taught teenagers how to engage in sexual activities. She asked that the book be replaced with a children’s Bible; however, her request was denied. There are several children’s Bibles already at the library.

In the chief’s office, Rowley and Davis told the police chief and another officer that they did not want to remove books entirely from the library’s collection, but instead place them in a separate location where children could not access them. 

“There appears to be an ongoing effort to sexually groom young children, and it must stop,” Davis wrote to the police in an email shortly before the meeting. “If not, it will surely lead to more children being harmed by adults seeking pedophilia relationships.” 

But documents show that the Wood County Prosecutor advised that the current definition of obscene material — which would have been expanded by Azinger’s proposed law — would prevent prosecution. The case was closed.

Which library books are being challenged?

The books challenged in Parkersburg all contain mentions of sex, in text or illustrations, either as a plot-point or a sexual education device. The most cited sexual reference at public meetings throughout the county has been from Gender Queer, when one character performs oral sex on another character who is nonbinary. No contested titles are in the children’s section, two are in the teen section, and the rest are part of the public library’s adult collection.

But while those opposing the inclusion of these books at the Wood County library are pushing to restrict access, the only books the library keeps locked up are ones that are archival or potentially fragile. Raitz said that access is the guiding principle for selecting a diverse range of books for the collection, and that restricting these titles — as the library’s critics have suggested — is not the library’s role.

“We leave it to the parents and guardians and the individual to make that decision for themselves,” he said. The library’s policy states that any parent or guardian is responsible for the content checked out on a child’s library card.

But Sean Keefe, a member of the citizen action group pushing for the removal of the books, doesn’t agree. 

“It should not be available only to that child,” said Keefe, who said he does not own a library card. “It should be available to the parent.”

Putting some books into a separate collection will have the same effect as censoring the books from the library completely, said Courtney Young, former president of the American Library Association.  

“It is perceived as a compromise, but is still not a good thing,” she said. 

Young said separating the books and making patrons specifically request access would both create a fear and stigma surrounding the book and also make it more likely that children will search for the material. 

A national movement to challenge and ban books

Challenges to books are on the rise across the country. And Wood County is not the only place in West Virginia where contentious conversations about books have come up in recent years. 

In 2021, a Pocahontas County teacher faced criticism from parents for including The Hate U Give in the year’s curriculum; the parents complained the book contained a large amount of sexual content. Last year, a petition garnered almost 300 signatures to try and have The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison removed from the high school English curriculum at a Berkeley County school over concerns that minors were being exposed to adult themes.

Public libraries across the country have also become political battlegrounds. In Washington State, officials in a Spokane suburb tried to take control of the library after a challenge to its inclusion of Gender Queer and a library in one Michigan town was defunded for keeping a LGBTQ+ title in its collection. 

Librarians across the country face harassment and judgment, while new programs emerge out of the controversy to help them better understand the importance of libraries with large and diverse collections. 

Young, the former American Library Association head, said she is scared for librarians who have to deal with issues of censorship and book challenges in their daily work. 

“You should not be attacking them personally because there is bound paper on a shelf in a building,” she said. 

Lots of noise, but few formal book challenges

While community members have repeatedly spoken against the books at public meetings, political events, and on social media, only a handful of challenges — the formal process for a book to be removed from the library collection — have been brought to the library director.

Raitz, the library director, said local residents have filed a total of three challenges in the last year. All have been denied. 

That’s been frustrating for Rowley and other members of the community action group. 

“The ones that are even supposedly on our side won’t even speak out against it,” Rowley said in May. “They won’t say anything.”

Earlier this year, the group changed tactics and is now pushing to get one of their members on the library board that has the final say about what books are and are not at the library. 

The group has backed Chad Conley, a substitute teacher who has criticized the books in the library and the selection process for its board, to be appointed to the library board. He is also running for a board of education seat in 2024 under the tagline of “Protecting Our Children” after an unsuccessful run last year. 

Applications closed earlier this week and the Board of Education expects to announce their selection in August. The newest member of the board will serve alongside four other board members.

While heated discussions continue about what books are in the library, Raitz is focused on showing that the library is more than a few controversial books. 

