Briana Heaney, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

After Death Of Boone County Girl, Gov. Jim Justice Faces Questions On Transparency

After the death of 14-year-old Kyneddi Miller, who was discovered by police in a near skeletal state on the bathroom floor, questions about what could have been done to prevent this are swirling.
State officials, as well as members of the media, have requested information from the state to find out what was done — and what wasn’t — by state agencies charged with protecting the welfare of children in the state. Yet little to no information has been released, despite FOIA requests

After the death of 14-year-old Kyneddi Miller, who was discovered by police in a near skeletal state on the bathroom floor, questions about what could have been done to prevent this are swirling.

State officials, as well as members of the media, have requested information from the state to find out what was done — and what wasn’t — by state agencies charged with protecting the welfare of children in the state. Yet little to no information has been released, despite FOIA requests. Journalists with West Virginia Watch received documents that were nearly entirely redacted.

Now the Justice administration has said it is exploring ways to legally provide better information to the public.

“I’ll absolutely direct them to follow the law. You know, without any question,” Justice said.

Cynthia Persily, cabinet secretary of the Department of Human Services said that the administration is also looking to other states to understand their transparency practices. Persily advised journalists and members of the public to obtain and use the critical accident report that is filed annually.

“That report, of course, has not been reported on in the media,” Persily said. “And we would just encourage everyone who wants to have information about child fatalities in the state to look at that report and the information is contained there.”

However, that report shows limited details on CPS actions, responsibility, and culpability. The current report does not have any information of the death of Kyneddi Miller.

Destructive, Powerful Tornado Touched Down In Northern Panhandle

A tornado touched down in Hancock County, destroyed multiple structures before turning to head into Pennsylvania on Tuesday night.

Tornadoes are ranked on a scale ranging from 0-5 known as the Fujita scale. This tornado is believed to be a 2-3 level tornado.

Meteorologists have currently estimated that the tornado had winds of 140 miles per hour, double the wind speed of what is considered a weak tornado. Crews are still working to confirm the locations, and the strength of the storm.

The tornado decimated a barn and blew the second story off of a house. Lee Hendricks, meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said when sturdy structures are destroyed it is indicative of a powerful storm.

“The damage was pretty substantial,” Hendrick said. “So we can look at the type of damage, what structures or trees or the surrounding indicators that we can see in the damage path. And we can take that and calibrate that to the Enhanced Fujita scale to give us a wind estimate on what caused that damage.”

This tornado marks the 11th tornado to touch down in the Mountain State this calendar year, which meteorologists at the Weather Service say is abnormally high.

Hendricks said warm air coming through the gulf is stirring up weather in the midwest, which has recently been battered with powerful tornadoes. Then that weather heads east.

“It seems like every three days, we’re getting a fairly active weather system moving through our area,” Hendricks said. “Now as the weather starts to warm up and we get more opportunities for getting warm, humid air being pumped out on the gulf, and we’re still getting the strong systems coming out of the Midwest, we are increasing our chances for severe weather.”

Teams from the National Weather Service are still surveying the damage from a separate storm in Jefferson County.

Huntington, Cabell File Appeal Argument In Case Against Opioid Distributors

Following Cabell County and Huntington’s loss of their opioid lawsuit, the localities appealed that decision. Now the state supreme court is involved, and the city and the county have filed a 40-page brief with the court – asking it to see things their way.

The localities didn’t lose for lack of evidence. They lost on a general disagreement on what qualifies as a “public nuisance.” The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia had a narrow interpretation of what constitutes a public nuisance. This differed from what both the plaintiffs and other courts have considered to be a public nuisance.

When Huntington and Cabell appealed the case, the appellate court looked to the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals to answer this question: Can public nuisance laws be used to successfully sue drug distribution companies?

Huntington and Cabell argued in their brief that the answer to that question is yes. And there is plenty of case law cited to support that, including a statewide opioid lawsuit that was won on a nearly identical premise and legal standard. The brief also lists other smaller lawsuits against energy and lumber companies that successfully used a public nuisance charge.

In a 1997 case against Kermit Lumber, a public nuisance legal standard was successfully used by the state of West Virginia. The court said in its decision that the term “public nuisance” does not have an exact definition, generally it has been described as the doing of, or failure to do something, that adversely affects the safety, health or morals of the public, or creates a substantial annoyance, inconvenience or injury to the public.

“The federal district court opined that West Virginia law does not recognize a public nuisance claim based on the distribution of a controlled substance. Petitioners maintain that the district court erred in reaching that conclusion,” the brief said.

Cabell and Huntington say that the more than 81 million dosage units that flooded a community of around 100,000 people, and the drug epidemic that ensued, is the responsibility of three drug manufacturers — McKesson, AmerisourceBergen and Cardinal Health. Those three companies supplied 89 percent of the Oxycontin that was sent to Cabell County.

The localities say in the brief that the unreasonable opioid distribution practices that they say caused addiction, overdose deaths, infectious diseases, crime and decimated neighborhoods interfered with public health safety, property and resources.

The brief also outlined the detrimental effect the epidemic had on babies and pregnant women in the state.

“Thousands of babies — at times up to 10 percent of all newborns in Cabell/Huntington — have been born with neonatal abstinence syndrome due to pregnant mothers opioid use,” the brief said.

The brief also lays out facts around the drug manufacturer’s failure to properly monitor the distribution of highly addictive substances, including multiple instances when federal regulators intervened with the companies warning them of lack of oversight in distribution and even taking punitive action.

“In 2005, DEA met with respondents to convey the rising problem of opioid diversion and warned them that failing to maintain effective controls against diversion would create a crisis,” the brief said.

