Emily Allen, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Bill For Air, Water Quality Rules Clears Senate Judiciary Committee

A bill moving forward in the Senate would lessen some of the state’s criteria for limiting pollutants in West Virginia waterways.

House Bill 2382 is a rules bundle, updating several air-and-water-quality rules that the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection enforces with recommendations from the federal government.

One of these rules, dealing with water quality, would adopt 24 of 94 recommended updates that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency made in 2015, all relating to the regulation of certain pollutants in waterways.

In testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee Monday, DEP Deputy Secretary Scott Mandirola said the department was working monthly with stakeholders to consider adopting another 32 of these recommendations from the federal government.

States are allowed to adopt EPA recommendations and amend them using certain scientific standards. Mandirola said West Virginia used “one-in-a-million” cancer risk and federal fish consumption standards, in reworking the 24 new criteria included in House Bill 2382.

About half of the 24 updates would result in less regulation of water pollutants than West Virginia already has in place.

“Any time you increase exposure to toxins and carcinogens, you’re increasing risk to public health,” said Angie Rosser, executive director of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition. Several members of that group spoke against the bill during a public hearing in February.

Rosser also said that her group is frustrated that the rules bundle excludes the 32 updates the DEP is still considering. All 56 updates were first proposed to the state Legislature in 2019.

The state Senate ordered the DEP to study the rules more after objections from some of the industries that the department regulates.

Mandirola said Monday that the 24 updates being introduced this year simply had the most consensus around them. He also said that none of the updates in House Bill 2382 would result in changes to West Virginia’s adherence to the Clean Water Act.

Ohio and Pennsylvania have adopted their own versions of all 94 of the recommended criteria from the EPA, according to testimony from Mandirola.

If this rules bundle passes the Senate, already having cleared the House of Delegates, the EPA still has to approve all updates before the DEP can enforce them.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

Bill Relaxing Plumbing, Electrician Requirements Clears W.Va. Legislature

A bill relaxing licensing standards for elevator mechanics, electricians, plumbers, crane operators, sprinkler fitters and HVAC technicians has cleared both chambers of the West Virginia Legislature.

House Bill 2008 reduces hourly experience requirements for certified sprinkler fitters, electricians and HVAC technicians. It allows plumbers to achieve certification by passing a written exam, replacing previous hours-of-experience requirements for that profession.

The bill would allow U.S. veterans who have worked as HVAC technicians for the military to apply for certification using their experience from that time.

The legislation further nixes state regulatory requirements for crane operators, still subjecting them to U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirements.

Republicans who supported the bill, in both the House and Senate, said it was about increasing job opportunities in West Virginia.

“The idea is not to be hurting jobs, but to get government and bureaucracy out of the way and still achieve these things in a safe manner,” said House Majority Leader Amy Summers, R-Taylor, before the House’s vote Thursday.

Democrats in both chambers who opposed the legislation questioned the bill’s attention to consumer safety.

Del. Phillip DiSerio, D-Brooke, said Thursday the legislation would “steal” jobs from West Virginians.

“Let’s just make it so anybody can come here and work,” DiSerio said. “Let’s not worry about our citizens. … Let’s just go ahead and vote this bill through.”

The House voted 59 to 40 to advance the legislation, with amendments from the Senate, to the governor Thursday.

The Senate voted in favor of the legislation, 17 to 16, on Wednesday.

This is one of a few highly debated bills originating in the House of Delegates to relax occupational licensing rules.

House Bill 2007, which is still in the Senate Government Organization Committee, would create a “universal occupational licensing recognition act,” calling on the state to recognize licensing achieved for certain professions from other states.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

House Democrats Introduce NAACP-Requested Resolution For Morrisey Impeachment

A resolution introduced in the House of Delegates calls on the House Judiciary Committee to investigate state attorney general Patrick Morrisey and his involvement in an unsuccessful lawsuit questioning the results of the 2020 election.

West Virginia was one of 17 states that joined the Texas attorney general in a legal effort challenging 2020 election results in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — states where president Joe Biden won over Donald Trump.

These also were states where the West Virginia NAACP says there was unprecedented Black voter turnout. Owens Brown, president of the state chapter, said the group requested House Resolution 15, filed by Dels. Mike Pushkin, D-Kanawha, and Danielle Walker, D-Monongalia, as a result.

“His judgement, we cannot trust him,” said Brown of Morrisey. “I feel as though, as a citizen of West Virginia, an African American citizen, I cannot trust him.”