The library has undergone significant changes to house more patrons and provide more spaces for collaboration, Raitz explained as he walked through the basement of the library. The new linoleum flooring was a mid-pandemic renovation to replace 20-year-old carpet.

The library has also expanded to provide more space for programs like tax filing prep and the biweekly Friends of the Library used book sale. No matter what material or resource people are looking for, Raitz said that the library will be a place that protects the freedom to read — not censors.

“Once you start opening that door, where does the line get drawn?” he said.

Battle over books: Wood County residents pressure library to restrict titles with LGBTQ, sexual themes appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

The Tucker, Barbour, and Randolph County pocket of central West Virginia is a beautiful part of the state. Embraced by the million-acre Monongahela National Forest, the region has become a prized location for well-appointed second homes and retirement tranquility. There’s lots to do: ski resorts, both downhill and cross country; vast miles of hiking and biking trails; campgrounds galore – an outdoor recreation mecca.

All of which is a boost to the local economy. And it’s needed. The coal industry, which once helped fuel this economy, has been in steady decline. Barbour County ranks 51st of West Virginia’s 55 counties in per capita income – this in the third-poorest state in the country. And though Tucker County, to the east, is faring better, few are getting rich.

For three decades, Woodlands Development Group has advanced economic opportunities in these three heavily rural counties while striving to keep them affordable. It’s a delicate balance.

Woodlands develops sustainable, affordable housing and supports economic initiatives in Barbour, Randolph, and Tucker counties. It assists with the development of parks, trails, community centers, and greenspaces. Its lending arm, Woodlands Community Lenders, offers access to capital and technical assistance to businesses and nonprofits.

The Tucker County towns of Thomas and Davis, each with a population under 1,000, have become attractive art and outdoor recreation destinations, with thrumming downtown businesses in storefronts that once stood shuttered.

But shadowing this boon are concerns that the artists/entrepreneurs and others who reanimated these streets will no longer be able to afford to reside here and that this same dynamic could eventually play out across the region.

“We weren’t working on building a cool little destination town,” said Seth Pitts, an artist and gallery owner in Thomas. Rather, the vision was to build a community “where we want to live. I’m just hoping the people who helped revitalize the downtown are able to stay here.”

Woodlands Development Group shares that ambition.

‘We’re Present’

The group is headquartered in the town of Elkins, in Randolph County, which borders, to the south, Barbour and Tucker counties. The organization was launched in 1995 by the Randolph County Housing Authority as a “nimble” resource, in Executive Director Dave Clark’s words, to address affordable housing. It’s evolved over the years.

Downtown renovation is a primary focus.

“We make direct investments in downtown buildings,” Clark said, “but we also can support private developers and private building owners, particularly if they want to take an old building and convert it from vacant space into a marketable space. So we’ll help them with the whole gamut.” That can include design, construction estimates, financing, and more.

“We’ve gotten more and more involved with tax-credit programs,” Clark said, “which really are the big-dollar programs in community development across the country – historic tax credits and low-income housing tax credits, predominantly.”

“I like to think of Woodlands as, first and foremost, a community-planning and organizing entity,” he said, which is why it remains largely focused on those three core counties. They comprise some 2,000 square miles but only 50,000 people. That focus allows the Woodlands staff to “keep our finger on the pulse and be more responsive and engaged.”

“I don’t think we’re doing anything magical or special,” Clark said. Staff members live throughout the region, attending city council meetings, joining the Rotary Club. “We’re present.”

“They’re holistic in nature,” said Vonda Poynter, senior vice president of membership for Fahe, a network of community-building Appalachia-based nonprofits, of which Woodlands is a member.

“Some organizations can’t step out of their lane to address an issue,” Poynter said, whereas Woodlands offers “creative solutions” designed to meet each need.

Downtown Abuzz

Elkins, a town of 7,500, has long been the hub of this three-county region. Among its attractions are the depot from which five scenic Durbin and Greenbriar Valley Railroad excursions embark. The Augusta Heritage Center holds a three-week summer event featuring world-class musicians. And the Mountain State Forest Festival attracts up to 100,000 people each autumn.

Woodlands’ biggest project to date is currently underway in downtown Elkins: a revitalization of the grand old Tygart Hotel. The hotel was converted to apartments a half-century or so ago and had incrementally fallen into “what we often refer to as ‘housing of last resort,’” Clark said.

