THORNTON – Month-old kittens scamper around, tumbling into one another on the grass. A black-and-white border collie, Maggie, nestles against the side of a farmhouse and nurses a puppy. Beef cattle graze on the hillside behind the house, which has been vacant since last summer—when, without warning, the water well went dry.

At the time, Jim and Melissa Nestor were raising three boys on their farm in a lush green valley three miles south of Thornton, a town along U.S. Highway 50 with a church, a towing service, a post office and no stoplight.

When the Nestors disconnected the well’s pump to see if that was the problem, they heard a loud sound: “Woooshhhh,” Melissa Nestor recalled, blowing air out of puckered lips.

“It was like, whoa,’’ Nestor said. “Gas was coming up out of the well. It’s a wonder we didn’t have a major catastrophe right there, like an explosion caused by a spark from a power tool.” 

From a coal mine about 350 feet below, methane had forced its way up through bedrock fissures and into the shaft of the well. 

At that moment last August, the Nestors’ lives—which revolved around caring for their livestock and pets and supporting their three sons’ activities in baseball, wrestling, football and 4-H—were changed forever. 

Now the Nestors are living in temporary quarters a mile away while their future hangs in the balance, depending on the outcome of a lawsuit the couple has filed in Taylor County Circuit Court against Arch Resources of St. Louis, the nation’s second largest coal mine operator.

The Nestors’ case is one of at least eight still pending that contend that Arch’s Leer Mine in Taylor County has damaged homes and property as a result of mining practices that can cause land to sink, alter ground and surface waters and, in the Nestors’ case, release dangerous methane. 

The lawsuits argue, among other allegations, that Arch’s mining activities violated state law that directs mining companies to “protect off-site areas from damage,” “eliminate fire hazards” and “minimize the disturbance of the prevailing hydrologic balance at the mine site and in associated off-site areas,” both during and after mining operations.

Those lawsuits follow more than two dozen others filed in Taylor County in recent years in which legal settlements were reached, according to Hunter Mullens, the attorney in Philippi, West Virginia, who is handling all of the cases for plaintiffs suing Arch. 

Mullens said he anticipated more lawsuits as mining continues to affect many of the several hundred people who live above the Leer Mine and as Arch expands operations in Leer South, a coal mine based in neighboring Barbour County that began operations in 2021.

For families that live on top of coal mines, the potential for methane, a colorless, odorless, flammable and explosive gas, to work its way to the surface is an ever-present fear. Known as an explosive threat to miners deep underground, methane vapors have also caused fires or blasts in or near homes when it has leaked to the surface.

Pleas last summer from the Nestors to the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement to hold Arch responsible were rebuffed. Both agencies said that testing on a single day last September inside their home detected no methane, and as a result, they declared that there was no “imminent” threat.

Methane is also a potent factor in climate change, around 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide at warming the planet over a 20-year period. 

While the U.S. coal mining industry has been on the decline for years as electric utilities embrace cheaper natural gas and cleaner energy sources, the type of coal mined by Arch at its Leer mines in West Virginia remains a prized commodity. It is of such a quality that it is used for making steel and is sold at a premium price. 

Economists see a continued market for this coal, called metallurgical or met coal, for decades to come—raising the possibility of ever greater methane emissions.

“One comes away with a clear sense that everything we know about how harmful our dependence on coal is, to our climate and our health, is made more so by this recognition that are also methane emissions associated with it,” said Rachel Cleetus, the policy director for the Union of Concerned Scientists’ climate and energy program. “At the same time, we are not holding accountable the companies that have caused this pollution.”

Arch declined to comment on the lawsuits and the methane emissions. But in its most recent annual report, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company touted its commitment to safety and local communities.

“We believe that our long-term success depends upon achieving excellence in mine safety and environmental stewardship; conducting business in a most ethical and transparent manner; investing in our people and the communities in which we operate; and demonstrating strong corporate governance,” Arch wrote.

The Nestors left their home after they were warned to get out by Jack Spadaro, a former top federal mine safety engineer who works as a consultant for coalfield residents, workers and their lawyers.

The water well sits nine feet from the back of their house. After the couple reported their experience, Arch installed a pipe in the well that extends 20 feet into the air in an attempt to help the methane escape at a level high enough off the ground that it would pose less of a threat. But the pipe, which continues to release methane, is too close for comfort for the Nestors, who worry about its proximity to their back porch and their kitchen and bedroom windows.

Contrasting Methane Readings

The state DEP inspected the site on Sept. 9, and its report mentioned methane concentrations as high as 89 percent in the vent. Testing on Aug. 19, 2022, inside the home by Moody and Associates, a Pennsylvania-based consulting firm hired by Arch attorneys, had also detected methane, but at far lower levels, 120 parts per million, or less than 1 percent, according to the consultants. That’s “well short of the 5,000 ppm concentration that would prompt an evacuation of the residence,” Moody concluded.

Citing that report, Arch’s attorneys stated in response to the Nestors’ lawsuit that while methane had been detected inside the house, the levels were not high enough to require any “immediate” action. “Defendants deny that their mining operations have damaged or contaminated [the Nestors’] property,” the company said.

Spadaro counters that Moody’s conclusion “is not an accurate statement.” In mines, he said, concentrations above 1 percent signal a potentially dangerous condition, and a level of 2 percent requires mines to be shut down until adequate ventilation can be restored. 

He cited a technical guide issued by the federal Department of the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation. It identifies methane levels in homes above mines that exceed 1 percent as a concentration that may “necessitate remedial actions due to potential accumulation of explosive levels of methane.”

For now, the Nestors are relying on advice from Spadaro, who has been investigating mine disasters for more than 50 years, and Mullens, whose small-town legal practice has embraced the goal of holding coal mining companies accountable for the full range of impacts to people who live above mines.

Melissa Nestor, who works as a school bus driver, said the family moved out because “I was scared to death for my kids, and for us.’’

“There’s methane coming in somewhere,” she said. “When can you sleep in a house not knowing when a bigger burst of methane is gonna come into that location? I just can’t sleep knowing that anytime it could bring up enough  to blow us up, or bring up enough to take the oxygen out of the air and we just never wake up.”

Memories of Past Methane Disasters

Spadaro says that the Nestors have reason to be concerned. “Some of the worst disasters that have killed hundreds of miners were explosions that were initiated by methane,” he said. 

The safety consultant was referring to the 2006 disaster at the Sago Mine, around 60 miles south of Thornton, in which 13 miners were trapped for nearly two days after an explosion and cave-in. Only one survived. “That was an example of a methane explosion in an abandoned part of a mine, where there was a methane cloud,” Spadaro said.

He also cited a 2017 federal court settlement between a West Virginia couple and Pinnacle Coal after an explosion in a house in Wyoming County that the plaintiffs attributed to methane from an underground mine. When an occupant started up a washing machine, “methane gas exploded, causing “serious damages to the interior and exterior of the home,” according to court records.

At its Leer mines, Arch uses a controversial mechanized technique, longwall mining, designed to maximize the amount of coal it can extract. Rather than harvest “rooms” of coal, leaving “pillars” of coal behind as support, longwall mining involves using a large bladed machine to shear off a slice of coal as wide as 1,200 to 1,500 feet that extends up to a mile in length, allowing the rock ceiling or “overburden” to collapse behind it.

Spadaro said that methane can coalesce in those mined areas of collapsed rock and waste rock and move unpredictably until it finds a way to escape, a situation that he suspects occurred in the Leer mine. That would put the Nestor family in a precarious position, he said.

“If you had a house and you had children in it, and you were nine feet from a pipe that was venting methane at what could be explosive levels, I don’t think anybody would want to live near that,” Spadaro said.

Mullens, the attorney for the Nestors, said  the case comes down to a question of risk and responsibility. “Does the coal company take the risk, as they’re making money off mining this coal?” he asked. “Or do people like the Nestors, who have three children and are trying to raise a family, take the risk? Well, right now, they’re taking the risk.” 

And Arch, he maintains, bears the responsibility.

