The West Virginia National Guard announced its newest leader Monday, while honoring its outgoing adjutant general of the last decade.
Brig. Gen. William E. “Bill” Crane will lead the state’s 6,500-member guard, consisting of citizen soldiers and airmen. Crane’s new role will include supervision of the guard’s day-to-day operations, in addition to the overall management of resources and personnel.
“We have a tremendous team,” Crane said during a virtual Change of Command ceremony Monday. “During this pandemic response, I’ve seen the Army and the Air Guard come together as one guard, one guard that includes our service members, their families, our retirees [and] our civilian workforce, both state and federal.”
Crane joined the National Guard in 1984, through the ROTC program and West Virginia University. He was promoted to Brigadier General in March, having started 36 years earlier as a vehicle driver for the 1092nd Engineer Battalion.
Crane is taking over after Maj. Gen. James Hoyer, who announced his own retirement in November. Hoyer promoted Crane to his latest rank in March.
Hoyer joined the West Virginia National Guard in 1983 through a joint ROTC program with West Virginia State University. Hoyer was promoted to adjutant general in 2011.
During Monday’s ceremony, Gov. Jim Justice thanked Hoyer for leading the state’s response to rebuilding hundreds of the homes lost to the 2016 floods, which killed 23 West Virginians and destroyed more than 1,500 homes and businesses.
Justice also awarded Hoyer with the West Virginia Distinguished Service Medal during Monday’s online event.
“It’s been an honor and a privilege to serve with and lead each one of the men and women of the National Guard,” Hoyer said Monday. “I would ask the men and the women of the National Guard to continue to lead by example, follow the Army and Air Force values. Our nation needs it more than ever before.”
Hoyer said he looks forward to helping the state “in a different uniform,” as he will remain on the governor’s COVID-19 task force and work for West Virginia University as senior associate vice president.
Can apples grow on an abandoned mine site? That’s a question the West Virginia National Guard is spending more than $5 million to find out.
West Virginia was given $30 million in 2016 to invest in economic development projects across the state. The money came from the 2015 omnibus federal spending bill passed by Congress. There was a catch, though—groups would have to build their projects on former Abandoned Mine Land sites.
The idea was partly to spur new jobs in coal country, but also to speed up reclamation of mine sites. Some of the funding went to develop industrial parks, and $5.3 million went to agricultural projects, includuing an apple orchard project in Nicholas County.
Apples on Abandoned Mine Sites
Sergeant Major Darrel Sears, with the West Virginia National Guard (WVNG), manages the project on an abandoned mine site in Muddlety, in Nicholas County.
Behind an electric fence, rows of young apple trees are growing over a hillside.
Credit Roxy Todd/ WVPB
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Young apple trees that were planted several years ago on the West Virginia National Guard’s apple orchard in Nicholas County
“Some of it needs a little bit of help in lime and fertilizer and balance for the pH, but honestly almost every soil in West Virginia does,” he said.
Sears said the majority of this property can be used to grow fruit trees. These 3,000 trees are expected to live about 30 years. They aren’t producing many apples yet, they’re only two years old. They’re also tiny, a type of dwarf apple tree that will need to be trellised.
The project is growing different varieties of apples, most of which are Golden Delicious, a variety of apple that was developed in West Virginia. They’re sweet, and Sears said that makes them great for more than just eating—the project has also attracted a major private investor, a producer of apple juice and apple cider vinegar.
“So, we already have a potential partner to develop further but it hasn’t been anything official,” he said. “If they don’t come somebody else will.”
If that type of private investment pans out, this orchard could eventually provide about 400 jobs, and $1.5 million in tax revenue for the state, according to an economic impact study West Virginia University conducted.
Sears and nine other employees work at this orchard now. By the end of next year, he said they’ll have planted 250,000 trees on this site.
Questions Abound
Not everyone is convinced this plan is the best scenario. West Virginia Department of Agriculture Commissioner Kent Leonhardt said he’d love to see the National Guard’s project succeed, but he has questions about their approach.
“Why did they choose juicing apples, when juicing apples are the lowest value of an apple that there is out there?” he said. “Why aren’t we going after table apples, and a processing plant to where we can cut them up to the sizes that our youth need in our schools?”
Newly planted apple rootstock at the orchard site in Muddlety, W.Va.
Using some of the apples for eating is still part of the WVNG’s plan, but they’re hoping that by bringing in a larger company, the project will have more long-term investment beyond the current grant cycle, which ends next year.
