Curtis Tate, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Senate Approves Bill To Backstop State Mine Reclamation Fund

The West Virginia Senate has passed a bill to address the state’s mine reclamation liabilities.

SB 1 passed in the chamber unanimously on Wednesday and now goes to the House of Delegates.

The bill establishes a mining mutual insurance company. The company would sell bonds for mine reclamation and serve as a backstop to the existing Special Reclamation Fund.

That fund kicks in when coal companies can’t meet their reclamation obligations, due to bankruptcy or a decline in coal production.

Senate President Craig Blair, R-Berkeley, warned that the need could reach hundreds of millions, or billions of dollars and overwhelm the fund.

As he explained to the Senate Finance Committee, that’s why he sponsored the bill.

“My confidence in this bill is so strong. I don’t sponsor bills,” Blair said. “I’m making an exception this year.”

The bill provides for $50 million in seed money, which would be repaid. The money wouldn’t come from the Special Reclamation Fund.

West Virginia Senate Votes To End Ban On Nuclear Power

A bill to lift the ban on nuclear power in West Virginia passed the Senate on Tuesday.

Lawmakers voted 24 to 7 to end the ban. West Virginia is one of 13 states that restricts the construction of nuclear power facilities.

The ban was enacted more than 25 years ago at a time when few lawmakers supported any form of energy other than coal.

But as Sen. Mike Woelfel, D-Cabell, put it, times have changed.

“I don’t know what the thinking was. I can guess what the thinking was in ‘96,” he said. “But we can’t afford to be protective of any industry at this point.”

Woelfel and other senators noted that Nucor, the steelmaker that is planning to build a plant in Mason County, questioned the ban on nuclear power.

The bill now goes to the House of Delegates.

Canadian Electric Vehicle Maker To Build School Buses In West Virginia

A Canadian electric vehicle manufacturer is coming to West Virginia, bringing hundreds of jobs.

GreenPower Motor Co. announced Wednesday that it will build electric school buses at a plant in South Charleston.

The 80,000-square-foot plant will employ 200 workers later this year and as many as 900 within two years. The company will lease the property from the state.

The state will provide $3.5 million in employment incentive payments, as well as purchase $15 million in buses manufactured at the facility.

“As we continue to diversify our economy, manufacturing these zero-emission school buses in West Virginia will open up a world of opportunities for our state,” Gov. Jim Justice said in a statement. “Not only will it bring hundreds of great paying jobs to the Kanawha Valley, but the ripple effects on our state’s economy are going to be off-the-charts.”

The Beast is a 90-seat school bus that has a range of 140 miles.

The zero-emission buses will replace diesel-powered ones. Studies have shown that diesel exhaust from school buses is harmful to children’s respiratory health.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill Congress passed last year includes $5 billion for low- and no-emissions school buses.

In New River Gorge National Park, Fire Is Part of A Healthy Forest

It’s an unseasonably mild day in December, and from a parking area on the edge of the New River Gorge, you couldn’t tell there had been a wildfire near here just days earlier.

As we make our way down a steeply sloped trail, we encounter some young rock climbers who seem hardly bothered by what just took place here.

Then it hits your nose. It’s the smell of a smoldering campfire. And once you’re inside the zone, it doesn’t go away. The ground is black and ashen. Scorched tree stumps and branches are everywhere.

This wasn’t a big fire compared to the ones that happen out west. It affected 132 acres. The New River Gorge National Park and Preserve encompasses 70,000 acres.

No one was injured or killed here, and there was no significant property damage.

In fact, our National Park Service guide, Dave Bieri, said the fire was beneficial to the forest.

“As you can see, there’s not really there’s a little bit of black on a few of the trees here, but almost all of its ground level,” he said. “So springtime comes and all the new growth pops up, you’re not even gonna be able to see there was a fire here unless you really look close, I think.”

Bieri said fire can help control invasive species that crowd out native plants. It can also reduce the amount of fuel on the forest floor, making it easier to contain future fires or making them less destructive.

That’s a change in strategy. For the better part of a century, it was thought that fires should be put out. In recent decades, fires have been set intentionally, including in the New River Gorge.

“Fire’s a natural part of the ecosystem,” Bieri said. “So any plant that’s supposed to be here, should be able to adapt to fire in their ecosystem, because it’s a natural part of the ecosystem before people around lightning started fires and there was nobody around that put them out.”

Prescribed burns aren’t the only tool available for managing forest fires. The fire zone in the New River Gorge included Nutallburg, a coal mining camp that was active from the 1920s to the 1950s.

Bieri said he wouldn’t want to start a fire intentionally near such a historic site. Instead, last summer, crews used leaf blowers and thinned out the fuel for a potential fire.

“That was one of our biggest concerns when this fire broke out this being right in the middle of it Nuttallburg is one of our major historic sites,” he said. “It’s really probably the best preserved coal site representing that time period anywhere.”

Though the fire came within feet of a structure that houses a conveyor belt used to transport coal from the mine mouth downhill to the tipple, it was not damaged.

“So what we do in an area like this is mechanical thinning, again to reduce the fuel loads all around these sites,” he said. “So when something like this happens, there’s not as much fuel to burn, and hopefully it stays off the buildings.”