‘Met Coal,’ a Bright Spot for a Fading Industry

As coal production in the United States dropped by almost 50 percent over the last decade, with utilities switching to natural gas and to renewable energy alternatives like wind and solar energy, met coal has been a bright spot for mining. With its value to the global steel industry, it can sell for double or triple the price of the coal used by power plants.

At many steel mills, especially those overseas, met coal is converted into coke, a high-carbon ingredient, in a 1,000-degree-plus manufacturing process. The coke is mixed with iron ore and limestone to make molten iron, which is then further treated to make steel. 

West Virginia is among the major producers of met coal in the United States, supplying 63 percent of what is distributed to the nation’s coke plants, according to a recent report from West Virginia University’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research. 

Met coal mining generated $4.2 billion in revenue for mining companies operating in West Virginia and nearly $10 billion in total economic activity in the United States in 2019, the most recent year for which numbers are available. Such operations employed around 6,900 West Virginia miners.

Most of the coal gets exported to major steelmaking countries like China, India or Brazil.

Together, the Leer Mine and the Leer South Mine “anchor” Arch’s metallurgical business, according to the company’s annual report, and produced about 6 million tons of coal last year. That amounted to around 78 percent of the company’s met coal output and 8 percent of its total coal production in 2022.

Together, the two mines have 109 million tons of reserves in a coal seam that underlies at least 143 square miles of northern West Virginia.

While a boon to the state’s economy, longwall mining for met coal wreaks dramatic changes on the surface. The ground sinks. Local hydrology can forever change, altering the flow and availability of groundwater or surface waters. Methane can accumulate.

“When they mine the coal, the land drops three to four feet,” said Dennis Fisher, an engineer with experience in oil, gas and coal-mine permitting who is helping Mullens with the Nestors’ and other lawsuits. “It’s hard to believe, but that’s what happens. Houses, trees, roads, ponds: Everything subsides from where it was before.’’

Fisher has been investigating reports of methane emissions from coal mines in the region and has found the impacts and the resulting concerns to be clustered in certain areas. In Taylor County, “three or four years ago, people started having a lot of issues with subsidence damage to their homes,” he said. “And then after that, there has been a methane issue, where methane has been venting from these old water wells.”

‘Dodged a Lot of Scrutiny’

Methane builds up in coal seams as organic matter turns into coal, a process that can take millions of years. While it became a threat to the Nestors, it is also part of a global climate crisis. 

Globally, coal mining emits 52.3 million metric tons of methane per year, exceeding emissions from the oil (39 million metric tons) and gas (45 million metric tons) sectors, according to a 2022 report by Global Energy Monitor, a California-based nonprofit that tracks the energy industry. 

The estimated global emissions of methane from coal is roughly equivalent to the climate impact of the carbon dioxide emissions of all coal plants in China, the group said. Yet methane emissions from coal mines have “dodged a lot of scrutiny,” said the report’s author, Ryan Driskell Tate. 

Cleetus, the climate and energy specialist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, maintains that methane emissions from all sources are generally underreported, including those from coal mines. 

Federal and state rules limit methane concentrations inside mines to protect miners, but there are no government regulations limiting the amount of methane that gets blown out of coal mines into the atmosphere to protect miners, or what leaks into the air on its own. 

A spokeswoman for the federal EPA said she was unaware of any effort by the agency to move toward adopting limits on methane emissions from coal mines.

Cleetus said the federal government has instead focused on reducing the methane coming from abandoned coal mines. President Joe Biden’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 provides around $11 billion 

In spending over 15 years to address a range of problems caused by abandoned coal mines, including leaking methane.

But that won’t be nearly enough, said Cleetus, who argues that the federal government needs to do more. “This is an important moment for the EPA to think how to track methane and hold these companies responsible,” she said. “The climate is suffering, as are local communities.”

State Regulators Dispute Damage Claims

The problems in Taylor County can be traced back decades, to when coal companies bought mineral rights from under landowners, often for not much money. Generations later, today’s landowners are stuck with the consequences. 

Conflicts between mining companies and landowners were more intense before Congress amended the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act in 1992 to offer some protections, such as requiring coal companies to repair damage to homes or certain other structures or to compensate the homeowners, said Joe Pizarchik, a Pennsylvania attorney who ran OSMRE, the federal Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation, from 2009 through 2017, during the Obama administration. Yet the battles persist.

If a property owner’s water supply has been affected, the law requires coal companies to provide a replacement source. Companies are also supposed to let owners know they are going to mine underneath their property and conduct pre- and post-mining surveys to document any damage.

The Nestors’ lawsuit and others say that Arch has not lived up to the requirements of the law. Some homeowners claim, for example, that the company failed to conduct the surveys for subsidence damage.

Officials at OSMRE, which also oversees impacts from surface or strip mining, declined to answer questions about how it regulates the impact of underground mining on anyone who lives above it, including the West Virginia litigants, referring questions to the state DEP. A spokesman for the DEP said he would not comment because of the litigation, even though the state is not a defendant in the eight active lawsuits filed by Mullens.

Public records show that the DEP took no enforcement action against Arch after its inspections of the Nestors’ property last year. State officials stated that no longwall mining had taken place directly under the home. 

After its Sept. 14 test on the family’s home found no methane, OSMRE ruled out a problem, writing that “no imminent harm conditions exist for methane at this time,” according to an Oct. 12 letter from the federal agency to Jim Nestor.

But Spadaro said that methane testing on a single day is meaningless and that Arch’s mining activity was close enough to presume that it caused the damage, with the home situated within 30 degrees of the edge of the mined area underground.

“They have willfully failed to protect the public,” he said.

The Local Lawyer, a Gulf War Veteran

The law office that Mullens shares with his wife, Kate Mullens, in Philippi occupies a former appliance store on Main Street, in a downtown where history stands out. A distinctive covered bridge spans the Tygart Valley River, a successor to the one built there in 1852. Every year, the city holds a re-enactment of the first Civil War land battle in West Virginia, won by Union troops.

A map of U.S. railroads in the Civil War era stands in a large frame on the floor in the law office’s lobby, and a photograph of Abraham Lincoln hangs in the conference room.

Mullens served in U.S. Army combat operations during the Persian Gulf War, which drove Iraqi forces from Kuwait in 1990 and 1991.

He is not the typical lawyer to take on the coal industry in a part of a coal state where the industry sees its future. Coal mining runs in his family; his father, Paul Mullens, worked as a dozer operator and later as a superintendent of a surface mine. And Hunter Mullens is president of the business-friendly Barbour County Chamber of Commerce.

Still, some of the pain he has experienced in his lifetime might be attributed to the coal industry. He said his father died at 55 of complications from lung and breathing issues, with coal dust and black lung disease suspected as a factor.

Arch has accepted its obligations to Taylor County landowners in the past and needs to do so again, Mullens said. In February, the company posted a record net income of $1.3 billion for 2022.

“We are not opposed to coal mining, but the people should be treated fairly,” Mullens said. “And they should be safe.”

‘We Thought Someone Shot the Window’

For visitors rumbling along the back roads of Taylor County, the telltale signs of subsidence and leaky methane are newly constructed homes with white methane vent pipes in the front, side or back yards. Mullens points to road cracks and slumps in the pavement resulting from mining operations that were later repaired.

In one lawsuit, his clients Tim and Vanessa Carr are pressing Arch to pay for damages to their two-story farmhouse, which was built by Tim’s great-grandfather in the early 1900s. They moved out after plaster fell from the ceiling of their daughter’s bedroom three years ago, frightening her. The home’s foundation and walls also cracked, the couple stated in their lawsuit.

“We woke up one morning and we heard a pop, and we thought somebody shot the window,” Tim Carr said in an interview. “The window exploded. Later in the day, another window exploded.”

Tammy and Chuck Foley, also clients of Mullens, raise cattle on a hillside farm that has been in Tammy’s family for decades. They contend that coal mining underneath their property cracked buildings, dried up springs and water wells and released methane gas.

At least for now, Arch is paying for public water to keep the livestock alive. But Chuck Foley, a former Barbour County administrator, is uncertain how long that arrangement will last and is looking for a settlement that accounts for damage to his house and several other buildings on the property.

