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.

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.

Whenever a hard rain fell on Harlan County, Kentucky, the mud, rocks and debris from the Foresters No. 25 mine pounded down the hillside into the community of Wallins Creek.

Local residents repeatedly complained about washed-out culverts and mud in their yards. Time after time, county work crews came out after a heavy rain to repair Camp Creek Road, a water line that runs alongside it and a local bridge. The strip mine’s owner, Blackjewel, fixed some problems, but when the rains came again, so did the muddy flooding.

Amber Combs, who lived down the hill from Foresters, recalled a day in August 2017 when “the water was rushing down and the yard was a muddy slush pond. It was literally like a river around my house.” Combs complained to Kentucky regulators, who fined Blackjewel $1,300, which it never paid. Overall, under Blackjewel’s ownership, Foresters would run up 17 violations and more than $600,000 in unpaid fines.  

Runoff from Blackjewel’s Foresters No. 25 mine damaged a road in Wallins Creek, Kentucky, in 2020. (Silas Walker/Lexington Herald-Leader)

Founded in 2008 by West Virginia native Jeff Hoops, Blackjewel grew in just a decade to become the sixth-largest coal producer in the U.S., partly by accumulating mines like Foresters that had gone bankrupt. By 2018, it boasted more than 500 mining permits in Kentucky, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming. Then, in July 2019, Blackjewel stunned the industry by declaring bankruptcy, with claims against it later estimated at $7.5 billion. 

That December, environmental groups where Blackjewel operated warned the bankruptcy judge that, while he was focusing on what they called the company’s “significant financial mismanagement,” he should also be aware of “severe environmental mismanagement problems.”

“Reclamation work, water treatment, and other expenses related to environmental compliance should be approved and prioritized” in the bankruptcy case, the environmental advocates wrote. 

Kentucky regulators agreed. But, citing longstanding case law, the judge rejected their request. Instead, bankruptcy trustees began divvying up the company’s assets among preferred creditors such as banks and hedge funds. Problems at Foresters and other Blackjewel sites persisted. By mid-2020, there were more than 600 outstanding violations of state mining and reclamation standards at the company’s mines in Kentucky, including 450 since the bankruptcy filing. On top of that, regulators had cited Blackjewel mines for more than 13,000 violations of Kentucky water quality rules, mostly for failing to monitor pollution discharges.          

The Blackjewel case, still unresolved and nearing its fourth anniversary this July, highlights the environmental toll of what has become a central feature of the coal industry’s business strategy: bankruptcy. Over the past decade, Blackjewel and other coal companies have found two ways to use bankruptcy to their advantage. First, they expanded their holdings by acquiring other companies’ bankrupt mines, which they hoped would turn a temporary profit during upticks in coal prices and production within the industry’s long-term decline.

Then they declared bankruptcy themselves, entering an arena where they didn’t have to pay all of their debts, and where environmental liabilities took a back seat to banks and other financial creditors. As more coal companies busted, hundreds of mines cycled through repeated bankruptcies. Some, like Foresters, are no longer producing coal, yet they continue to pollute their communities.  

A first-of-its-kind analysis by ProPublica and Mountain State Spotlight has documented that mines that have gone through multiple bankruptcies also tend to create more environmental damage. By combining data from federal bankruptcy court filings and state regulatory records, we identified mining permits that have been through more than one bankruptcy and compared the number of environmental violations they’d accrued to violations for mines that had not been through bankruptcy. We found that the median number of environmental violations for surface and underground mines that had been through multiple bankruptcies between 2012 and 2022 in Kentucky was almost twice the median number for mines that had not, and 40% higher in West Virginia. Blackjewel mines in Kentucky that have gone through multiple bankruptcies had more than twice as many violations as the state median for nonbankrupt mines. Our analysis could not determine if bankruptcy caused the environmental violations or was simply associated with them. Read about our methodology here.

The analysis suggests that the bankruptcy system is “keeping mines alive that are not viable and that are struggling to remain in compliance with environmental laws,” said University of Chicago law professor Josh Macey, co-author of a 2019 study on coal bankruptcies.