Morrisey was unavailable for comment Thursday, but spokesperson Curtis Johnson for his office said the resolution itself was “frivolous” and a “political stunt.”

Johnson wrote in an email that the resolution “demonstrates a lack of leadership and the degree to which they are out of step with the West Virginia voters, an electorate for which, ironically, they themselves seek to disenfranchise in nullifying the votes of all races, ethnicities and creeds that elected the Attorney General.”

The resolution, introduced in the House on Thursday, has been referred to House Judiciary, according to the legislative website.

House leadership did not respond to a request for comment on whether House Republicans would take up the resolution.

Pushkin acknowledged that it was a longshot in a state legislature where there’s a Republican supermajority in both chambers, but he believes it meets the state’s definition of maladministration, an impeachable offense.

“It was maladministration to involve West Virginia, knowing that they weren’t going to win the lawsuit,” Pushkin said of Morrisey. “He chose to enter the lawsuit just to appeal to his base.”

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

New W.Va. House Bill Creates Minimum Standards For Hiring Local Officers

A bill headed to the West Virginia Senate creates new standards for the hiring of law enforcement officers.

If it becomes law, House Bill 2891 would require applicants for local law enforcement agencies to have graduated from at least high school, and to complete both a psychological assessment and polygraph exam prior to training.

The legislation bars applicants who have been dishonorably discharged from any branch of the U.S. Armed Forces, or anyone who has been convicted of or admitted to crimes of domestic violence, drug offenses or “moral turpitude.”

The bill also prohibits law enforcement agencies from hiring anyone who can’t transport or possess firearms. Applicants must consent to a background check.

The bill’s lead sponsor, Del. David Kelly, R-Tyler, said Friday the legislation spells out work that most police departments and sheriff’s offices already do.

“Most of what we put in the bill, it’s already implied,” said Kelly, a former sheriff. He sponsored the legislation with other delegates who have law enforcement backgrounds.

“We want to be proactive. I think being proactive is better than being reactive, any day.”

The bill passed Monday with one noticeable change. An earlier version of the legislation would’ve set the minimum hiring age to 21 years old, but delegates voted Friday to return that age to 18, saying anything older would restrict local law enforcement agencies that are already struggling to secure applicants.

The bill includes provisions for officers-in-training. Namely, if an officer is still being certified, they have to work under direct, physical supervision of another fully trained officer.

The bill, for municipal and county law enforcement agencies, replicates standards that the West Virginia State Police already follows for its own troopers.

Before sending the bill to the full House of Delegates, members of the House Judiciary Committee, who first considered the bill, heard from representatives of the West Virginia State Police and the state Law Enforcement Professional Standards subcommittee, which oversees the statewide certification of local officers.

House Bill 2891 passed 89 to 9 with two members absent.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

Frontier Agrees to Regular Meetings With House Committee, Liaison

Frontier Communications agreed Wednesday to quarterly meetings with the House Technology and Infrastucture Committee, as well as the creation of a liaison between the company and the committee for constituent complaints.

The agreements come as Frontier is wrapping up a national Chapter 11 bankruptcy process, and a few months after the Federal Communications Commission announced it would award the company more than $247 million over the next 10 years for broadband deployment, through the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund (RDOF).

“It really positions us even better,” said Allison Ellis, Frontier senior vice president of regulatory affairs, during a hearing with the committee. “Because we are freed from the $10 billion worth of debt that we [were] previously trying to shoulder, and that will give us more flexibility in the RDOF work that we’re doing.”

Frontier, a national telecommunications company, is the state’s main landline phone provider. After acquiring territory formerly owned by Verizon in 2010, the company made a series of commitments to the Public Service Commission, which regulates the company for landline phone service, to expand broadband access.

Although its coverage is nearly statewide, Ellis said, only about 14% of the state’s population uses Frontier for voice services and only about 10% are Frontier internet customers.

Most recently, in bankruptcy agreements and following a third-party audit of the company’s landline and broadband offerings, Frontier pledged to spend $200 million on capital improvements by the end of 2023, and to expand its broadband fiber offerings to at least 150,000 households by 2027.

Additionally, in applying for funding through RDOF, Frontier committed to raising nearly another $250 million in private capital to fund the construction of broadband infrastructure, in addition to the FCC’s $247 million.

