Question #1. Flooding is one of the most serious environmental issues facing West Virginians. In 2023, the Legislature created a Flood Resiliency Trust Fund to enhance flood prevention and protection, using primarily nature-based solutions and concentrating in low-income areas. For many years, this Trust Fund was unfunded. In 2026, the Legislature approved $5 million for the Trust Fund, which CWV believes is wholly inadequate. Will you support dedicated, ongoing state funding for flood resilience and oppose efforts to weaken or divert those funds?

Yes. West Virginia’s flooding problem is not an abstraction. It has cost lives, destroyed homes, and left communities without the resources to recover. Living on a farm, I’ve seen firsthand what unmanaged water does to farms, roads, and watersheds. Nature-based solutions (e.g. restoring floodplains, planting riparian buffers, rebuilding wetlands) are practical, cost-effective, and build resilience that lasts. $5 million is a start, but it’s not serious money for a state that faces floods of this severity. I’ll advocate for dedicated, sustained funding that actually matches the scale of the problem.

Question #2. During the 2026 session, legislation was introduced to establish a community solar pilot program (HB 4111). This legislation would have made it possible for low-income consumers, and people whose homes do not permit rooftop solar panels, to share in the reduced cost of electricity generated from a central, local solar facility. If similar legislation is proposed in 2027, will you support it?

Yes. Energy costs hit rural and low-income West Virginians hardest. Community solar is a straightforward way to make clean energy accessible to people who rent, live in shaded areas, or simply can’t afford upfront panel costs. It’s not a partisan idea. It’s about expanding options and reducing energy bills for people who need it most.

Question #3. Water quality is an issue that is of great concern to all West Virginia citizens. It has been reported that this state has some of the worst drinking water violation rates and the poorest drinking water quality in the United States. Will you support legislation that funds drinking water infrastructure improvement?

Yes. Clean drinking water should not be a luxury. West Virginia’s rates of drinking water violations are a public health emergency dressed up as a budget problem, and rural and lower-income communities bear the heaviest burden. Funding water infrastructure is one of the most fundamental things a state government can do. We’ve consistently underinvested in it, and that has to change.

Question #4. West Virginia has experienced major drinking water crises linked to above-ground storage tanks. Do you support maintaining or strengthening inspection and safety requirements for these tanks to protect public drinking water?

Yes. The 2014 Elk River spill that left 300,000 West Virginians without safe tap water should be a permanent reminder of what inadequate oversight costs. The regulations that followed were hard-won and necessary. I’ll oppose any further efforts to roll them back and support strengthening them where evidence shows gaps remain.

Question #5. Methane is often leaked from improperly maintained, orphaned or abandoned gas wells. It is the most potent greenhouse gas known, can contaminate groundwater, and be hazardous to local residents. During the 2026 session, legislation was proposed (HB 5414, HB 5415) that would prevent future orphan gas and oil wells by requiring an operator to post a bond sufficient to cover the full cost of plugging, or to pay production-based amounts into an escrow fund sufficient to plug the well at the end of its useful life. If similar legislation is introduced in 2027, will you support it?

Yes.  The orphan well problem is a textbook case of privatizing profits and socializing costs. Operators extract value for years and then walk away from wells that leak methane, contaminate groundwater, and sit as hazards on farmland and in communities. Requiring operators to post bonds or pay into escrow sufficient to cover plugging costs is simply requiring them to be responsible for what they create. Taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook for cleanup that proper bonding would have covered.

Question #6. Large solar generating arrays are often located on farmland. Will you support incentives and permitting reforms that encourage large solar to be sited on brownfields/degraded or previously mined/industrial lands, to help West Virginia protect prime farmland and intact forests?

Yes. As a farm owner, I have a direct stake in this. Prime farmland is an irreplaceable resource for food security, rural economies, and communities that depend on agriculture. West Virginia has significant acreage of degraded and previously mined land that could host large solar arrays while reclaiming land that’s currently idle or hazardous. Steering large solar development toward those sites instead of working farms and intact forests makes both economic and agricultural sense.

Question #7. Currently, West Virginians have no local control through their municipal or county governments over the siting, construction, operation, water use, or environmental compliance of micro-grids and data centers. Will you support legislation to restore local control over these factors?

Yes. This is one of the most important issues I’m running on. HB2014 stripped West Virginia counties of meaningful oversight over data center siting, construction, water use, and environmental compliance. Local governments represent the people who actually live with these developments. They depend on the aquifers, pay local taxes, and end up absorbing the infrastructure strain. Communities deserve a voice in decisions that will fundamentally change their character. I’ll support legislation to restore local control.

Question #8. During the 2026 session, legislation was introduced that would have protected private wells, and controlled groundwater and aquifer depletion by data centers and other industrial development (HB 4683). If similar legislation is introduced in 2027, will you support it?