It goes on to say that respondents did not take action to combat an influx of pills headed to small, rural areas like West Virginia, but instead took actions that incentivized employees of the drug distribution companies to continue the trend.

“Respondents (Cardinal, McKesson, AmerisourceBergen) used sales employees to conduct due diligence even though respondents compensated those workers based on how many opioids they sold,” the brief said.

West Virginia Public Broadcasting has reached out to all three companies but did not hear back in time for publication. The three companies’ brief, which will argue why the narrow interpretation of a public nuisance by the fourth circuit court should be upheld, is scheduled to be filed May 20.

US Department Of Education Announces Funding To Help Students Complete Federal Student Loan Forms

The Department of Education is launching a multimillion-dollar program to help boost the completion of FAFSA for high school students nationwide.

Last week Gov. Jim Justice declared a state emergency following a botched roll out of the new Free Application For Student Aid, or FASFA.

According to the governor’s office there has been a 40 percent decrease in FAFSA applications in the state. Justice said a difficult and complicated process is partially to blame.

Monday, the US Department of Education launched a program to expand availability of advisers, counselors, and coaches to help students and caregivers through the FAFSA process. It also aims to increase the hours that FAFSA support staff are available on weekends and evenings.

The department’s goal is to increase the number of high school students who complete their FAFSA.

Fifty million dollars will be available in grants to organizations that can expand college access and enrollment.

Abandoned Mine Turns Apple Orchard With Help Of National Guard

A long winding road, once frequented by coal trucks, leads to the top of what used to be a mountain. At its end are flat fields filled with budding apple trees.

Major General Bill Crane said this apple orchard was an abandoned mine seven years ago.

“We’ve got about 20,000 apple trees in the ground,” Crane said. “It’s an experimentation site that we work with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).”

This is one way the National Guard is taking on climate change and pollution. The Guard has teamed up with scientists from the USDA and West Virginia University (WVU) to find ways to grow apple trees on land that was previously thought to be somewhat of a waste land.

First they had to tackle one major problem: No topsoil. The solution: Chicken poop from pastures in the state.

“The nice thing we’re doing here is we’re bringing chicken manure from the Eastern Panhandle, we bring it here to help make the soil better,” Crane said.

Chris Dardick, a scientist with the USDA, said taking the chicken manure from the Eastern Panhandle to the orchard helps mitigate farming runoff into rivers. He said nitrogen from animal waste has been running into rivers, and creating algae blooms, which cause other aquatic life to die.

“Much of [chicken manure] contains nitrogen,” Dardick said. “Bringing it out here, out of the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and using it to amend the soils for apple production or other crops, that’s sort of a win-win.”

Tracy Leskey works with Dardick at the USDA as the research leader for this project and said the trees absorb another climate changing element — carbon.

“One of the things that we recognized a few years ago is this opportunity for apple trees to sequester carbon from the atmosphere,” Leskey said.

Trees take in carbon, and store it in their trunks and roots, or deliver it to the ground. The process is known as carbon sequestering and is one tool for fighting climate change.

And where the land had carbon removed from the soil in the form of coal, Leskey said the soil can now hold, or sequester, more carbon than the typical soil can.

But this project isn’t only aimed at helping the earth. Melissa Stewart, director of Patriot Guardens, hopes this project will also help the mental health of both active and retired service members.

“When they come back home from a deployment, and maybe they have seen some things that they don’t want to remember, they can’t have a conversation with somebody to get that out of their mind?” Stewart said.

She hopes that service members can create a “side hustle” and learn a hobby that brings peace and healing.

“Through agriculture, they can work with their hands, in an atmosphere like this,” Stewart said.

This is one of many projects the National Guard is working on to produce food like peaches, strawberries and arugula in the state. These projects are aimed at combating food insecurity in West Virginia where one in seven children experience hunger. Stewart says this is where the farming work takes on a special meaning for service members who are transitioning out of the service.

“To take that need to serve and give it purpose as they come out a uniform, being able to illustrate that they’re still serving our state as they transition into more of a civilian status by helping grow the food that helps feed our families helps feed our state,” Stewart said.

State, National Organizations Petition W.Va. Supreme Court To Keep Huntington, Cabell Opioid Case Alive

A group of national and state organizations are asking the state Supreme Court to side with Cabell County and Huntington in their lawsuit against major opioid distribution companies.

The Amici Curiae, or friends of the court, are organizations that have an interest in the outcome of the case.

“The opioid crisis represents one of the greatest threats to public health in our lifetime, with profound consequences for the communities Amici serve,” the Amici said in the brief.

The case pivots on the legal definition of what is considered a public nuisance. After Judge David Faber ruled narrowly on what defines a public nuisance, Cabell and Hunting lost their case against the companies. The Amici told the court in its brief that Faber’s decision was overly restrictive and inconsistent with West Virginia law.

“(The decision) prevents opioid distributors from being held responsible for the costs of abating the crisis they caused,” the Amici said in the brief. “And improvidently diminishes their duty to avert the further spread of the crisis to almost nothing.”

The localities appealed the decision in the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which asked the state Supreme Court to define the legal reach and definition of a public nuisance.

The Cabell County Case needs a broad description to stay alive, much like what the state of West Virginia used in a separate suit.

“The court should answer the certified question in the affirmative, holding that West Virginia Common Law defines public nuisance to include the conditions caused by distribution of controlled substances,” the Amici said in the brief.

The organizations represented in the brief are the National Association of Counties, the County Executive of America, the National League of Cities, the International Municipal Lawyers Association, the West Virginia Sheriffs Association, the West Virginia Association of Counties, the County Commissioners Association of West Virginia, and the West Virginia Municipal League.

In the brief they said that a narrow definition would absolve major drug companies of their responsibility for creating an opioid epidemic.