In 2015, community leaders asked if Woodlands would be interested in purchasing the building and restoring it to its hotel origin. “I honestly didn’t think it would ever fly as a hotel,” Clark said. Woodlands brought in a Virginia group that specializes in boutique hotels. “They came back, and the numbers looked really pretty good; they thought there was a lot of potential.”

“Someone might have said, in a feasibility study, ‘It’d be better to tear that sucker down and build new – which you might have spent just about the same amount of money on,” Poynter said. “But doing something that preserves a building and invests in the community in that manner is, again, a very holistic approach to their housing and community-development work.”

The 56-room Tygart Hotel is scheduled to be completed by the end of the year, a $17-million-plus project.

Meanwhile, Woodlands Development Group is working with six new downtown-building owners, assisting with renovations. Young people who had left are returning and investing.

Among the businesses that will be making its downtown debut is Big Timber Brewing – owned by locals who returned, and one of Woodlands’ first borrowers – which will be relocating its taproom a block from the hotel. And the local development authority recently received funding to build an event center.

The hotel project has “definitely facilitated a lot of development,” Clark said.

‘A Direct Connection’

The town of Thomas is 37 vertiginous miles to the northeast up two-lane U.S.-48. “Hidden gem” is the all-too-well-worn term used to describe Thomas and its sister town, Davis, six miles farther along 48.

A couple of dozen relatively new storefronts, most of them formerly abandoned, now adorn Thomas’s Front Street. About two-thirds of them, Clark estimates, are operated by local artists. Woodlands has played a critical role in this development.

Seth Pitts is an illustrator and writer who’s been foundational to the town’s revitalization. He and his business partners received a loan from Woodlands to purchase the building that became both his gallery and home.

“I don’t think a bank necessarily would have loaned to us,” Pitts said. “But they know us,” he said of Woodlands. Woodlands’ staff’s direct connection to the community, he said, allowed for them to “look at our assets in a more creative way” – to appreciate what they brought to the community.

Finding the Balance

Given that so much of the surrounding acreage is protected parkland, potential options for new housing development in the region are limited.

A four-lane road now connects Davis to the Washington, D.C., metropolis. It’s a two-and-a-half-hour drive that used to take four.

Clark noted that second-home development and Airbnb conversion are incrementally nudging folks out of Davis and Thomas. Workforce families are migrating down toward the town of Parsons, 15 miles to the south, which, he said, isn’t an ideal alternative. It’s a 2,000-foot climb from Parsons to Thomas, a drive that can be treacherous in the winter.

Barring Airbnbs outright is probably not the right solution, Pitts said. More practical is encouraging structures that combine a unit or more of affordable housing with Airbnb or something else that accommodates the owner recouping their investment.

A bottom-line objective in future development, he said, should be promoting solutions that facilitate those who’ve put in the sweat equity to continue pursuing their ambitions.

Back in Elkins, Dustin Smith reflects on that town’s past and future. Smith, Woodland’s director of project development, is a northern Pennsylvania native who came to work for the group a decade ago as an AmeriCorps member and stayed on.

“I feel like I’ve seen a lot of change in the last 10 years, and it feels like we’re really kind of on the precipice,” he said.

Clark agrees: “It feels like Elkins maybe hasn’t turned the corner but is getting there. More storefronts are open and you’re seeing many more people downtown at night.”

Smith recognizes that delicate balance: “Rural gentrification is a fine line.”

“It’s exciting,” Clark allowed, “but it’s also a little unsettling. There’s an element of, ‘What are we contributing to?’ But, “so far, from my perspective, I think we’re on the right track.”

The post Walking the ‘Fine Line’ of Rural Development and Gentrification appeared first on The Daily Yonder.

In the coming days, local government leaders across West Virginia are set to elect five board members for the foundation tasked with managing the majority of the state’s opioid settlement funds, a sum that totals right around $1 billion as of July. The new members of the West Virginia First Foundation will join Dr. Tom Kelly, an emergency medicine physician who was elected last week, and five members chosen by Gov. Jim Justice. The governor has also indicated that he’ll make his selections “really soon.”

