Energy & Environment

The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration is inevitably affected by the standoff in Washington. MSHA is partially open with less than half the staff.

One of the most immediate effects of the federal government shutdown hits tourists.

A record number of raptors flew over an observation point in West Virginia recently.

A story teller puts a new twist on old Appalachian traditions.

And a Kentucky school program helps who want to children learn music.

The Environmental Protection Agency will soon be expected to move forward revising coal ash regulations, according to a federal court ruling.

In April 2012, nearly a dozen environmental groups filed a lawsuit challenging the EPA’s inaction to revise coal ash regulations.

The fourth series of Inspiring West Virginians  features one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, John Forbes Nash, Jr, a 1994 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics. Nash grew up in Bluefield, West Virginia, and the town still holds an importance for him. Now 84, John Nash is currently a Senior Research Mathematician at Princeton University in New Jersey. 

Fifty-four-year-old Rodney Bartgis, state director of the West Virginia Nature Conservancy, stood atop Cave Mountain in Pendleton County, an elevation of 2,777 feet.

“It almost looks like the Rocky Mountains,” said Bartgis. “This is the biggest uplift of limestone in the eastern mountains of the United States, and a lot of the rare plants and animals in this canyon are associated with this limestone,” he said. 

  Members of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition hosted a rally Monday morning in Huntington. 

  Their effort focuses on shedding light on the transfer of waste water on barges.

The Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition hosted a group from the northern panhandle called the Wheeling Water Warriors. This group of Wheeling Warriors organized after a waste water treatment plant was proposed to be built near Wheeling. Since then they have led a charge that includes organizing The Great Ohio River Relay.

With new regulations expected to come from the Environmental Protection Agency on coal-fired power plants, one West Virginia University law professor is predicting new challenges for the state coal industry.  James Van Nostrand is a law professor at the WVU law school, who specializes in energy law. He fully expects legal challenges to be presented by the coal industry in response to the EPA’s new guidelines which are slated to be released this week.

Federal Budget Cuts, EarthEcho education project and black lung roundtable

EarthEcho - West Virginia will be one of the states featured in a new education project created by EarthEcho International that focuses on in the Chesapeake Bay. EarthEcho is launching a new multi-year expedition program that will focus each year on an environmental problem.

  One Marshall University professor’s research is pretty unique. She’s examining the eastern diamondback rattlesnake, which isn’t in West Virginia. The research will take her to the Marine Corps training base in South Carolina. 

Jayme Waldron is an assistant professor of biology and conservation biologist. As a Marshall University undergrad she took part in studies looking at salamanders. That research took her to South Carolina where she gradually looked at reptiles and then rattle snakes.