Another question Commissioner Leonhardt has is why is the National Guard investing in agriculture? Major General James A Hoyer, the man in charge of the WVNG, said their job is not only to deal with natural disasters, but also to help find ways to solve economic and environmental challenges.
He said that includes looking beyond coal for ways to use the land that’s been left behind by years of mining.
“I think our role, from a guard perspective, is to take that property and turn it into something for West Virginia’s future,” he said.
If the Soil Fits
But is a mine site really a suitable place to grow an apple orchard?
“It all depends on the kind of soil you’ve got and its productivity potential,” said Jeff Skousen, a professor of soil science at West Virginia University, and an expert in reclamation of mine sites. He estimates that there are about 500,000 to 600,000 acres of abandoned mine land sites in West Virginia.
Some have been reclaimed. Others have not.
“And I would guess that probably a fourth of that area might be suitable for farming,” said Skousen.
Most of this abandoned mine land is still owned by mine companies or private landowners, but it could be developed into a post mining industry, like growing apples, if the soil is free of contaminants, and if there are enough nutrients to support farming. Skousen helped the WVNG select the site for their Nicholas County orchard, and he tested the soil.
“These soils aren’t toxic; there’s nothing wrong with them,” he said. “They’re just fairly course … they don’t hold as much water and hold as many nutrients.”
Skousen advised the WVNG to add some potting soil to the dirt to give more nutrients and to help break up the tough clay. He said he’s hopeful the trees will continue to thrive and produce, but it will be a few more years till they’ll know for sure if they were successful.
Clay County Failure
An earlier apple tree project the WVNG was involved in was not successful. That site is located in Clay County, right along the Nicholas County line. Most, if not all, of the thousands of apple trees there have died. The ground appears dry, and there are pieces of coal shale in the dirt, nestled up against the dead trees.
Credit Roxy Todd/ WVPB
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Previous site of apple tree project in Clay County
This project was headed up by a non-profit called the Central Appalachia Empowerment Zone, and the West Virginia National Guard helped plant all the trees in 2015.
Hoyer with the WVNG said in the case of the Clay County project, the soil soil quality was adequate, rather the project lacked resources to manage the orchard after the trees were planted.
“The follow up on those trees is not like the follow up in the orchard that we have at Muddlety,” he said.
According to the state Department of Environmental Protection, the site where these apples were planted was mined by Greendale Coal, which had its permits revoked in the late ’80s. The DEP said reclamation was later done on the soil, but there is an issue with acid mine drainage.
It’s not exactly clear if any of these environmental issues had anything to do with why the apple trees died. Connie Lupartus, executive director the Central Appalachia Empowerment Zone, said she was told by the DEP that the site would be appropriate to grow apples, and they did grow initially. Lupartus said they only received a little more than $20,000 for this pilot project, and if she had to do it over again, she would make sure she has workers in place to care for the trees once they were growing.
Jeff Skousen, the WVU soil scientist, said that, generally speaking, if the reclamation on a mine site wasn’t completed, then it’s probably not the ideal location to grow apple trees.
“So we do have to be careful about sites like that,” he added.
For multiple reasons, Skousen said, the second orchard location in Muddlety is probably better suited for growing apples. That site was last mined in 1969, and though there is still some reclamation needed on the property, he’s hopeful that the soil and water quality will be able to support an orchard.
Bringing in Outside Perspective
The challenges in the first pilot project in Clay County did help the WVNG realize they needed some help.
They consulted with some fruit researchers at the Appalachia Fruit Research station in Kerneysville, West Virginia.
The reserachers are working with the WVNG to help find the apple varieties that grow the best on the Muddlety site. They’re also helping them grow some other fruit on this site.
“In our stone fruits we have a trait we call super sweet nectarines and peaches that have tremendous flavor profiles,” said Chris Dardirck, a molecular biologist with the Appalachia Fruit Research Station.
They’re also working on finding a way to help the WVNG grow pears, peaches, nectarines, plums, and even a kiwi variety that was developed specifically for West Virginia.
Time Will Tell
Back up at the Muddlety site, Sergeant Sears said, in a generation from now, apples and other fruit trees could be one of the things covering these hillsides. He added he does think this project will be more successful than the Clay County project.
“And as far as them doing better here there than over there, it’s just a matter of testing to see,” Sears said. “I mean, you don’t know until you get them going, but they appear at this point [to be] doing quite well here.”
He said in about four years, we’ll know for sure. That’s when the 250,000 trees they are planting for this pilot project are expected to start producing apples.