The Foleys say that one of the first clues that they had a problem was when water shot 10 feet out of a well near one of three homes on their property. The coal company installed a methane vent.

Tammy Foley’s parents were living in that house at the time, and she recalls her mother telling her what it was like for them when the house was “creaking, and cracking and heaving” in 2020, just before she died.

“They were both 70 or 80 years old, sitting there with this house fallen down,” she said. “Then her doors wouldn’t open to the basement, and we noticed the front steps were all cockeyed.”

Her father is now living in a nursing home. Chuck Foley said it saddened him to recall what his wife’s parents had to confront “right at the end of life.’’

“We just want to get it settled and move on with our lives,” he said of the the lawsuit against Arch.

In court papers, Arch has denied liability for the damages the Carrs and Foleys described.

Selling Off Cattle to Make Ends Meet

Jim Nestor has lived on his farm since 1991. It covers about 67 acres that he inherited from his previous wife, who died of cancer in 2005.

After moving out last summer, Jim and Melissa Nestor found a temporary place to live that was 21 miles away. For months, they made the 42-mile round trip twice a day to feed their animals, a costly and time-consuming trek along winding country roads.

Now renting a house about a mile away, they have found that the extra expenses continue to mount even if they are closer to their animals. They’ve had to sell a quarter of their herd, which formerly numbered around 40 cattle, to make ends meet. 

Even though they currently have access to public water, that’s an unaffordable long-term solution for animals that each drink 30 gallons per day, the Nestors said.

“I don’t want to be rich or anything,” Jim Nestor said. “I just want my house and my farm. I don’t think that’s too much.”

Inside Climate News is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet that covers climate, energy and the environment. Click here for the Inside Climate News newsletter.

Little publicized but treacherous, methane from coal mines upends the lives of West Virginia families appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

For months, West Virginia officials have been touting record-low unemployment numbers. That continued in June, as officials announced that only 3.3% of West Virginians were unemployed and actively looking for work. 

But there’s less to cheer about when it comes to the state’s fairly stagnant labor force participation rate. That figure, which essentially measures the percentage of working-age adults who are either employed or actively looking for work, isn’t the most well-known economic indicator. But it’s one that economists say matters just as much, if not more, than unemployment numbers.  

“Unemployment is not the problem,” said John Deskins, the director of West Virginia University’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research. “Our problem is we have a relatively small percentage of the adult population that is engaged in the labor force in the first place.” 

The labor force participation rate tracks the percentage of working age people who are either actively working or seeking employment. It’s currently 54.6%, the lowest in the nation and well below the national participation rate of 62.6%. And it has been in that last place position or extremely close to it for about five decades.  

To come closer to the national rate, the state would need to increase its workforce by roughly 100,000 people. 

But understanding the why behind the low rate is more difficult. In several interviews, economists told Mountain State Spotlight that a number of factors could contribute to West Virginia’s persistent labor force problem, including population decline and limited opportunities for economic mobility. There are also lower numbers of college graduates and the continued decline of once-prominent state industries to consider. 

It all combines to create a situation where the state struggles on two different sides: on one end there is an issue with retaining the current and future workers already living here. And on the other end, there is an issue with attracting out-of-state workers and their families who might move into the state if its workforce was doing better. As issues mount, a growing group of nonprofits, academics, and local governments see addressing the former as the most immediate concern.

How nonprofits are bringing new energy to addressing West Virginia’s workforce woes

After wrapping up a stint in the Army and returning to his hometown, Huntington native Trey Chambers was working in a restaurant and considering going back to school. But he was in his mid-twenties and wasn’t sure college was the best option, particularly once the pandemic hit.

That’s when a boss told him about NewForce, a technical skills program that provides a free six-month training in software development. Chambers was accepted last year, and after a busy few months juggling his restaurant job with front and back-end development training, he finished the program in January. 

Since then, he’s put his skills to use as a new web developer for Bulldog Creative, a Huntington advertising agency. In his current role he primarily helps create websites, using skills that he had struggled to build on his own before entering NewForce. 

“The only thing I had to risk was my time, and without this [opportunity] I would still be in the restaurant industry,” he said. 

In some ways, the start of Chambers’ story is common among young people in West Virginia, many of whom face difficulty finding meaningful employment and gaining the skills vital to land better paying jobs. And to help address the problem nonprofits like Generation West Virginia, which runs NewForce, have stepped in to help with job training as a way to slow the brain drain. 

“I think that in West Virginia we have grown up with the understanding that to be successful you have to leave,” said Alex Weld, the executive director of Generation West Virginia. “We’ve got to be better about celebrating the opportunities here and making those opportunities clear for West Virginians.” 

Besides NewForce, Generation West Virginia is also trying to keep more young people in West Virginia through a nine-month fellowship program and its Career Connector, which connects job seekers and employers.

The resource was useful for Jessica Stidham, who moved to West Virginia with her husband in 2015. The Career Connector helped her land a new job as an assistant director of First Ascent, a new program aimed at developing and retaining other young workers in the state. 

For her, addressing the state’s workforce crisis is crucial, not only to improve economic conditions, but also to give workers something that she has found for herself here: a sense of fulfillment. 

“It is one thing to have a job with a steady income, that’s definitely important,” she said. “But being able to work and travel and have a good quality of life and ability to enjoy natural resources has [also] been a big draw.” 

But job training and networks are only part of the solution. 

“A lot of the barriers to the workforce are human,” said Coalfield Development founder Brandon Dennison. The organization aims to reimagine Southern West Virginia’s economy, taking an area once dominated by coal and transforming it to handle new industries.

Part of doing that, Dennison says, means working with people who face bigger challenges than skill gaps: people in recovery, people who have struggled to gain employment, and others who have faced significant barriers in a job search. 

“We see ourselves modeling a different and better way to do workforce development,” he said. “We know we can’t re-employ everyone that needs to be re-employed but we do create paid jobs for people who face severe barriers to employment.” 

Coalfield Development also plays a leading role in the Appalachian Climate Technology, or ACT Now Coalition. The group includes several nonprofits, state universities, municipalities and local governments, unions, and other groups, all focused on improving both economic and environmental conditions in the state. Last fall, the coalition was awarded a Build Back Better grant from the federal government, receiving $62.8 million and another $30 million in philanthropic funds to support its efforts.

Even so, nonprofit leaders like Dennison and Weld do face difficulties, especially with scale. Efforts to expand the workforce require a lot of money, and nonprofits aren’t guaranteed to reach every person in need of help. This means that even with the progress independent groups have accomplished, deeper solutions, statewide solutions, remain necessary. 

Increasing West Virginia’s workforce requires a wide-ranging list of solutions — many of them people-oriented

While the sorts of jobs and skills training offered by these nonprofit organizations, government offices like Workforce WV, and local community and technical colleges are in demand, closing a skills gap is only one aspect of what needs to be done to help West Virginia’s workforce.

There also needs to be a focus on what Deskins referred to as “human capital”: improving the conditions that affect a person’s interest in and ability to work. That can include issues with transportation access, health, substance abuse, discrimination, and previous interactions with the justice system. 

Another factor that economists identified as a particularly pressing — and potentially more easily solvable — issue is increasing access to child care. The latter is an especially significant factor for women, who have entered the workforce in significant numbers in recent decades, but who are often the first to leave due to child care reasons. West Virginia currently has the lowest female workforce participation rate in the country. 

“I think child care access is sort of an understudied thing in West Virginia, in terms of its contribution to labor force participation,” said Heather Stephens, the director of WVU’s Regional Research Institute. “We don’t have good child care access and that makes it very difficult for parents of young children.” 

The endgame goal then, is for a number of changes to happen that all contribute to better situations for workers. 

“I wish the problem was tax policy, because that is a problem that we could fix easily,” Deskins said. “But if you have a bad drug abuse problem, a bad health problem, it takes a long time, years, to fix those.”

Here’s why West Virginia has struggled to increase labor force participation for decades appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

For the past 20 years, Ryneal Medical Transport served West Virginians in the Eastern Panhandle when they were at their most vulnerable. 