Blackjewel’s founder, Hoops, epitomizes how the story of the coal industry and its barons has become inseparable from bankruptcy. He built his empire on bankrupt mines. Then, as Blackjewel’s liabilities mounted, he began seeking new vistas. In the months before Blackjewel’s bankruptcy, according to court records, he transferred tens of millions of dollars into another company that is building a resort in his native West Virginia, part of a broader effort he has described as a noncoal empire he can leave to his children.  

Hoops, who declined requests for an in-person or phone interview, said in emailed answers to questions that he didn’t intend for Blackjewel to go bankrupt and that creditors forced him into it. “The model was never to bankrupt the company,” he wrote. “In no way have I benefited from the system.” He added, “I will not recover a cent of my valid claims.” Hoops said that Blackjewel complied with environmental laws and that when violations were issued, it took steps to address them.  

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Before his bankrupt company left a legacy of mud-shrouded roads and polluted streams, Jeff Hoops was a local hero. He rose from a dysfunctional family and a menial job in the West Virginia coalfields to create a regional economic engine and become a philanthropic pillar of his community. 

He and his wife, Patricia Hoops, were all smiles on the front page of the Herald-Dispatch of Huntington, West Virginia, in April 2014 when the newspaper named him its “Citizen of the Year.” The article recounted Hoops’ charity work close to home — a residence hall at Appalachian Bible College in Mount Hope, an indoor football practice facility at the University of Pikeville in Kentucky — and halfway around the world: distributing Bibles in Russia, financing construction of an orphanage in India, running a hotel for missionaries in the Dominican Republic. The children’s hospital in Huntington was named for him, thanks to a $3 million gift. So was a local soccer facility, after what the paper called a “generous donation.”

Despite his wealth and success, Hoops remained the modest and deeply religious man that his friends and neighbors had always known. As a major donor to Marshall University’s Thundering Herd athletic program, he would rate a perch in a luxury box at the stadium. But he said he prefers to sit in the stands, where he can feel the crowd’s energy and be closer to the action.

“I’ve invited him into the box but he says, ‘No, I’m okay,’” said John Sutherland, executive director of Marshall’s Big Green Scholarship Foundation.     

When Sutherland wants to talk Marshall sports with Hoops, they meet at Shonet’s Country Cafe, a family diner in Milton, West Virginia, for scrambled eggs and sausage, and sometimes a slice of pie.    

Born in 1956, Hoops grew up in Bluefield, deep in southern West Virginia along the Virginia border. Bluefield then had 20,000 residents; it counts less than half that many today. Historically, it was a financial hub and railroad center for the coal industry. Now, it promotes itself as “Nature’s Air-Conditioned City” (elevation 2,611), and the local chamber of commerce gives away cold lemonade whenever a summer day hits 90 degrees.

Hoops was the second oldest of five children of Roy Hoops, who worked as a clerk for the Norfolk & Southern Railroad, and Lucy Walker. Roy’s drinking, infidelity and physical abuse of Lucy strained the family, according to court records. Lucy filed for protective orders and divorce several times. When Roy promised to change his behavior, they reconciled.

“Certainly my childhood had its challenges, as my father’s life was controlled by alcohol,” Hoops said.

Hoops was a striver. He sang in the youth chorus at church and made the Bluefield High basketball team as a sophomore despite standing 5-feet-1-inch tall. He sprouted to what he called “a towering 5-8” by 1974, when he graduated from Bluefield and married his high school sweetheart, Patricia Johnson, a week later. He wanted to work right away, but he was only 17, and the minimum age in the coal industry was 18. So he altered his birth certificate and found a job running parts in an underground mine, he said.  

In 1975, Hoops joined the engineering department of a mining company, doing surveying and designing ventilation plans. He began going to college at night, eventually earning associate’s and master’s degrees and an executive MBA. Within a decade of high school, he became a top corporate engineer and then vice president of operations for United Coal, which became part of Arch Coal. After leaving Arch in the late 1990s, Hoops established and sold a series of coal companies. A former associate described Hoops as a workaholic driven by a competitive streak. “The joy of his life is coming out on top of a business deal,” the former associate said.