One of the last goals of former West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin’s administration, was to try to help southern West Virginia economically. Tomblin hopes he’s found a unique way to do that.
Space, that’s one of the things companies look for when they consider locating in West Virginia. They want plenty of it before they’ll commit to moving factories and warehouses to the state, but former Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin said the lack of flat land is often a challenge for those working to diversify West Virginia’s economy.
Credit Clark Davis / WV Public Broadcasting
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WV Public Broadcasting
“Because one of the things that we’ve found out from our commerce and development office is that we’ve lost a lot of potential investors coming in, simply because we could not find level ground, or enough ground suitable to build the kind of factory that they wanted,” Tomblin said.
Tomblin said many times companies need as much as 50-100 acres to locate in the state. And before he left the Governor’s Office, Tomblin made sure to find that much space for multiple companies.
The Hobet Mine site along Route 119 in Boone County boasts 12,000 acres of flat land. Tomblin says the former mine site could be used for both industrial and commercial development, helping to revitalize the region’s economy. A project to create a suitable site for business development began under the Tomblin administration and now Hobet is known as the Rock Creek Development Park, which Tomblin told West Virginia Public Broadcasting in December is already attracting attention.
“We have part of the utilities there now, but I think that’s going to, I’m just sorry we can’t get that complete before I leave, but we got it set in motion, so it’s moving around very well,” Tomblin said.
The Hobet site is still being mined, although at a much smaller scale than it once was, and the reclamation process is still underway. It’s that process, though that prepares the site for new tenants.
Among those tenants will be the West Virginia National Guard. In a unique relationship that’s worked in other areas of the state, the guard will use some of the land for training, as well a new maintenance facility and even agriculture projects aimed at helping veterans. Adjutant General James Hoyer leads the state’s guard.
“So I think it’s really up to our imagination what it could and how we leverage that available land and space to create opportunities for southern West Virginia that help us both diversify our economy as well as continue to enhance the opportunities that will still exist in a revitalized energy industry,” Hoyer said.
The guard’s use of the site will create a need to expand the infrastructure available there, including a more accessible route to the top of the mountain, and additional water and sewer lines to support an increased amount of people working on the property. Once that infrastructure has been created, the Boone County site will be more attractive to new investors, near a four-lane highway with direct access to Charleston and Yeager Airport.
The West Virginia National Guard currently has training sites in the state at Camp Dawson near Kingwood, the St. Albans readiness Center and the Memorial Tunnel Training Complex near Gallagher, West Virginia. And a site at Camp Branch in Logan County where they have a combat assault strip.
Credit Clark Davis / WV Public Broadcasting
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WV Public Broadcasting
The guard hopes by adding Rock Creek to the list, the West Virginia network of training facilities will be more attractive to other military operations from outside the state that need a one-stop shop for training.
The Guard is currently in the process of creating a maintenance shop at Rock Creek that will be able to service some of the guard’s vehicles and also those for other military branches.
“We’re going to be able to do some maintenance work that’s going to be tied to some mobility training using what we call non-standard vehicles, not necessarily tanks and bradley’s, but the non-standard vehicles that are used in a variety of the counter-terrorism missions that go on around the globe,” Hoyer said.
But Hoyer believes the activity on the site won’t start and end with the West Virginia National Guard.
“The access and capability that we have to bring more of that national security and homeland security to the state and generate an industrial base around that activity and we think we can do it more cost effectively and more timely and at the highest levels of quality,” Hoyer said. “So that makes our nation safer and creates jobs in West Virginia sounds like a winner to me.”
Initially the Guard will create 8 new positions at Rock Creek, but said that number will likely increase in the future as more of their projects get underway.
The West Virginia Department of Education said through a news release that they are working with the West Virginia National Guard following a directive from Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin. Tomblin has called for additional water testing to confirm that all schools in the counties impacted by the chemical leak on Jan. 9 are under 2 parts per billion (ppb).
“We have been testing water in all of our schools at the governor’s more stringent level of 10 parts per billion which is 100 times more rigorous than Centers for Disease Control & Prevention’s recommend level of 1 part per million,” said Adjutant General James Hoyer in the release.
“After testing thousands of lab samples, chemists can now confidently test at 2ppb. This additional safety factor is one more example of how the governor has gone above and beyond the federal recommendations to bring added confidence to parents, students and staff to ensure the highest level of public safety,” he added.