If a Jefferson County resident was bed-ridden with end-stage liver disease, Ryneal could drive them to and from the hospital. If a Berkeley County senior citizen needed their oxygen tank managed on the way to a dialysis appointment, Ryneal could help.

“The first 15 years was great,” said Mary Helmick, Ryneal’s president and co-owner. “Actually, it was great up until COVID hit.”

That’s when staffing issues, paired with ride reimbursements that left little-to-no room for profits, began to cripple the organization, according to Helmick. She and her husband kept Ryneal alive for a while longer. But last January, they decided it was time to close, ending a service that in Helmick’s estimation would respond to 8,000 to 10,000 medical calls a year with their fleet of 24 specialized vehicles.

While there are a few other Eastern Panhandle organizations that provide the same types of services Ryneal did, none of them have the capacity to fully make up for the company’s absence. Many local health care workers understand why the organization shut its doors, but transporters and doctors alike say the change has made it even more difficult for some residents with life-threatening conditions to get to and from the hospital. 

“If there’s no Ryneal, they can’t safely leave the hospital because [staff] have no way to get them the continued care they need,” said Dr. Michael Londner, an emergency medicine physician and vice president of medical affairs at WVU Medicine Berkeley Medical Center. “They literally now are living in the hospital until we can sort out a solution.”

Problems related to health care transportation aren’t unique to the Eastern Panhandle; patients and providers have experienced problems accessing health care in other parts of West Virginia. 

But Ryneal’s closure highlights how West Virginians in the area rely on the medical transport system to get quick and effective health treatment — and how care suffers for all when one of those interdependent pieces goes away. 

“It’s its own ecosystem,” said Chad Winebrenner, the chief of operations for Berkeley County Emergency Ambulance Authority. “Even though we’re not directly tied in, that domino effect, it still gets to you.”

Needs unmet without Ryneal

There are many ways transportation issues can prevent patients from addressing their health needs. But in the Eastern Panhandle, Londner says the problem most exacerbated by Ryneal’s closure has been for patients who require special accommodations while in transit.

People who need this kind of trip range from those on dialysis who need stretchers to be transported to someone who needs oxygen administered on their way back from a chemotherapy session. It’s a population that requires either an ambulance or similarly-equipped vehicles to get from place to place.

Helmick remembers one of Ryneal’s last long trips, transporting a patient dying of cancer from Martinsburg to Emerald Isle, North Carolina, as one of these types of journeys. She said one of the woman’s dying wishes was to be at her home when she passed away. 

“We got her home at seven o’clock that night,” Helmick said. “She passed away at seven o’clock the next morning. We were very fortunate to get her home.”

In a post-Ryneal world, it’s becoming increasingly harder for Eastern Panhandle patients who need that kind of specialized medical transport to access it, even for trips that start and end within West Virginia’s borders. Londner said the region has struggled with these rides as long as he can remember, but the problem has expanded, first with an increased need from the COVID-19 pandemic and now with Ryneal’s closure.

There are other smaller companies in the area Ryneal served — primarily Berkeley, Jefferson and Morgan counties — that still offer specialized medical transportation services. The area’s two major hospital systems, Valley Health and WVU Medicine, each have a fleet of vehicles, as does a local private company called Patient Care Transport. 

But the region has seen large population growth over the past decade; it’s now home to over 200,000 people and has a higher-than-average disability prevalence. Even with the other service options, there is still a large unmet demand, according to Londner and Ali Hadavand, Patient Care Transport’s Chief Operating Officer. Hadavand said his company, plagued by the same staffing shortages felt by health care organizations across the country, is down to only three emergency medical technicians.

He thinks Patient Care could be shouldering more of the need left behind by Ryneal’s closure if it had more qualified employees.

“We’re doing our best,” Hadavand said. “I could definitely run two more trips a day at least.”

Now, the problem has become so severe that Berkeley Medical Center has held off from discharging some patients at all. Londner said that as of mid-June, one bed-bound patient who needs frequent dialysis treatments has been in the hospital for 158 days.

“He would need an ambulance three days a week to get him there,” Londner said. “And we don’t have any way to do that for him…We can’t safely discharge him knowing that he will not be able to receive care.”

The effects of this transportation gap are far-reaching. Emergency room wait times have risen for all patients, partly because hospitals can’t discharge people who are ready to either leave or be transferred but don’t have appropriate rides available, according to Winebrenner of the Berkeley County Emergency Ambulance Authority.

“It just becomes a pretty big backup when that chain gets broken,” he said. 

Mitigation possible with the right policies

Some of the factors that led to Ryneal’s closure, like health care workforce shortages, are problems that communities across the country struggle to address adequately. But others are issues that local policymakers could take steps to mitigate. 

In Ryneal’s January letter announcing its closure, Helmick and her husband cited low insurance reimbursement rates for rides as a major reason. While inflation raised the operational prices of goods like gas in recent years, the amount insurance providers like West Virginia’s Medicaid and Public Employee Insurance Agency paid Ryneal and other medical transport companies for their work didn’t keep pace. 

“This year it was going to hit harder,” she said.

While Ryneal may no longer exist, Londner thinks the only way future private companies can operate and succeed in the area is for insurance groups to raise their medical transportation reimbursement rates. It’s something he believes to be crucial for West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle and, as it pertains to PEIA and Medicaid, something in West Virginia lawmakers’ power to address. 

“You need the reimbursement to be higher so that people can afford to make a living being a transport company,” he said.

It’s also not just private transportation. Despite some legislative action during the 2023 session, local emergency medical service agencies are also struggling with funding and retaining staff members. Some West Virginians have said making sure state lawmakers support these programs financially is crucial to creating robust local medical transportation systems.

To address staffing issues, Hadavand of Patient Care believes it’s important for local policy makers to think about ways to get kids interested in becoming paramedics and EMTs. Some parts of the country have EMS programs that engage kids in middle and high school, offering early exposure to the professions.

While programs like that may not completely reverse health care workforce shortages, Hadavand sees sparking a medical transportation interest in young people as important for his industry.

“I’m not sure how to do it,” he said. “But I think that would help, having more kids wanting to go down this path.”  

‘Domino effect’: Eastern Panhandle residents struggle to get vital health care after closure of a medical transport company appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

MONTGOMERY, West Virginia – When West Virginia University took the local campus out of Montgomery five years ago, it took more from the rural town than just a college.

Suddenly, 1,500 students were gone. More than 100 staff and faculty moved out. The bar and the car dealership closed. The grocery store, too. And it was only going to get worse, locals knew.

“I see the future of Montgomery going way downhill. Being a ghost town,” Chad Vickers, the former manager of Not Frank’s Pizza, told a Charleston news station at the time. “There’s going to be hundreds of people out of jobs, myself included probably.” He was right. The pizza place used to sit near the campus, and now it’s gone.

All this time later, West Virginia’s decision to move WVU Tech is important not just for what it took away but also for the distrust it fueled with its departure. The residents of Montgomery feel abandoned by the state’s powerful flagship university, which also has become the state’s largest healthcare provider and employer.

The move threatened the town’s livelihood, the city’s mayor, Greg Ingram, says, and reinforced the feeling that rural places like Montgomery were constantly being stripped of their resources — and their dignity. The small town has become even smaller, with just 1,280 residents recorded in the most-recent census.  When it left, the university even carted off the city’s beloved World War II cannon, a gift from the nearby city of Charleston that had served as a local landmark for decades.

“In West Virginia, we’re robbing from the poor towns and putting wealth into richer towns,” the mayor says. 

A growing rift

Higher education is facing increased skepticism across America. A majority of Americans, across every age group, are now more likely to disagree than agree that a four-year education is worth the cost, according to a Wall Street Journal-NORC poll released in April.

The financial fretting is fairly simple: Prospective students aren’t certain a degree will help their career, but they are fairly certain they will need to go into debt to get it. At the same time, criticism against higher education is increasingly exposing partisan and cultural divides: less the feeling that a four-year degree doesn’t have value, and more that the flagship university doesn’t value them. 