Hoops’ parents divorced in 1985, remarried in 1986 and divorced again in 1991. Roy retired from the railroad and owned an Exxon gas station from 1983 to 2002. On his deathbed in 2014, he called his son to apologize. “I forgave him, told him I loved him, and told him the most important thing was for him to make peace with God,” Jeff Hoops recalled. 

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When Hoops was growing up, coal was the most powerful business and political player in places like southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky. But then, buffeted by skyrocketing natural gas production, cheaper renewable energy prices and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the industry began to founder. 

Makers of everything from asbestos to opioids have used bankruptcy to avoid paying for damage they caused, but the sheer volume of coal bankruptcies outpaced any other sector. At least 60 coal companies went bankrupt between 2012 and 2022, including some of the biggest in the country. The environmental group Appalachian Voices warned in July 2021 that a wave of bankruptcies could leave 633,000 acres of coal mines in the eastern U.S. in need of cleanup, eroding the ability of communities to rebuild economically.  

In theory, bankruptcy doesn’t exempt a company from its responsibility to preserve the environment. The 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act requires coal companies to clean up damage as they mine. When mining is over, the land must be put back to “a condition capable of supporting the uses which it was capable of supporting prior to any mining.” 

That’s not how it generally works in practice. Coal companies often fall behind on so-called mine reclamation and, with obligations also mounting for worker pensions and health benefits, file for bankruptcy protection. They lay off employees at mines that are no longer productive or profitable, ditch pension and health care liabilities and avoid paying for environmental damages.

For example, coal giants Peabody Energy and Arch Coal created a third company, Patriot Coal, and spun off their mines with environmental problems and pension obligations into it. All three companies eventually went bankrupt, ducking a combined $2.6 billion in liabilities, according to Macey, the University of Chicago law professor. Many of these mines have changed hands since then but still have not been reclaimed.

“Bankrupt coal companies dump their mine cleanup obligations onto communities and taxpayers who simply don’t have the money to pick up the tab,” said Peter Morgan, a Sierra Club lawyer who has tracked coal bankruptcies around the country.

The purpose of bankruptcy is to give desperate people and companies time and relief from creditors so they can get back on their feet. But not all creditors are treated equally. Bankruptcy law gives secured creditors such as banks, law firms, the Internal Revenue Service and equipment suppliers — but not environmental costs or fines — priority for payment. 

“Bankruptcy courts are not doing enough to stop conduct that allows coal companies to get out of their environmental responsibilities,” Macey said.

There’s a potential backstop to pay for environmental cleanup: reclamation bonds. Federal law requires coal companies to post these bonds to receive mining permits, as a sort of insurance. The amount that companies are required to put up varies from state to state; in West Virginia, it can be as much as $5,000 per acre of the permit. To secure the bonds, companies pay a surety firm a one-time fee — typically 20% to 50% of the face value, according to Hoops. If a mining company goes belly up, state regulators can revoke its permits and use the bond money to clean up whatever mess is left. Money from forfeited bonds, sometimes along with other revenue such as environmental penalties or coal production fees, goes into state reclamation funds to restore abandoned mine sites.

But the required bond amounts often aren’t enough to cover all potential costs. Cleanup costs have soared, partly due to larger surface mines that blew up or chopped off entire mountaintops, and partly because modern studies have increasingly identified water pollutants requiring lengthy and expensive treatment. According to a 2021 legislative audit, West Virginia’s reclamation bonds have covered only one-tenth of cleanup costs. Separately, the Appalachian Voices analysis projected cleanup costs in West Virginia alone as high as $3.5 billion.  

As a result, state officials are reluctant to revoke permits and take on the financial responsibility for cleanup. What often ensues instead is a game of musical mines. Knowing that they won’t end up on the hook for reclamation, other coal companies buy mines out of bankruptcy — and then often go bankrupt themselves. 

The ProPublica analysis identified 2,030 mines in Kentucky and West Virginia that have been through bankruptcy since 2012 — more than a third of all coal mines in those states. Of the bankrupt mines, 491, or 24%, have gone through more than one bankruptcy.  