Selecting the right people for these positions is essential, says Drema Hill, a West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine professor who helped the Attorney General’s Office determine how the state can spend its opioid settlement winnings.

“It is really going to have the power to make the decisions over these funds,” Hill said. “That’s why it’s very important who is elected to be on this board.”

We break down how West Virginia local governments are choosing their board members, how the foundation can spend its settlement funds, how well those members will represent areas most impacted by the substance use crisis and how transparent the foundation’s operations will be.

How are the opioid settlement foundation board members chosen for each region?

While West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and other state lawyers were pursuing lawsuits against pharmaceutical supply chain companies, they developed a Memorandum of Understanding for the money from the lawsuits. The memorandum guides how the state can spend this money and established governing guidelines for the West Virginia First Foundation.

The document split the state into six regions based on existing designations from the state’s Bureau for Behavioral Health. Each region will have one resident serving as a board member for the foundation.

Officials from the towns, cities and counties of each region — with the exception of people from seven small local governments that never signed on to the memorandum — can nominate one person to be their region’s board member. Once all the nominations are in, the regions will host public meetings, where representatives from each local government included will vote on the candidates.
So far, the only meeting that’s taken place has been the one for Region Six, a series of southern West Virginia counties that were targeted by prescription drug distributors. Its local elected officials selected Kelly. The other five regions will choose their representatives on July 12 and July 13.

Who can be nominated?

The memorandum says board members should have expertise that could be helpful for guiding the foundation; examples range from substance use treatment practitioners to people experienced in finance.

A letter from Morrisey’s office to local governments says that nominating current elected officials is “highly discouraged.” According to his press secretary, that’s an attempt to prevent the selection from becoming political. 

But that hasn’t stopped local governments from nominating elected officials. Mercer County Commissioner Greg Puckett was nominated for Region Six’s board seat but ultimately not selected.

In Region Three, an area made up of counties in the Mid-Ohio Valley, Parkersburg Mayor Tom Joyce will be on the ballot. Over the past two years, Joyce has, contrary to local data, attributed rises in Wood County crime to local substance use treatment efforts and successfully lobbied for state legislation that prevents Wood County from adding more treatment facilities. He did not respond to phone and email interview requests for this story.

Vienna Mayor Randall Rapp, who nominated the Parkersburg mayor for the board, cited Joyce’s professional experience working for hospitals as a major reason why he nominated him.

“I just think that [with] his background and his character, Tom will do the right thing,” Rapp said.

Wood County Commissioner Blair Couch was less comfortable with the prospect of Joyce as the Region Three representative. His commission nominated Westbrook Health Services president Kevin Trippett, and Couch said he would prefer someone like Kelly.

“I think politicians can be swayed more than a doctor from Raleigh County,” Couch said.

Will the foundation board be fair to the places most impacted by the crisis?

The money will be split according to a formula that assigns percentages — based on a municipality’s population, number of prescription pain pills received, and overdose death count — of how much of West Virginia’s total opioid crisis took place in an area.

For example, the formula determined that about 9% of the total crisis took place in Cabell County and Huntington. It calculated a similar estimate for Kanawha County and Charleston.

But each region will still only get one vote on the foundation. That means that despite the calculation that Region Five, which includes both Kanawha and Cabell counties, was affected more than other regions, it will have the same vote on the board as Couch’s Region Three.

“How can you have Cabell and Kanawha in the same region?” Couch asked. “Those two big ass counties, who have suffered a lot through the opioid [epidemic], are going to have one vote on this 11-member panel.”

How transparent will the foundation be?

Drema Hill says the West Virginia First Foundation is being set up as a private nonprofit to discourage the funds from being politicized and misused. But this has raised questions about whether the foundation will be subject to the same rules as government organizations. 

Morrisey’s press secretary did not respond to phone and email questions asking whether the foundation will be subject to the state’s Freedom of Information Act. But courts have previously ruled that private foundations created by state authorities are subject to the law, according to Suzanne Weise, a West Virginia University law professor who specializes in government transparency.

A list of “frequently asked questions” developed by the Attorney General’s Office says that the foundation won’t be subject to the state’s Open Meetings Act. The memorandum does say that all meetings related to the foundation should be open to the public and gives the state’s attorney general the power to audit it. But some local government officials have already raised concerns about whether those provisions will create enough accountability for the organization.