Those divides matter even more as American universities have expanded both their academic programs and ways they engage with the larger public, says John Aubrey Douglass, author of “The New Flagship University,” which details how universities have been “expanding their reach into most aspects of modern life.” 

The positive is that universities can use their talent and research to support local and regional communities, Douglass says. However, poor communication from academics can make faculty seem out of touch or overtly political if they aren’t careful. 

“Greater public engagement can also mean greater political entanglement and sometimes expectations from, for example, local governments or businesses, that are difficult to meet,” Douglass says. “There is a need for a more sophisticated approach to university communications and engagement with communities.” 

The growing rift is especially felt in rural areas like Montgomery. Many of them rely on local colleges and flagship universities to provide essential services, from firefighting to healthcare, yet are skeptical higher ed leaders have their best interests at heart.

Their frustration is as tangible as the debris of the demolished buildings that now fill Ingram’s daily commute to city hall — as pressing as the rain thumping against his windshield, as his wipers swipe through a past that used to include a thriving downtown.

“This is a Chinese restaurant,” Ingram says, pointing out the window, “but they’re ready to fold too.” 

He passes a newer-looking brick building: The Upper Kanawha Valley Economic Development Corporation, which used to lease its basement out to the university for storage space.

“They just went belly up,” Ingram says.

Just as it does nationwide, education serves as a dividing line between Morgantown, where 56 percent of adults have a bachelor’s degree, and Montgomery, which is mostly in Fayette County, where just 16 percent have a bachelor’s degree.

In moving WVU Tech an hour away to the bigger city of Beckley, university officials cited low enrollment numbers that had dropped to under 1,500 students, roughly half its peak. They hoped that the new location would attract more students from neighboring states and throughout southwest West Virginia. 

By fall 2022, enrollment had gone up to 1,872 students. That’s still short of the university’s goals. The number needs to be closer to 2,000 to achieve a healthier level, says WVU Tech president Ramon Stuart, who started in January.

For residents here in Montgomery, the decision felt personal. It was the culmination of decades of decline, with populations and voting power steadily falling across this rural stretch of West Virginia.

“There was a chance that this whole area could have been saved,” Montgomery’s fire chief, Benny Filiaggi, says. “We’re trying to create some growth, to live the American dream, but now if you come to this area, you don’t have a place to send your kids to school.”

The year after the university left, the county closed the town’s high school, too, so now many Montgomery kids take a 50-mile round-trip bus ride every day, up narrow hairpin roads to the more populous and prosperous towns up the valley.

“WVU swings a big political club in West Virginia. They get whatever they want,” says Ingram, the mayor. “The administration, it’s cold. That’s a land grant institution. They should not be destroying communities. But they did.”

Making the university essential

For decades, flagship universities in many states have offered courses at satellite campuses and operated extension offices that help serve the agricultural, health, and youth development needs of rural communities. 

That’s also true in West Virginia, which has two satellite campuses and an extension office in all of the state’s 55 counties. The flagship’s president, Gordon Gee, has made it a point to visit each of those counties at least every other summer. This summer, he plans to get to all of them yet again. 

Gee says his goal is to make the university essential to West Virginians: in their health, their education, and their economic well-being. In the last decade, he has spearheaded acquisitions that grew the university from three hospitals to 20, now employing more than 20,000 people through its affiliated nonprofit WVU Health System. 

“There’s probably no institution that has more of an impact on its state than West Virginia University has on West Virginia,” Gee says. 

However, what some flagship universities call outreach has sometimes felt like over-reach to the people they’re trying to engage. 

It’s a tension felt across the country. In North Carolina, rural residents have said the university system sometimes feels more focused on offering prescriptions than hearing their needs. The attitude is “I’m from Raleigh, and I’m here to help you,” says Misti Silver, a program chair at Mayland Community College in the town of Spruce Pine.

In Wyoming, the dean of the University of Wyoming’s college of education sees how a “tyranny of distance” fosters distrust, with some rural communities located eight hours from the flagship. 

To bridge the divide, Scott Thomas has adopted a new model for rural personalization while crafting an asynchronous, mostly online program to start addressing some of the state’s overall teacher retention challenges. 

Through that process, the university realized rural educators were less interested in hot-button issues and more curious about how to really create more student-centered environments at their schools.

“We don’t say ‘This is your curriculum.’ We say, “What do you need in your place?” Thomas says. “It’s bringing the University of Wyoming to Wyoming. And that’s different from, ‘Hi, we’re here from the university, and we’re here to help.’”

In West Virginia, Gee — who’s led five universities, including three flagships — is well aware of the growing criticism. He has been criticized for a top-down approach that some have compared to running his universities like corporations. “We can fit the people who can make decisions about the future of West Virginia in a telephone booth,” he often tells reporters, saying that key decisions can be made over late-night texts among him and a few others. 

“Every once in a while you’ll hear someone say something, or they’ll say the university is too big or too powerful,” Gee says. “But that’s a better statement than saying the university is irrelevant.” 

He remains bullish on the decision to move his campus out of Montgomery, despite the continued enrollment challenges.

“We needed to be on the front doorsteps of the southern parts of the state, the coal fields, bringing the engineering school to that part of the state,” Gee says.

To help Montgomery, Gee says the university has offered up its experts to help develop new opportunities — in particular, the West Virginia law clinic helped Montgomery get home rule status and solve some zoning challenges.

“In this instance,” he added, “I can honestly say that everyone has won.”

Even the people of Montgomery? 

“You know, I don’t write Montgomery off,” Gee says. “I think those who continue to complain about the move are writing themselves off, and they shouldn’t.”

Trying to rebuild

In Montgomery, the mayor is still struggling to rebuild. Not just his town’s economy but also its community. “The only thing you gather for is church. You don’t go to a ball game. The college had a theater: people in the community were actors.” 

As he drives through the streets, Ingram passes the empty stands at the college’s football field and the old WVU Tech gym and its Olympic size pool, which the city would love to buy, but could never afford to keep up.

The city has already had to raise taxes for the first time in 60 years to make ends meet without the faculty, students, and businesses that used to be its lifeblood.

“When the university left,” Ingram says, “they just left their carcasses here on the community.” 

Binders fill the mayor’s office, the result of four economic revitalization studies conducted by the city and its partners over the last few years. Their conclusions are all the same: Move to a tourism-based economy. Take advantage of natural resources. No matter that locals refuse to swim in the river, which is so polluted that some vendors have started selling T-shirts of the three-headed fish rumored to swim in its toxic waters.

Ingram, a former diesel mechanic, made a career of fixing things. Since the university left, he’s had a hard time finding a way. 

Still, there was one thing he could make right: After more than a year of negotiations, he finally got the city’s treasured cannon back. And he’s using it to underscore just how bitter the divide has become between his town and the flagship.

“Right now, it’s aimed at Morgantown,” he says. “Gordon Gee’s office.”

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This story was co-published by USA Today.

As the sun beamed down on an unseasonably warm April day, a small group of nurses and community volunteers waited under a white tent on the West Side of Charleston, ready to give COVID-19 tests to anyone who asked.

Women approached with small children in tow, stopping to say hi to the workers outside. As people walked up the street or drove through the adjacent parking lot, a few stopped to be tested.

Things weren’t as busy as they were at the peak of the pandemic, when lines for tests and vaccines in this neighborhood were much longer. But for the Rev. James Patterson, that’s a good sign. He’s now focused on harnessing the impact his group’s efforts have had in the community on a new project: converting a former Save-a-Lot grocery store into a health center to serve Charleston’s West Side.

The health center project marks a new phase in the work that Patterson’s group, the Partnership of African American Churches, has done to improve health access and outcomes on the West Side, home to one of the largest Black populations in West Virginia.

“Sometimes people in power say ‘you’re trying to create a segregated health care system,’” Patterson says of his work in the state. “I’m trying to desegregate the segregated one that already exists.”

The hope is that the health center will help reduce many of the disparities that the pandemic exposed by servicing communities on the West Side and Kanawha County more broadly. And in a best-case scenario, the Charleston center would just be the beginning — one in a series around the state in some of West Virginia’s most impoverished communities. The $13.5 million in funding needed to finish the Charleston site and help build the other centers, Patterson thought, could come from the more than $1.3 billion in federal money West Virginia was given under the American Rescue Plan Act.