The RDOF announcement was met by opposition from several state lawmakers, including those on the House Technology and Infrastructure Committee, and U.S. Sen Shelley Moore Capito, who said in December the company’s mismanagement and delays in past federally funded programs “raises significant questions about their ability to manage federal funds of this magnitude.”

Ellis said through restructuring, Frontier is in a better place to handle these projects now.

“I will also say that on a go-forward basis, the company is committed to a very rigorous approach to any additional borrowing. We absolutely want to guard against any future financial difficulty,” Ellis said. “We think that we’re just not going to have the issues that we had previously.”

Members also heard from the company on the results of Frontier’s performance review audit for the PSC, as well as previous efforts to build out to unserved West Virginia communities through federal funding and emergency response efforts.

The committee first invited Frontier representatives to a hearing in late February. They also received documents from Frontier related to the company’s progress on federal funded broadband expansion programs, as well as a settlement with the West Virginia attorney general’s office in 2015.

House Technology and Infrastructure Chair Daniel Linville suggested toward the end of Wednesday’s hearing that the committee will be inviting more providers in the future.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

House Passes Bill To Exempt Oil, Gas Operators From Aboveground Storage Tank Act

The West Virginia House of Delegates voted Wednesday to roll back regulation of above-ground storage tanks owned by oil and gas operators.

House Bill 2598 applies to some of the only oil and gas tanks still regulated by the 2014 Aboveground Storage Tank Act, since most other oil and gas tanks have been exempted from the law in the last seven years since its passage.

The tanks are used by operators to store byproducts from drilling oil and gas — mostly brine water, but as some experts testified to the House Energy and Manufacturing Committee last month, the tanks are also known to hold pollutants like benzene, barium and radium, which can lead to anemia, high blood pressure and cancer.

While supporters of House Bill 2598 said Wednesday the bill could help small oil and gas operators, overwhelmed by regulation costs, opponents say it walks back important regulations protecting West Virginia water quality.

Those who oppose the bill include the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees the implementation of the Aboveground Storage Tank Act.

The DEP estimates that the bill will free roughly 890 new tanks from its regulation, all of which are within five hours of public drinking water intakes.

“These are tanks in zones of critical concern,” said Deputy Cabinet Secretary Scott Mandirola on Wednesday. “These are the sources of potential significant contamination that water utilities have to identify.”

Others who have spoken out against the bill — including environmental advocacy groups like the West Virginia Rivers Coalition and the West Virginia Environmental Council — say that House Bill 2598 is a step backward from laws enacted seven years ago following the Freedom Industries Spill of 2014, which left more than 300,000 West Virginians without drinking water for a week after a storage tank leaked more than 10,000 gallons of toxic materials into the Elk River.

“The Freedom Industry tank of 2014 was not a brine tank, it was not a crude oil tank,” said House Energy and Manufacturing Committee Chair Bill Anderson, R-Wood. “Let’s draw that distinction right here, and right now.”

According to Anderson, the bill supports his committee’s work over the last three years to address more than 4,500 abandoned natural gas wells across the state.

“If we do not give some relief to these operators, we’re going to add several hundred more tanks, where people are going to be going bankrupt, and leaving us additional tanks to plug,” Anderson said.

Others who spoke in favor of the bill included Dels. Roger Conley, R-Wood, and Clay Riley, R-Harrison, both who said they have done work in industries tied to the inspection of these tanks.

Democrats, including those who lived in Charleston during the Freedom Industries spill of 2014, said the bill would undo an important law.

“Every parent worries about the first time they’re gonna have to protect their child against some sort of imminent danger, ” said Del. Kayla Young, D-Kanawha. Young was a new mother living in Kanawha County at the time of the spill.

“My danger was the faucet. One day, I’ll have to explain to him why he had bottled water baths for the first year of his life. … And one day, I’ll have to explain to him why I was part of a government that could let that happen to other people’s children.”

Before passing the House, supporters — including House Energy and Manufacturing Vice Chair John Kelly, R-Wood — pointed to a low number of leaks since the Aboveground Storage Tank Act’s enactment.

Del. Evan Hansen, D-Monongalia, told members Wednesday this isn’t a reason to exempt oil and gas tank operators, but rather a sign that the law is doing its job.

“We’ve heard that leaks have occurred from these tanks and have not impacted our drinking water,” Hansen said. “That’s a good thing. That’s because this program is working.”

The bill, which passed the House 74 to 26 with two Kanawha County Republicans voting against it, moves onto the Senate for further consideration.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.