As Bieri finished showing us around the fire zone, a light rain started falling. It soaks the blackened ground and restarts the life cycle of the forest floor. A cycle that includes fire.

Mon Power Asks PSC To Approve Upgrades To 2 Coal Plants

Two coal-burning power plants in northern West Virginia need upgrades to stay in operation, and local electricity customers will be asked to pay for them.

Mon Power is seeking approval from state regulators to upgrade wastewater treatment systems at the Fort Martin Power Station in Monongalia County and the Harrison Power Station in Harrison County.

The upgrades will bring the plants into compliance with Environmental Protection Agency rules.

If the West Virginia Public Service Commission approves the project, both plants can remain in operation beyond 2028.

According to the company’s filing, it plans to retire Fort Martin in 2035 and Harrison in 2040. The plants began operating in 1967 and 1972, respectively.

The plants produce about 3,000 megawatts of electricity and consume 7% of West Virginia’s annual coal production. Together, they employ 420 workers.

Starting in 2024, Mon Power customers will pay a monthly surcharge to cover the $142 million cost of the upgrades. It will add 51 cents to the average residential customer’s bill, according to the company’s filing.

The Public Service Commission earlier this year approved similar projects at Appalachian Power’s John Amos and Mountaineer power plants and Wheeling Power’s Mitchell plant.

State regulators in Kentucky and Virginia rejected the plans, so West Virginia ratepayers alone will have to bear the cost of upgrading the three plants.

Mon Power is a subsidiary of FirstEnergy. In July, FirstEnergy reached agreed to pay a $230 million penalty to settle federal charges related to a bribery scandal in Ohio in 2020.

Emmett Pepper Came Back To Charleston For Work And Family. Now He's On The City Council

Charleston attorney Emmett Pepper spent 12 years away from the city where he grew up.

Already active in the community, he’s taken a seat on the city council, though under tragic circumstances.

He was appointed to fill the vacancy created when his friend and mentor, John Kennedy Bailey, was killed in an accident in September when a tree fell on his car on Greenbrier Street. Pepper said he’s honored to continue Bailey’s legacy.

In the meantime, he’s continued his work arguing on behalf of West Virginia ratepayers at the Public Service Commission. He also helps lower income residents get financial assistance to make their homes more energy efficient.

Pepper spoke with me in the council chamber last month about why he left West Virginia, and why he came back. He also told me what his experience living in other parts of the country and visiting other countries changed about the way he saw his hometown.

So you grew up in West Virginia, right?

“I grew up in Charleston, I lived on the west side. I lived in Cross Lanes. I lived on the East End. And I graduated from George Washington High School. So I lived in the South Hills, too. And now I live on the East End. I went to college at Virginia Tech down in Blacksburg, Virginia. And after graduating, I ended up working in Richmond, and for some grassroots campaigns, and, and then moved to the northeast living in New York and Connecticut, working there for a grassroots organization called Citizens Campaign for the Environment.”

How long were you in the Northeast?

“So in 2008, I decided I wanted to go to law school, for some reason at the age of 30. And so I ended up going to law school in Washington, D.C., at American University, and graduated from there in 2012. And came back.”

Was there a specific opportunity that brought you back?

“I think like a lot of people, the reason I moved back was jobs. I had a job that I was able to come to here working for the Supreme Court, and family. My father still lives here. A lot of family in the area. My brother lives here. And so I live near my family. And it’s nice now raising my own family here.My three-year-old gets to see his grandfather. So it’s really nice to have that support network and to have that connection to a place.”

How do you feel about your appointment to the council?

“There’s a lot of emotions swirling around with being on City Council. The main one is that I’m honored and excited about the work. But of course, the circumstances are difficult. I considered him to be a mentor. He helped me. He was instrumental in creating the green team, which is a citizen-led group of volunteers to help find solutions for making the city more sustainable. We got through one policy related to energy efficiency for the city together and we were planning to do more work on recycling, and we’re already doing work on that. And I was really honored that the mayor and his widow both gave their vote of support for me to be appointed. It’s not something I sought. But when I was asked, of course, I felt honored and really just wanted to help burnish his legacy and continue the work I was already doing in the green team.”

How did living away from West Virginia help you see it differently?

“I think living somewhere else, and actually, even traveling somewhere else is so important to just getting some perspective on life. It was really formative for me to go to Europe, and to just see other people’s experience, and what it is to be human is different there than it is here. I lived in the Bronx, in New York. That was a very different experience from living in Charleston. And I’ll admit, growing up in Charleston, the one of the criticisms from people who live in other parts of West Virginia is the people from Charleston feel insular. I will admit, I have not spent as much time outside of the city, and around the state as I would like, since I moved back, I’ve done more of that. It’s something that I think is needed: For people to get around this state and to see the different ways of living in our state. Living somewhere else, you can get a perspective on your home in a way that you can just visiting somewhere else. And so I’ve noticed that a lot of the people who are involved and active in West Virginia, a lot of times are either people from other places or who have lived in other places. And that’s not always true, but it often is true. And and and I think that’s because it because of that perspective, and I’m actually really impressed when there’s people who have lived here all their lives who can still get that perspective because that even that speaks even more so to their abilities to to be able to think outside of the box and then to see the possibilities out there, which is harder if you haven’t experienced it firsthand.”