Of the 210 bankrupt Blackjewel mines in our database, including 197 in Kentucky and 13 in West Virginia, almost half have gone through at least one other bankruptcy. The vast majority of those — 101 of 103 — are in Kentucky and had a median of 16 environmental violations, more than twice the median for nonbankrupt mines in that state. 

Since Blackjewel went bust in 2019, more than 100 of its Kentucky permits have been sold out of bankruptcy — many for the second time, according to court filings. Lawyers jokingly call the second round of bankruptcy “Chapter 22,” or Chapter 11 twice over. 

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In 1999, Hoops went out on his own with just one mine, the Hunts Branch Mine in Phelps, Kentucky. In 2008, he founded Revelation Energy. It grew, and Hoops changed the name to Blackjewel in 2017 as part of what he called “a strategic restructuring.” The plan was to shift away from providing steam coal for power plants and toward producing more metallurgical coal for steel mills, a market where prices were increasing.

Blackjewel assembled mines from the bankruptcies of James River Coal, Alpha Natural Resources, Arch Coal and others. Alpha paid Hoops $200 million in cash and more than $100 million in installments to take about 250 of its mining permits. Every acquisition “was based on a detailed economic model that demonstrated the mines could make money even in a down market,” Hoops said. 

The strategy, Hoops said, was working. Blackjewel expanded from central Appalachia to Wyoming’s Powder River Basin. It employed 1,700 miners and boasted 1.2 billion tons of coal available for mining, enough to keep going for many decades.

But in April 2019, two bankruptcy experts questioned whether Hoops would be able to honor his companies’ environmental obligations.

“Rather, his businesses have begun to exhibit a pattern,” Macey and Jackson Salovaara wrote in “Bankruptcy as Bailout,” an article in the Stanford Law Review. “Hoops takes over abandoned mines, receives cash from the company that wants to get rid of them, and then fails to actually remediate the environmental problems.” 

Three months later, Blackjewel declared bankruptcy. It cited a roof collapse at a Virginia mine, a spike in workers’ compensation costs and flooding that prevented railroads from moving coal out of Wyoming. It also blamed adverse market conditions, including the rise of cheap natural gas, greater use of renewable energy and increased regulatory pressures.

Energy industry researcher Clark Williams-Derry pointed instead to questionable business decisions, such as Blackjewel locking in prices for steel-making coal just before prices increased sharply. “The signs of financial distress have been evident to anyone who cared to look,” he wrote in a blog post titled, “Seven Bombshells in the Blackjewel Bankruptcy.” Hoops said that lenders forced the timing of the price locks on Blackjewel, costing the company millions of dollars. 

Hoops said that key lenders — United Bank and the investment firm Riverstone Holdings — cut off credit for Blackjewel, forcing the firm into Chapter 11. “They had managed to get my funds put on hold before and during the bankruptcy, as I would have never allowed the company to file but for their actions,” Hoops said. United and Riverstone declined comment.

In a press release, Hoops portrayed the bankruptcy as part of an effort to “position the company for long-term success.” But it didn’t feel that way to many Blackjewel miners. Some mines closed, sending workers home without any notice, and without their most recent paychecks. A mine in Wyoming was on fire, and Blackjewel was scrambling to pay employees to put it out.

Joseph Fox, who worked at a Blackjewel coal preparation plant in Virginia, had just taken his family on vacation to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Then, his paycheck bounced. Fox, his wife and their son and two daughters cut their beach trip short.

“They’re kids. All they wanted was a vacation,” Fox recalled. “They didn’t understand, and you don’t want to be telling them your paycheck bounced.”

In Kentucky, a group of miners who missed paychecks blocked a Blackjewel coal train in Harlan County. Hoops said that all of the miners have been paid. Still, they filed claims and lawsuits alleging that they were laid off without due notice. 

The bankruptcy trustee settled the lawsuits with a promise that miners would be bumped up in the ranking of creditors. But court documents suggest there will be little money to go around, maybe only enough to pay the lawyers, accountants and consultants managing the liquidation, lawyers monitoring the case said.