But the pitch Patterson sent Gov. Jim Justice for the funds never received a response. Instead, he watched as lawmakers, at Justice’s request, passed HB 2883, legislation that allocated the majority of the state’s remaining $678 million in ARPA money to the West Virginia Economic Development Authority.

State political leaders argue that using the federal assistance to invest in general economic development will provide more financial opportunities for workers and will bring larger corporations and jobs to West Virginia. But for advocates and community organizations, the decision is frustrating, particularly as so many state efforts to help marginalized and distressed groups remain in dire need of money and could have benefited from the recent flood of federal cash. 

And with the pandemic laying many of West Virginia’s deepest disparities bare, further highlighting ways that race, income, education level, neighborhood and other factors all have impacts on people’s quality of life, advocates fear that the state has missed a once-in-a generation opportunity to help the communities who need aid the most.

An opportunity created by an unprecedented amount of federal relief

As Patterson walks inside the vacant grocery store, his plans become clear. 

He points to a corner, formerly a freezer section, explaining where the center’s primary care services would be set up and where a therapist would sit. A dentist would be stationed nearby. Another part of the center would house a small pharmacy, allowing the center to be a one-stop shop for the local community. 

Patterson’s proud of the progress that has been made. In 2022 the City of Charleston gave the Partnership of African American Churches $440,000 from local American Rescue Plan Act funding to buy the building. The organization is working with an architectural firm to create plans for the redesign, and hopes to keep many of the workers who have helped during the pandemic on as staff. 

“This is going to happen,” Patterson said, smiling as he stood in the shadowed building, surrounded by old grocery signs, chairs, and clusters of donated supplies. “Or I am going to die trying.”

But he’s still short of the funds he needs to complete the Charleston site. A share of the ARPA money would have made things easier. Patterson notes that in a state where there’s rarely enough money on hand to do much of anything, the ARPA funds presented a tremendous opportunity. 

For the Rev. Matthew Watts, a senior pastor at the West Side’s Grace Bible Church, the money was the first real chance in decades for the state to provide targeted relief to poor communities. Like Patterson, Watts also submitted proposals for the state ARPA money to the Governor, calling for $300 million of the money to be distributed directly to counties and municipalities to help address poverty and other local needs. 

“The pandemic has magnified, exacerbated, and shed tremendous light on the challenges that marginalized communities face,” he said, adding that the ARPA money is intended to help address these issues. 

West Virginia received two separate pots of this federal money: the first gave roughly $678 million to local county and municipal governments. The second gave the state government $1.35 billion. 

The money is largely being overseen by the Treasury Department, which has given states until the end of 2024 to obligate the funds and until 2026 to actually spend them. In its guidance, the Treasury Department encouraged state and local governments to use the funds to support communities and businesses negatively affected by the pandemic, adding that a “strong, resilient, and equitable recovery” was a desired outcome. The agency also cautioned states against using the money for general economic development.

Initially, the state made a big deal about getting community feedback on how to spend the money and released a state recovery plan that aligned with the federal guidance, promising to consider “the promotion of equitable outcomes” in the process. 

“We’re being asked to promote inclusive economic development in regions of the state in the planning process, so that historically underrepresented communities are part of and are given a real voice in how these funds are used,” Justice’s deputy chief of staff Ann Urling told lawmakers at the time, adding that the state’s plan should reduce disparities and target those in the most need. 

In 2021, West Virginia’s Herbert Henderson Office of Minority Affairs announced that it would embark on a 16-month listening tour to each of the state’s 55 counties to collect feedback from residents on how they wanted the ARPA money spent. Getting this type of community feedback on the money was encouraged by the federal government, and the fact that the listening tour was specifically conducted by the Office of Minority Affairs suggested that the state was particularly interested in hearing from marginalized groups.

But the tour was never finished. 

In an email, HHOMA executive director Jill Upson said that the tour stopped in May 2022, after visiting 29 counties, well short of its goal. Upson noted that the tour could not continue because the agency lost its executive assistant that month, leaving her as the sole employee of the state office. 

By the beginning of this year, $678 million of the state government’s share remained. And at the request of Gov. Jim Justice, leaders in the House of Delegates introduced a bill to spend that money, with the largest chunk — $500 million — going to the state’s Economic Development Authority. Smaller additional appropriations were earmarked for water and sewer infrastructure and Marshall University.

The state says its plan for the money was informed by the public. Advocates say they were ignored. 

It is still unclear exactly how Justice’s office arrived at the updated plan for the remaining ARPA money; the Governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment, or to detailed questions about how it determined that economic development was the best way to spend so much of the remaining ARPA funds.

Upson says the bill accurately reflects the feedback she got during her office’s truncated tour of the state. 

“One of the primary purposes of the ARPA funding was to mitigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic through the promotion of economic development and other measures,” she said. “The unmet needs addressed in the bill were in alignment with community feedback.”

But for advocates like Watts, that explanation is both confusing and frustrating. 

Watts, who also serves as the chairman of the Charleston-based Tuesday Morning Group, says that community-based projects were an ideal use of the money. But even if lawmakers wanted to go a different route, he says that they could have considered funding the multiple pieces of minority and poverty-oriented legislation they’ve passed but never sufficiently funded. 

“What we did was a very well thought out framework,” Watts says of his ARPA proposal, “because there is already legislation codified in law, and state agencies that should be doing things. But they weren’t allocated money or there’s not enough money there.”

He keeps a list of those bills at the ready. There’s a 2004 measure that called for the state to invest in minority economic development and small businesses. A different law created a professional development school pilot program that addressed achievement gaps in counties with higher numbers of Black and low-income students. And he’s still hoping for the state to fully embrace a 2017 bill which created an antipoverty pilot program that wasn’t implemented in the way Black organizers hoped. 

But most of those ideas weren’t on the table when lawmakers hashed out the details of the ARPA spending during this year’s legislative session. When the ARPA bill was amended by the House Finance Committee, the changes were minimal: the money allocated to the Economic Development Authority was reduced to $482 million, and $5 million was also marked for the Department of Economic Development. The remaining money was divided among investments in water and sewer infrastructure, an improvement fund for abandoned buildings, and a $1 million allocation to Marshall University.   

Del. Larry Rowe, D-Kanawha, did propose amending the ARPA bill to reduce the amount of money going to the Economic Development Authority and incorporate the Tuesday Morning Group’s spending plan, arguing that communities needed to get money as well. But his proposal was rejected, with critics noting that the ARPA funds given directly to local governments could have been used for community needs. 

“I’m truly disappointed,” Rowe said of his failed effort. “This was really the opportunity, the only one I’ve seen in history here, to take money back home.” 

And Del. Todd Kirby, a freshman Republican from Raleigh County, proposed his own amendment to HB 2883, arguing that all of the money should be taken from the Economic Development Authority and given to the Department of Corrections, the Public Employees Insurance Agency, and local economic development authorities. 

“I felt like this was an easy one,” Kirby said. “Who wouldn’t want the ability to go back to their district and say ‘hey, we’re going to control how this money is spent and we’re going to focus on the needs of our individual communities and districts’.” 

But ultimately, lawmakers voted overwhelmingly to send most of the money to the Economic Development Authority.

“I think the direction that we’re looking to go with is to promote and build good jobs,” House Finance Committee vice-chair Del. John Hardy, R-Berkeley, said, adding that “the best social program is a good job and a steady paycheck.”

In an emailed statement, House of Delegates Speaker Roger Hanshaw defended the bill, explaining that for him, long-term investments in infrastructure and job creation were the ideal uses of the federal aid. 

“As the 134 individuals elected by the 1.8 million West Virginians to represent them, it is our job to implement what we think will best serve the long-term interests of the state,” he said. 

