At the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce’s Annual Meeting, leaders of the state’s largest energy and utility companies participated in a roundtable discussion with Public Service Commission Chair Charlotte Lane. The meeting was held Labor Day weekend at the Greenbrier resort. The PSC is responsible for supervising and regulating the state’s public utilities. During her […]
When I was a first-year student at the University of Virginia I was required to take a science course. The choices were physics, chemistry, biology or geology. “Rocks” is what the students called geology and it was reputed to be the least rigorous, so that’s what I took. It was a good choice. We learned […]
A report issued May 25 by the Michigan Ecology Center and the Sierra Club should make gardeners who use “natural” fertilizers made from sewage sludge think twice. The report details how sludge can contain PFAs — forever chemicals that persist in the environment for decades. In most places industries are allowed to flush PFAS-containing waste […]
Every year at this time, those of us interested in environmental preservation and conservation take stock of what the West Virginia Legislature has done for, or to, the environment. Sadly this process usually results in the same conclusion. We made very little progress. During the 2021 regular session just ended, the most notable environmental victory […]
In 2019 a fisherman noticed black seepage from Verso’s paper mill at Luke Maryland into the North Branch of the Potomac River. The seepage turned out to be “black liquor” from the papermaking process coming from several sources along the river bank, including an old storage tank and a coal ash lagoon. A lawsuit was […]
The House Health and Human Services Committee on Friday, March 4 sent a bill exempting above-ground storage tanks from regulation even though located on the banks of rivers and streams close to public water intakes. The vote by 13 Republicans on the Committee overruled the vote of 6 Democrats and the objections of the Department […]
Awhile back, a good friend of mine spent half an hour complaining to me about having to pay an additional $100 when he registered his Prius hybrid vehicle. That caused me to wonder why West Virginia would want to discourage the ownership of these vehicles with a whopping big tax. Hybrids consume lots less gasoline […]
Bipartisan support seems to be gathering around the idea of authorizing purchase power agreements (PPAs) in West Virginia. A PPA would allow a solar installation, or other alternative generation project, to be built on a customer’s property and owned by a third-party. Power from the installation would be purchased by the customer at lower rates […]
Governor Justice recently appointed longtime Division of Environmental Protection official Harold Ward to be Secretary of the agency. Ward had been serving as the DEP’s deputy secretary of Operations and director of the Division of Mining and Reclamation, where he oversaw all operational components of the WVDEP, as well as the agency’s mining regulatory program. […]
On January 19, 2021 the US Department of Interior issued an order diverting funds away from the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership, which funds urban green spaces in areas that lack access to conventional parks — primarily in non-white communities. This action came despite funding by Congress of $125M in the recent Omnibus spending bill. The […]