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By the time of the bankruptcy, Hoops was already preparing for a future outside coal. He set up a family holding company, Clearwater Investments, with his three sons as trustees. Its purpose was to “leave a financial dynasty to Jeff and Patricia’s heirs by investing in several businesses as well as by collecting royalties on various investment properties,” said an internal “executive overview” filed in the bankruptcy case.

Some of the listed holdings retain a connection to coal, including a trucking firm and a mining equipment sales service. Others don’t, like a wheelchair and brace sales firm with sales in 2018 of $8.7 million.

In January 2019, Hoops sent the Clearwater overview to his sons, Jeffrey Jr., Jeremy and Joshua. “I hope by the end of this year to have a nice package together that shows everything we own as it is a vast company now,” he wrote. “Love you guys …. Dad.”

It didn’t take long for Clearwater to surface in the Blackjewel case.

Creditors discovered that in the six months prior to Blackjewel’s bankruptcy filing, as the company was becoming increasingly insolvent, Hoops had transferred at least $34 million from Blackjewel to Clearwater. 

Hoops said that these transfers were appropriate because they represented partial repayment of $51.5 million in loans that he and his family had made to Blackjewel since January 2019 via a revolving line of credit. But this explanation didn’t satisfy creditors, who accused him of violating bankruptcy rules by putting himself at the head of the line.  

It was a “sweetheart deal,” then-bankruptcy trustee David Bissett told the judge during a July 2019 hearing. Hoops was “protecting his own self-interest” rather than Blackjewel’s employees or creditors, Bissett said.

Lenders were so outraged at Hoops’ money transfer that, as a condition for providing Blackjewel with emergency financing, they forced Hoops to step down as an officer of the company. They also blocked any Hoops family members from taking a management role. 

In a farewell email to employees, Hoops defended himself. “No one is hurting more than me over what has occurred,” he wrote. “There has not been one cent taken out of the mining company, the exact opposite I have loaned more money to try to get this company through these difficult times.”

The email continued: “I accept responsibility for being unable to lead this company through these difficult times.” Hoops wrote, “I know in my heart how hard I fought for each of you and this company and to have people threaten me and say I took money out of this company for other projects hurts more than words can express.” 

The liquidation trustee sued Hoops and seven family companies, including Clearwater, over the money he shifted from Blackjewel to them in the months before the bankruptcy. 

Last August, the trustee settled these cases. Few details were made public, except that as part of the deal Hoops dropped a $2.6 million claim for money he argued Blackjewel owed him. 

Hoops said only that the lawsuit was “resolved amicably.” The liquidation trustee declined comment. 

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Another bankruptcy court fight focused on the Foresters mine.

This wasn’t the mine’s first brush with bankruptcy. U.S. Coal, its original owner, went bankrupt in June 2014. By the time Hoops took over the permit in 2016, the mine was down to fewer than 20 workers, and production was a third of its 2013 peak of 550,000 tons. In 2018, it stopped producing coal altogether, and had only three employees, according to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration.

A year into Blackjewel’s bankruptcy, a flood from Foresters eroded part of a local road and damaged a drinking water line. The rest of Blackjewel’s now-idled operations across Kentucky were also polluting their surroundings. Alarmed by the worsening conditions, the state’s Energy and Environment Cabinet sought the court’s help. In June 2020, the environmental regulator asked the judge to order Blackjewel’s trustee to bring all of the company’s permits into compliance with mining standards and pollution rules. 

In a court filing, agency officials warned that Blackjewel sites not only weren’t being restored to pre-mining conditions but weren’t even being maintained to prevent contaminated water from pouring downstream into water supplies. The agency warned of flooded holding ponds being at high risk of “discharging metals and suspended solids into adjacent rivers and streams” and of landslides “that could endanger the lives and the property of residences below.” 

In September 2020, a week after state inspectors again cited Foresters for erosion and drainage, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Benjamin A. Kahn held a hearing on the regulators’ complaints. But the concerns about environmental fallout ran smack into a wall of decades-old law. While noting that crews were already responding at Foresters and other sites, the bankruptcy trustee argued that legal precedent gave the judge little scope to intervene. The judge agreed. Citing U.S. Supreme Court and federal appeals court decisions, Kahn instructed the trustee to clean up only “imminent” threats to public safety, not “speculative” threats.