West Virginia’s leaders have long focused on economic development — with mixed results

West Virginia’s focus on spending millions on unspecific “economic development” isn’t new: rather, it tracks with how the state has long spent its money, and that trend continued during the pandemic as federal dollars rolled in. Since the first wave of federal money arrived under the CARES Act in 2020, Justice’s office has had oversight over much of the funding that flowed into the state. And some of his spending priorities, particularly his focus on using the money to address longer-term financial planning rather than more urgent needs, have been criticized.

These CARES Act spending decisions also frustrated lawmakers; they passed a bill in 2021 to force the Governor’s office to get legislative approval before appropriating large amounts of federal dollars.

But lawmakers have not been as critical of how ARPA funds, a far more flexible pot, have been used. When $315 million of the money was used to backfill agency coffers in 2022 after the Department of Economic Development spent the same amount to secure a deal with steel manufacturer Nucor for a project in Mason County, lawmakers helped approve the larger deal that brought the company to the state. And more recently, legislators have also supported other economic development projects arguing that they will be the best way to bring more jobs and money to West Virginia. 

History suggests that it isn’t all that clear that economic development deals pursued by the state consistently produce those results, and West Virginia has a long history of not fully seeing a return on investment in large corporations, or even worse, paying for industries that ultimately fail to show up. 

A missed ‘once-in-a-lifetime‘ opportunity

HB 2883 passed on the final day of the session, and was signed by Justice soon after. The Department of Economic Development and the Economic Development Authority did not respond to questions about how the agencies will spend the money they have been allocated.

But no matter how the money is spent, what is clear is that the money is now off of the table to directly help with projects in local communities. Patterson of the Partnership of African American Churches said that while the decisions made in the past few months are ultimately unsurprising, they are still frustrating. 

“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to spend a small amount of funding to make a huge improvement in the lives of populations that are in the worst amount of need,” he said.

However, there is some hope that the state can be encouraged to use the economic development funds in ways that could have a broader impact. One potential idea from Watts for example, is that the state use the funding given to the Economic Development Authority to support small businesses and allow local businesses and entrepreneurs to apply for funding. 

“In these distressed and marginalized communities, very few of them are going to get a Nucor plant or a battery plant,” he said. “But there could be a strategic plan for how to help small businesses so that they can create jobs.” 

But even if that happens, community leaders and advocates worry that the state has missed a chance to directly address the needs of marginalized and distressed communities in a way that it may never get again. The effects of that missed opportunity, they argue, will continue to be felt in the state for years. 

“They were playing with house money — this wasn’t the state’s money — it was money from the federal government,” Watts said. “It wasn’t a zero-sum game where we have to do this or this. They could have done some of both.” 

How West Virginia missed a ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ chance to help vulnerable communities appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

Stark disparities continue to exist in how Black students and low-income students are disciplined in West Virginia schools, according to data released Wednesday by the state Department of Education.

As Mountain State Spotlight reported last year, Black students in West Virginia have been suspended twice as often as their white peers for the last two decades. And a lackluster report was given to lawmakers last summer that showed disparities still exist but did not include a plan to address them.

But this week’s report came with a six-slide plan to start tackling the issue and a different tone from state education officials.

“This has got to be a complete overhaul,” said Board of Education President Paul Hardesty during the meeting. “We’ve got to do something different.”

State education officials said almost 178,000 instructional days were lost over the last school year due to school suspensions.

In that time period, Black students continued to be suspended twice as often as their white peers. Low-income students, foster care students, homeless students and students with disabilities were also suspended at disproportionately higher rates.

The data also showed students who were suspended performed worse in reading and math proficiency than students who were not. Last year, West Virginia schools had their lowest-ever performance on standardized reading and math tests.

“We have a problem of epic proportions,” Hardesty said. “It’s no wonder we’re in a position we are on proficiency.”

On Wednesday, state education officials presented the Board of Education with a plan to increase training, create a public dashboard with school discipline data and recommended the board revise its discipline policy.

They recommended ending zero tolerance policies, encouraging alternatives to classroom exclusion and revisiting discipline levels.

This could mean a departure from a 2019 change that made it easier for students to be suspended, allowing schools to punish students with out-of-school suspensions for minor offenses like cheating, “disruptive conduct,” “inappropriate language,” “inappropriate appearance” and “disrespectful behavior,” without being held accountable by the state system that grades a school’s performance.

Since then, the state Superintendent of Schools and the Board of Education President have both changed. Hardesty was appointed to the board in 2021 and named president last year. Superintendent David Roach was appointed in August of last year after several years at the head of the School Building Authority.

While the data released this week came with strong words from the state Board of Education and an outline for addressing the issue, it is far from the first time that the state has looked into this.

In 2013, researchers with the state Department of Education conducted the first statewide study of the impact of school discipline and found some of the same disparities shown in this week’s data.

Black students were being suspended more, students with disabilities were being suspended more, and students who were suspended were more likely to do poorly in school or drop out.

In 2020, state lawmakers required the department to collect and report data related to school suspensions. They also required officials to develop a plan to deal with issues raised in the data.

The first report was delivered to lawmakers last summer with data missing in one place and inaccurate data in another. And it did not include a plan to address the issue.

During this year’s legislative session, lawmakers passed a bill to give teachers in grades six through 12 the authority to remove a student from the classroom who is being disruptive.

Republican supporters of the bill said it would give teachers an extra tool to maintain a safe learning environment while Democrats said it would lead to more school suspension and exacerbate the issue.

New data shows racial, economic disparities persist in West Virginia school discipline practices appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

This article was produced with ProPublica as part of its Local Reporting Network initiative. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

For years, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice has been dogged by allegations that his family businesses haven’t paid their debts, including fines for environmental violations at their coal plants. One bank is even seeking to garnish his salary as governor to cover an unpaid personal guarantee of a business loan, court documents show.

But these disputes are likely to resurface in what will be one of the most hotly contested races for control of the U.S. Senate in 2024. Last week, Justice, who is immensely popular in the state, announced that he will challenge U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat who is often the swing vote on key legislation.

A review by ProPublica in 2020 found that, over three decades, Justice’s constellation of mining, farming and hospitality companies were involved in over 600 lawsuits in more than two dozen states. Many were filed by workers, vendors, business partners and government agencies, alleging they weren’t paid. Often, similar cases were filed in multiple jurisdictions, as lawyers for plaintiffs tried to chase down a Justice company’s assets to settle debts.

By late 2020, the total in judgments and settlements for Justice family businesses had reached $140 million, ProPublica and Mountain State Spotlight found.

Since then, his family business empire has faced more turmoil. Lenders are trying to hold him personally responsible for hundreds of millions in debt. Courts are ordering payment of long-standing environmental penalties.

Neither representatives for Justice nor the family’s businesses responded to a request for comment. In the past, Justice has said that he and his family companies always pay what they owe. The governor has said that his businesses don’t create any conflicts of interest and that he didn’t run for office to get anything for himself.

Justice inherited a coal fortune from his father and expanded it to an empire of agricultural companies and resort hotels, including The Greenbrier, a posh, historic resort located in a valley where southern West Virginia’s mountains meet western Virginia’s rolling hills.

Last week, Justice used The Greenbrier as the backdrop for his announcement that he would seek the Republican nomination, facing U.S. Rep. Alex Mooney in the GOP primary. (Manchin has not announced a reelection bid yet, but in response to questions about Justice he said, “Make no mistake, I will win any race I enter.”)

As we documented, the resort has been at the heart of various conflicts of interest, as major trade associations that lobby state government for their industries have held meetings and conferences there.

And just two days before Justice’s Senate announcement, another of his resorts, Glade Springs, was the subject of state Supreme Court arguments in a case in which the resort homeowners’ association is seeking $6.6 million in property upkeep fees from one of Justice’s companies, which owns lots at the resort.

When he became governor in 2017, Justice said he was turning control of his family businesses over to his adult children. But our investigation found that, while governor, he continued to steer the empire.

In his political campaigns, Justice frequently touted his experience as a businessman and said that his long career in coal and other industries made him suited for the role of West Virginia’s chief executive.

Justice’s coal operations have also been repeatedly pressed to settle allegations of significant pollution problems in deals with regulators, yet the environmental violations have continued. Last month, a federal appeals court ruled that Justice companies must pay $2.5 million in environmental fines. Lawyers for the companies had argued the fines were the result of a misreading of an earlier settlement.