How will the foundation spend the settlement money?

Once the attorneys’ fees for the settlements are finalized, the West Virginia First Foundation will be responsible for managing hundreds of millions of dollars. The board members are supposed to invest the majority of that sum, but the memorandum also instructs them to distribute 20% of the foundation’s yearly budget to the six regions each of the next seven years.

Each regional board member will also double as their area’s director; that job entails leading regional governing groups that decide how their shares of the money get spent. The foundation’s board members will collectively be responsible for determining the process by which West Virginia government and non-government organizations can apply for regional funds.

Conny Priddy, the program coordinator of Huntington’s Quick Response Team, is confident the money will help reduce the damage of the state’s opioid crisis. But she worries it won’t be enough.

In the 2021 trial that pitted Huntington and Cabell County against drug distribution companies, an epidemiologist and a forensic economist estimated that it would take $2.5 billion just to address the problem in that county. In the wake of U.S. District Judge David Faber’s ruling in favor of the drug distributors, lawyers for Huntington and Cabell have appealed the decision to the 4th U.S. Circuit.  

Now, the foundation will only have access to a portion of $1 billion to address problems throughout the entire state. Priddy said some money is better than nothing, but she doesn’t know what impact it will ultimately have for the West Virginia families who have suffered the most.

“I hate to say it, but you can’t throw a little bit of money at it and then expect the problem to go away,” she said. “It has become generational.”

Disclaimer: Weise is the secretary of Mountain State Spotlight’s Board of Directors.

Mountain State Spotlight explains: West Virginia’s opioid settlement foundation will soon have board members. Here’s how they’re picked appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia's civic newsroom.

On a hazy summer afternoon, a silver pickup truck rolled into a parking lot filled with pop-up tents in Charleston’s Kanawha City. As it came to a stop, four people from Marmet experiencing homelessness hopped out and began walking around a free wellness event.

Social service providers from around the county had gathered to help people like Pamela Hale, one of the Marmet residents. She was grateful for the resources available, ranging from hot lunches to basic first-aid care to HIV testing.

Hale, who referred to herself as the encampment’s “mama,” wished more people had joined her. But she said they’re often skeptical of social service workers who come by, like the ones who gave Hale a ride to the event.

“They think automatically, ‘cops,’” she said.

This community wellness event is one way health providers are trying to build bridges to eastern Kanawha County communities like Marmet, areas they’ve struggled to reach in the past. State and local infectious disease experts say this region has been among the most impacted by the effects of the county’s injection drug use crisis, including HIV, hepatitis C and endocarditis.

Health workers know an effective strategy for building relationships here, one that’s worked well in neighboring Fayette County: mobile syringe service units. These operations could be regularly set up near encampments, providing disease testing and also letting people exchange used needles for sterile ones.

“I think the high-risk group would come out for that,” said Christine Teague, the director of Charleston Area Medical Center’s HIV Care program.

But West Virginia lawmakers passed a law in 2021 granting local governments the power to approve and revoke the authorization of needle exchanges. And in Kanawha County, commissioners have only authorized one program — which operates in Charleston and is difficult for people in towns like Marmet, Rand, Belle and Montgomery to reach without reliable transportation. They’ve indicated they don’t see a need for more than one exchange in the county.

“I wish to God we could have a mobile syringe unit,” said Cassie Province, an outreach worker at the nonprofit Covenant House. “But they won’t let us do that.”

How we got here

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has repeatedly found that syringe service programs decrease infectious disease transmission and reduce needle litter. But the vital tool has faced pushback operating in Kanawha County for years. Since 2018, two programs have closed after both Charleston and West Virginia passed policies restricting syringe exchanges.

The 2021 state law stipulated how the programs could operate and gave county commissions and city councils the power to approve and close them. Health professionals at both the national and state levels worried about how these closures and others across the state would impact people who inject drugs. Charleston and Huntington were already in the midst of large injection drug-use HIV outbreaks, with a top CDC official calling Charleston’s the country’s “most concerning” outbreak of the year.