Yes. Data centers are extraordinary consumers of water, with larger facilities potentially using millions of gallons per day. In rural areas where residents and farmers depend on private wells and shared aquifers, and it can mean a neighbor’s well going dry. Legislation requiring protections for private wells and preventing aquifer depletion by large industrial users is sensible and long overdue and I’ll support it.

Question #9. West Virginia leads the nation in deer/vehicle collisions, killing over 10,000 deer and creating property damage and risk to human life. Highway fencing and the construction of wildlife under- and overpasses dramatically reduce this needless damage and risk. If legislation is proposed in 2027 to study the feasibility of wildlife crossing corridors in high-risk areas, will you support it?

Yes. West Virginia leading the nation in deer-vehicle collisions is a public safety problem with real costs to drivers, families, and livestock. Wildlife crossings and highway fencing have solid evidence behind them from states that have invested in them. A feasibility study is a reasonable first step, and this is exactly the kind of practical, data-driven approach to solving West Virginia’s problems that I will support.

Question #10. In the last several sessions, legislation has been introduced that would have opened West Virginia state parks and forests to development, thereby changing their character. This legislation included opening these protected areas to motorized vehicles and developing them for commercial use. If similar legislation is introduced in 2027, will you oppose it?

Yes. West Virginia’s state parks and forests are among our most valuable assets. They support tourism, recreation, quality of life, and the communities near them. Opening them to motorized vehicles or commercial development would degrade exactly what makes them worth having. I’ll oppose any legislation that changes their protected character.

Question #11. Why should West Virginia voters concerned about the effects of climate change, such as destructive storms that can cause flooding, and environmental pollution on their daily lives choose you over your opponent?

I graduated from Rutgers University as a George H. Cook Scholar with a B.S. in natural resource management and a specialization in conservation ecology. I also own and work on a small farm in Jefferson County where I raise horses, goats and chickens. My water comes from a well and my home and farm depend on that water. I’m not learning about  environmental challenges from a briefing document. Not only is this what I studied in college, but now these issues directly affect me and my community.

In addition, my opponent voted for the original, more extreme version of HB2014 before ultimately voting against the version that passed. I opposed HB2014 from the moment I read it and immediately contacted the members of our county commission to see what could be done to prevent it’s passage because I believe communities have the right to shape what gets built in their midst, who uses their water, and what happens to the land their families have farmed for generations.

I’m running in a district where I’ll need to build a broad coalition, and I believe environmental protection is one of the places where that coalition is possible. Clean water doesn’t have a party. Flooding doesn’t check voter registration. Farm preservation matters to conservatives and progressives alike. I’ll make that case across the aisle, and I’ll back it up with my votes.

Question #12. If the greenhouse gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels by electric utilities must be reduced, what is the best way to do this while still supporting fossil-fuel workers and communities?

West Virginia’s fossil fuel communities deserve honesty, not false promises. The energy transition is underway whether we participate in it or not. The real question is whether we shape it in ways that benefit our workers and communities, or watch them get left behind.

I believe that the most promising path runs directly through land we’ve already used. West Virginia has thousands of acres of reclaimed and degraded mine sites, often with existing transmission infrastructure nearby, that are well-suited for solar and wind development. Building on those sites creates jobs in the same communities the extractive economy built, but without displacing anyone or pitting energy against agriculture.

Fossil fuel workers also have real, transferable skills in heavy equipment, geology, pipeline systems, etc. Retraining programs that meet workers where they are, rather than asking them to start over, are essential. We need to make a genuine long-term commitment to these communities through infrastructure investment, economic diversification, and the kind of sustained attention that historically gets promised and then forgotten after the election.

I won’t tell workers their industry will disappear overnight, because that’s not the truth, but I will tell them about long-term trends, and I’ll work to make sure the transition is one they can participate in rather than one that happens to them.

Question #13. Suppose an industrial development is proposed for your district. Promises of jobs are made in support, but you have doubts about how many and what types of jobs would actually result. Environmentalists oppose the development, citing concerns about harm to water resources, but you have doubts about how serious the harm would really be. How would you resolve these doubts on both sides? To whom would you listen?

I would start by not accepting anyone’s numbers at face value, which includes developer’s job projections *and* the environmentalists’ harm estimates. Both sides have legitimate interests, and both can overstate their case.

On jobs, I’d want to know what kind of jobs are actually being promised. Will they be permanent or temporary? Local hires or outside workers? What do the wages and benefits look like? What comparable projects elsewhere actually delivered versus what was announced? Campaign-season job projections frequently don’t survive contact with reality.

On environmental harm, I’d want to hear from state environmental agencies, from independent scientists, and from the people who actually live and farm near the proposed site. Residents who depend on a well or a stream often know things about local hydrology that don’t show up in an impact summary.

I’m skeptical of big promises from outside interests, because those promises often don’t materialize, and the costs of being wrong tend to fall on the community, not the company. I’d bring that same skepticism, and that same insistence on real information, to any decision like this. And I’d be transparent with my constituents about what I found, even if the answer was complicated or not what I expected.