In December, an industrial plant owned by Justice’s family agreed to pay nearly $1 million in fines after releasing excessive air pollution into Black neighborhoods in Birmingham, Alabama. An attorney who works with the Justice family said the consent order would “provide the certainty that the company needs to complete its evaluation of the plant’s future.”

For years, Justice had been considered West Virginia’s richest man and listed by Forbes as a billionaire. But in 2021, Forbes removed that listing. The magazine cited a dispute over $850 million in debt to the now-defunct firm Greensill Capital.

The Justice companies settled that dispute with a payment plan. But last week a longtime banking partner of Justice’s, Carter Bank & Trust, filed documents seeking to collect on a separate $300 million debt. Justice’s son, Jay Justice, said in a statement that the bank had refused a reasonable repayment plan.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice runs for Senate amid stacks of unpaid bills appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.

On warm spring days, the forests of Cacapon Resort State Park sprout bushy, lime-green leaves as people walk along wooded trails, fish in the lake, birdwatch or share a meal at a picnic table.

For nearly a century, the park’s old forests, sweeping views and peaceful waters have attracted visitors, many seeking a nature-filled respite from the Baltimore-Washington D.C. rat race. But the park holds a particularly special place in the hearts of local residents who often gather there with friends and family.

“When I bring my grandkids over here, it’s the happiest time I can imagine,” said Craig Thibaudeau, who lives nearby. He recalls fond memories of playing with his grandchildren on the swing sets or beaches and fishing with his brother from Texas.

So when state officials announced plans to build a private RV campground in the park and one of the proposals included several hundred campsites, he was concerned.

“You lose the humanity of this park if you go corporate,” Thibaudeau said. “And that’s the bottom line. It’s the humanity that makes it so special.”

In public protests, he and dozens of others argued the environmental and social consequences of the development would be devastating.

The outcry eventually led the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources to abandon the current campground effort entirely, and the agency is now seeking public input on what facilities it should add to the park.

The fierce debate over the RV campground at Cacapon was the first test of a law passed last year allowing private development of facilities in almost all state parks. While the project is on hold, the law remains on the books and state officials could explore development at Cacapon or another park in the future, setting up another struggle over the role of private companies on public land.

Why a request for campground proposals sparked intense backlash

The dustup over development in Cacapon Resort State Park started in December, when the WVDNR put out a request for proposals from private companies interested in developing both campgrounds and recreational facilities at the park.

“The WVDNR welcomes community engagement for this development project and will work with local stakeholders to maintain Cacapon’s natural environment as currently enjoyed,” Commerce Secretary James Bailey said in a March statement releasing the three proposals received from different companies, all for a combination of RV campgrounds and other amenities.

One plan, by a Harpers Ferry-based company, would create 50 RV campsites and also provide a shuttle service. A second proposal by a Berkeley Springs-based company sought to partner with the park on the development of an RV campground on nearby private land.

The third plan by Blue Water Development in Maryland, contained a number of options, including the creation of as many as 350 RV campsites, a floating dock called an aquabana, mini-golf, and in one proposal, a “snowflex” that would involve using artificial snow to support year-round skiing and snowboarding.

Community members quickly rallied against this plan, launching local protests, community meetings, and an online petition to withdraw the request for proposals that received more than 1,000 signatures.

They argued that hundreds of campsites and the recreational facilities would create a disruptive amusement park-like atmosphere and advocacy groups raised concerns that some of the new amenities would affect the affordability of the park.

“Cacapon is a very unique, very mountainous area,” said Mike Jones, the public lands campaign coordinator for the West Virginia Rivers Coalition. “Putting in these kinds of mega-projects is just incompatible with that.”

In a letter to state officials, the Morgan County Commissioners said that a large RV campground would strain already struggling sewer and road infrastructure and “diminish many of the reasons that folks visit our park to begin with: the natural beauty, the historical significance, and the peaceful tranquility.”

State parks officials canceled a public hearing set for mid-April after a lawsuit brought by a citizen argued that they did not notify the public as required by law. Several days later, they announced that they would not be moving forward with any of the three proposals and would seek further public input.

Critics note a new state law allows for private development in parks

While plans for an RV campground at Cacapon have been put on hold for the time being, advocates pointed to the proposals as confirmation of their concerns around HB 4408, a bill passed in 2022 that allows for private companies to develop projects and facilities in all state parks, except for Watoga State Park, the state’s largest.

The proposal was heavily criticized by environmental and conservation groups when it was introduced last year, with local groups, and some former state parks employees arguing that the measure would lead to development projects that could irreparably damage the parks and would also effectively privatize significant parts of them.

“Our state parks, up until this administration, never seemed focused on being profit-making centers, at least not for private businesses,” said Angie Rosser, executive director of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition.

In an email, House of Delegates spokeswoman Ann Ali noted that the 2022 legislation was requested by the WVDNR. Del. Mark Dean, a Republican from Mingo County and the lead sponsor of the legislation, said in a statement that he supported the bill because he “thought it could provide a new opportunity for outdoor recreation to expand throughout the state, especially those activities with high start-up costs.”

Local residents and delegates however, have criticized the measure in recent weeks.

“I tried to talk it down. I changed about five or six votes,” Del. George Miller, R-Morgan, told a local online news outlet of his decision to oppose HB 4408 last year after initially backing it. “But it would have passed anyway. We have to deal with it now.”

Residents say environmental concerns are paramount

During recent protests against the proposed development, some residents held signs with sharp slogans, like “CCC does not mean Corporate Cash Cow” – a reference to the Civilian Conservation Corps. The New Deal-era employment program created millions of conservation jobs for young men and hundreds of state parks – including Cacapon.

The park’s roots in a movement intended to preserve public lands made recently proposed development all the more concerning to those living nearby. In addition to aesthetic worries about hundreds of new RV campsites, residents also had environmental concerns.

Development would’ve likely included cutting down trees on several acres of land, paving over soil with concrete and draining a wetland to create a beach. All of these measures can increase the likelihood of flooding, already a major concern for West Virginia due to its many mountains, valleys and river systems.

Five years ago, park visitors and nearby residents alike were evacuated when the Cacapon River rose more than seven feet above the flood stage.

“They evacuated my street. And it wasn’t voluntary. They stayed there until you left,” said Morgan County resident Dale Kirchner, who filed the lawsuit over the public hearing and lives very close to the park. “So now if you have acres more of runoff – not only for the campground, but the amenity areas – how much worse is that going to be? Do we really want to take a chance with global warming and the storms getting worse?”

Kirchner and others also expressed concerns about safety. If the park could suddenly host an additional thousand visitors, they worried there’d be more campfires and people partying. They worried that could lead to more injuries and forest fires. Just last week, multiple forest fires burned across more than 1,500 acres in nearby Pendleton County, eventually setting ablaze beloved environmental landmark Seneca Rocks.

Such a fire in Cacapon could endanger priceless resources. The park is home to two endangered species, the wood turtle and the harperella, a plant with white flowers that typically grows along shallow streams. It’s also home to old-growth forests, often described as irreplaceable because of their unique ability to provide a haven for biodiversity, reduce flood risk and mitigate the effects of climate change — in a way younger forests can’t mimic.

As state moves forward, local residents say their voices must be heard

After scuttling the current proposals for an RV campground, the state must now go back to the drawing board. The Division of Natural Resources has released an online survey about future development that will be open until late May.

Beyond that, it is unclear what will happen next — neither the WVDNR nor State Parks responded to questions about the now-scrapped proposals or future plans at the park.

But for Morgan County residents, the defeat of the RV campground bids presents a clear victory for local efforts to ensure community input in the park development process. And for critics of privatization efforts, the recent controversy likely provides ammunition for future debates over development in other parks.

Now with the new law on the books, almost all state parks, including Cacapon, could be chosen for private development, raising the question again of whether public lands should be altered for the sake of economic growth.

Public lands or private profit? West Virginia RV campground debate raises questions over role of state parks appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.