Outside of West Virginia’s two largest cities, rural spread was also expected. And data from Charleston Area Medical Center supports that, at least in Kanawha County, it’s been happening. Maps from the hospital system indicate that from 2017 to 2021, people in the county’s more rural, eastern parts have been at high risk of hepatitis C and HIV.

Teague said that region and Charleston’s West Side are the areas in Kanawha County most affected by diseases transmitted via used syringes. Unlike their efforts in the West Side of Charleston, her program and other health services have struggled to test and treat eastern Kanawha County residents — leading Teague to believe the HIV and hepatitis C case numbers in the area are significantly higher than official numbers indicate.

“This high-risk group may not be interested in coming out unless you have something useful for them,” Teague said. “Whether that’s syringe service programs or food or what have you.”

While the 2021 state law limits when and where mobile needle exchanges can operate, it does allow for them to exist. Robin Pollini, an infectious disease epidemiology professor at West Virginia University, said syringe service programs that are able to travel to small, rural eastern Kanawha communities would help mitigate HIV and hepatitis C spread.

“People who use drugs have traditionally not had good experiences with the health care system,” she said. “That’s why having a mobile unit, which is very different from having them come into a medical setting, is so important.”

But the law also requires approval from the county commission for any needle exchange program to operate. Kanawha’s commissioners have only authorized one program: West Virginia Health Right.

The free clinic runs its needle exchange program solely from Charleston and does not offer mobile services in the county. 2022 data from the state health department indicates Health Right distributed far fewer sterile needles than programs in Huntington and Morgantown.

In 2021, Angie Settle, the clinic’s executive director, told the Kanawha County Commission her organization’s needle exchange policies create “a multitude of safeguards” to make sure every syringe is returned. In that same meeting, she said Health Right does not plan on expanding its program. Settle did not respond to a phone call or an email asking whether those plans have changed.

In previous interviews, Kent Carper, president of the Kanawha County Commission, has said Health Right offers enough syringe exchange services for the county. When presented with multiple studies indicating that Kanawha would benefit from easier access to needle exchanges, he has questioned the researchers’ intentions and credibility. A spokesperson for the county said Carper and Ben Salango, a fellow commissioner, were both unavailable to comment for this story.

In a phone call, Lance Wheeler, the third commissioner, did not indicate whether he would support mobile syringe service programs in the county. He said he relies on administrators at Health Right and the Kanawha-Charleston Health Department to tell him and other local elected officials what the needs are to address the opioid epidemic.

Without any other authorized programs, no one else can legally offer that service. As a consequence, government decisions that helped diseases spread in eastern Kanawha County also hinder health professionals from using one of the most effective tools to mitigate it.

“Right now there is not sufficient capacity for the need in Kanawha,” Pollini said. “Or almost anywhere, really. But particularly in Kanawha.”

What a syringe exchange could do for Kanawha County

In Smithers, a town of just over 700 people on the border between Kanawha and Fayette counties, a mobile syringe service program shows the impact that one could have in eastern Kanawha County.

The county border runs through the town, and there’s little visible difference between the two sides. But, unlike Kanawha County, Fayette County Commissioners have authorized its health department to run a mobile needle exchange unit in the area. So, twice a month, Fayette County Health Department peer recovery specialist Paula McCutcheon travels to the Fayette side of Smithers and sets up a needle exchange for a few hours.

Her primary goal with the unit is to make testing and comprehensive harm reduction services as accessible as possible to any West Virginian who needs it.

“They can’t come to us, so we’re going to come to them,” McCutcheon said. “Our goal is to keep them alive and safe and meet them where they’re at.”

The Fayette Health Department program can only show up at specific times and places approved by the state. But to Brooke Parker, a clinical social worker with CAMC, McCutcheon is using the mobile exchange to create the type of trust the hospital’s HIV care program yearns to build with residents in eastern Kanawha County.

“She’s really out there in the community, and she knows exactly what needs to be done,” Parker said.

It’s the type of effort Pollini believes is crucial for the Upper Kanawha Valley, regardless of which side of the Fayette-Kanawha border someone happens to live in.

“That kind of service can be much more effective than just going in and doing testing,” she said. “Because you’re building those relationships.”

Lack of mobile clean needle exchange hampers HIV mitigation in eastern Kanawha County appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.