Some problems at Foresters met this standard, and Kahn ordered them fixed. Still, violations for muddy runoff and sediment from holding ponds have persisted there.

Kahn deferred action at dozens of other Blackjewel sites with hundreds of environmental violations that he deemed less severe. Kahn’s analysis didn’t address the risk that if bankrupt mining companies can avoid routine maintenance and reclamation, speculative threats can turn imminent in a hurry. Once the judge’s criteria are met, “it’s too late,” said Lena Seward, lawyer for the Kentucky state regulatory agency. “The road is washed out.”

Kentucky also tried to forfeit bonds for some Blackjewel mines so that the state could begin cleanup. But that’s tied up in a legal challenge by the surety company, which contends that it has the right to restore the sites itself instead of losing the bond money. For other mines, the state and the bond company are still working out terms for cleanup. 

Meanwhile, the companies that bought most of the mines haven’t gotten very far with cleanup, sometimes because the state blocked final approval of the purchases due to unresolved violations at mines they already owned. Kentucky regulators acknowledged in an email that they “would like to have seen a faster transfer applications/reclamation process.”

As it acquired mines, Blackjewel posted a total of more than $500 million in reclamation bonds in four states. But that sum may not be enough. State regulators warned the bankruptcy judge in late 2020 that, for the 32 Blackjewel mines without buyers, conditions had deteriorated so much that cleanup costs were estimated at $20 million more than the bonds would cover.    

Hoops disputed that the bond amounts were inadequate. The regulators were “wrong,” he said, but he did not elaborate.

In February 2021, the Kentucky cabinet went back to the judge. A Blackjewel mine was showing severe erosion, with sediment ponds so full that they posed what an inspector called “an immediate danger to the public and environment downstream.”

Kahn ruled against the regulator again.

“The violations just continue to mount,” said Kentucky attorney Mary Varson Cromer, who represents coalfield residents in the Blackjewel case. “The whole system is not functioning, and it ends up costing more to reclaim, and it’s the residents and the community that are at risk.”

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The game of musical mines is slowing down. Across Appalachia, coal production is forecast to drop more than 20% over the next decade. In a market where coal production and prices continue to drop, there’s little demand for Blackjewel’s coal. Almost all its mines in Kentucky, including Foresters, have been sitting idle for four years. 

Blackjewel’s case has also bogged down in paperwork, or the lack of it. “The books and records inherited by the trust were woefully incomplete (and largely nonexistent in some instances),” the trustee complained in March 2023, explaining yet another delay. 

With Blackjewel behind him, Hoops is looking to the future. Clearwater is building a resort in Milton, where Hoops lives. The project is meant to invoke the splendor of ancient Rome. Hoops named it the Grand Patrician Resort. Patrician has a double meaning: It refers to the ruling class of ancient Rome and also honors Hoops’ wife, Patricia.

Hoops wept as he announced the resort project, which is located on the site of a former children’s hospital. His aunt and his brother-in-law had both been patients there, he told a local newspaper. “I get emotional,” he said. “To see God take something that was used to treat kids that were hurting, a lot of them crippled for life, he always takes something bad and turns it for good.”

The resort’s golf course had a soft opening last August. Construction of a luxury hotel continues. Local press accounts say the site will include a 400-seat steakhouse, a wedding chapel and ballroom and two indoor pools. A second phase is expected to feature another hotel, equestrian trails and a 3,500-seat outdoor arena modeled on the Roman Colosseum. This month, Hoops hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new hiking trail at the resort.

Even though Hoops left Blackjewel four years ago, one of his family-run businesses is still connected to its mines. The insurance company holding the reclamation bonds for the Blackjewel mines that weren’t bought out of bankruptcy has hired Lexington Coal to reclaim them. Its manager is one of Hoops’ sons. Lexington Coal “has not benefited in any way economically” from the reclamation contract, Hoops said. 

Joel Jacobs and John Templon contributed data reporting.

In the game of musical mines, environmental damage takes a back seat appeared first on Mountain State Spotlight, West Virginia’s civic newsroom.