It is expected that the testing will occur over the weekend and results should be back by mid-week. Any school that tests above the two parts per billion will be re-flushed and retested. Moving forward, the Rapid Response Team established earlier this month to address issues in schools will continue to answer and investigate calls.
“Student safety continues to be our top priority,” said Gov. Tomblin. “As a parent, I understand that families need the additional peace of mind that comes with this testing.”
In the meantime, schools will continue to provide hand sanitizer and bottled water for drinking and cooking, according to the release.
“We are taking every precaution because we know that parents trust us to keep their children safe,” said Jim Phares, West Virginia Superintendent of Schools.
On The Legislature Today on Tuesday, February 18, Phares said he doesn’t know of any plans for the Rapid Response Team, which includes a member of the Department of Environmental Protection’s Division Air Quality, to begin testing the air quality in schools. The smell and fumes in school is what is believed to be linked to symptoms of burning eyes and noses, as well as fainting.
It’s been nearly three days since a “do not use” water advisory was issued for more than 300,000 people in the Kanawha Valley, but now officials are saying the end may be in sight.
It took a team of chemists from the National Guard a full day to produce a method testing the amount of crude MCHM in the water at the contaminated treatment facility. The chemical is used in a coal washing process and leaked into the water supply Thursday morning from a storage tank along the Elk River.
Col. Greg Grant said the amount of chemical present is trending downward with each test, but must be consistently below 1 part per million for a 24 hour period before West Virginia American Water can begin to flush their piping system.
“What we’re looking at is a broad spectrum of data that gives us a composite look at this water over a period of time to make sure it’s safe,” he said at a press conference Saturday night, “and those data points are showing that we are moving in the right direction.”
Grant said his teams would collect more than 100 samples overnight from the treatment plant and throughout the system to increase the data set and give them more accurate information.
“These individual samples are like a puzzle piece. We have a bunch of puzzle pieces, but we don’t have the picture yet,” added West Virginia American Water President Jeff McIntyre.
An outside contractor has been hired to help expedite the testing process of these samples, a process they’ve narrowed down from 46 to 18 minutes.
McIntyre said it will still likely take days to flush the system even if they have the proper data set Sunday, but customers should not start flushing their own plumbing now.
McIntyre warned running your water will deplete the amount they are able to test and compromise the recovery efforts. Customers will be given detailed directions on how to handle the process at the appropriate time.
Businesses in Charleston may soon be allowed to reopen, but West Virginia American Water customers will still have to wait- maybe as long as days- before the “do not use” advisory is lifted.
Kanawha Charleston Health Department Director Dr. Rahl Gutpa said the county health department will begin reviewing plans from businesses that can show they can safely reopen their doors.
He said they will have to find an alternative source of water to be approved and will go through onsite reviews for safety.
Adjutant General James Hoyer says the National Guard and a team of experts have created a standard methodology for testing water samples.
Friday, Hoyer said water samples were testing at 1.7 parts per million. The Centers for Disease Control says the water is safe for use and consumption at 1 part per million, but West Virginia American Water President Jeff McIntyre said they are not releasing Saturday’s testing sample results- at least not yet.
“We can collect all the samples we want, but the equipment that we run it through is very sophisticated and it takes time to run those samples,” McIntyre said. “So, we have a lot of samples that we’ve collected that we’ve not even had time to run.”
Each sample takes 20 minutes to test.
McIntyre said once his company can assure the water processed in the treatment plant is at the CDC approved level then they can begin flushing their water lines. Giving customers the closest thing to a timeline they’ve received yet, McIntyre said the flushing process will likely take days.
As far as the leak site itself, Mike Dorsey with the state Department of Environmental Protection said approximately 7,500 gallons of Crude MCHM leaked from a one inch hole in a storage tank, but they’re still not sure how the hole got there.
The DEP has set up booms in the river to collect any water that may still be leaching from the shoreline and have dug multiple interceptor trenches to collect any contaminated groundwater.
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West Virginia American Water President Jeff McIntyre told members of the media it may take days to flush the entire water distribution system before people can resume using their water.
Dorsey said Freedom Industries- the company responsible for the contamination-is now cooperating fully.
“There’s a great deal more cooperation now than there was early on,” he said. “It’s a serious issue and it’s in everyone’s best interest to communicate well.”
There was a concern about the chemical continuing to move downriver, impacting the drinking water of more than just West Virginia American Water customers, but Dorsey said by the time the chemical reaches the Kanawha River and then eventually the Ohio River, he believes it will be too diluted to impact public health.
