West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Telling West Virginia's Story
Berkeley County is giving residents an opportunity to recycle food as well as paper, aluminum and glass.
The Berkeley County Solid Waste Authority’s food waste collection program is part of a 12-month composting pilot initiative funded by a $7,400 federal grant.
The authority is encouraging residents, businesses, church groups, restaurants and others to participate in the program.
Food waste that will be accepted includes meat, poultry, fish, table scraps, bread, coffee grounds and tea bags.
The federal government will provide additional help to two West Virginia counties to reduce drug abuse and drug trafficking.
Berkeley and Harrison counties are among 26 counties and cities in 11 states designated as high intensity drug trafficking areas.
Office of National Drug Control Policy acting director Michael Botticelli announced the designations on Monday.
The designation increases the counties’ access to federal resources and information sharing among federal, state and local law enforcement.
Seventeen other West Virginia counties previously were designated as high intensity drug trafficking areas.
Courthouses and police departments across the state have been collecting prescription drugs for a few years now. The idea is to cut down on waste in the streams and keep unused prescriptions out of the hands of drug abusers. The Berkeley County Sheriff’s Department says collections have almost doubled in the past 5 months.
Since the Berkley County Sheriff’s Department moved last March to its new office in Martinsburg, Chief Gary Harmison has seen an increase in residents properly disposing of their pharmaceutical waste.
Harmison says that before their move, the Sheriff’s Department only needed to empty the drop box once every four months. He has now seen the result double having to empty the drop box twice every three to four months. Harmison suspects the proximity to several residential areas helped increase the rate. The Department’s previous location could only be reached by most via car.
Chief Harmison says the Department is excited to offer the residents of the area an opportunity to properly dispose of their medical waste and help protect the environment, as septic and sewage treatment do not break down most drugs, and can greatly affect groundwater.
This effort is intended to bring local focus to the issue of increasing improper disposal of pharmaceutical waste and drug abuse.
As the demand for Internet resources increases, libraries are the starting place for free information. However, budget cuts have forced libraries across the state to scale back drastically on operating hours and access to services, just when it seems those resources are most needed. The Jefferson County branch of the League of Women Voters hosted a public forum on ways the community in the Eastern Panhandle can support the public libraries in their area. These libraries say they have much to offer the public but need more funding.
At the public forum, five directors of the Berkeley and Jefferson County libraries gave insight on the services their particular library provides. From delivery services, to early literacy programs, to collections of distinctive Eastern Panhandle history, all five libraries spoke on the uniqueness of what their library has to offer. Gretchen Fry, the director of the Bolivar Harpers Ferry Public Library, argues that while online bookstore rentals may seem great, they can’t compete with what a library can do for its patrons.
“Libraries are able to provide a large selection of eBooks because of the fact that they actually have access to a number of vendors,” said Fry, “whereas Amazon actually is more restricted in what vendors they can provide, because a lot of them won’t sell to Amazon, so we actually can purchase a larger variety of eBooks.”
Fry says some publishers of certain bestsellers choose to sell to libraries over resources like Amazon. Because of this, libraries tend to provide a larger amount of online and physical collections.
“People would prefer to actually go to their library, because they can get a wider selection and it’s free–they don’t have to pay anything.A nd the way the current situation actually with libraries is set up, they don’t have to pay fines either for library books, like a traditional library book. What happens is after you check out the book, it just expires, you don’t have to pay a fine.”
Pam Coyle, the director of the Martinsburg-Berkeley Public Library, spoke on the upcoming November 4th levy in Kanawha County. If the levy would pass, the libraries in the county would receive over $3 million for five years sponsored by the Board of Education. While the pass of the levy would not directly affect the libraries in the Eastern Panhandle, Coyle does think it could send a very prominent message throughout the state.
“Kanawha County has its own levy that’s going out. That’s not, other than interlibrary loan, will not affect us, but it will affect the attitude of, when we have to go out probably for our own levy, which may or may not happen in the future, depending on what happens with the school board, and libraries across the state. Because if it can get passed in Kanawha County, then it can hopefully pass in every county that they could have their own levy, that’s dedicated specifically to the library and not dependent on any other agency,” noted Coyle.
With big dreams of expanding, the Jefferson and Berkeley County libraries hope to receive more funding in the near future. And if the November 4th levy passes in Charleston, they hope it will provide a ringer to the rest of the state that libraries need help.
Updated Wednesday, March 26, 2014 at 12:30 p.m.:
West Virginia State Police say two multi-vehicle accidents on Interstate 81 during whiteout conditions have left two people dead and more than half a dozen others injured.
State police spokesman Lt. Michael Baylous says the fatalities occurred in a seven-vehicle wreck in the northbound lanes around 8:45 a.m. Wednesday. Five to seven people were taken by helicopters to hospitals in the area.
Another accident involving 10 vehicles occurred in the southbound lanes in the same area. Numerous injuries were reported.
Baylous says both pileups occurred in whiteout conditions caused by heavy snow and wind.
The interstate is shut down while police investigate the accidents. Motorists are being detoured onto Route 11.
The Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office is investigating the southbound crash.
Original post from Wednesday, March 26, 2014 at 11:20 a.m.:
Three people are dead following a multi-vehicle crash on Interstate 81 in the Falling Waters area of Berkeley County.
A Berkeley County Central Dispatch supervisor says the wreck involved seven vehicles, including a tractor-trailer. The supervisor identified herself as operator 4.
She says the accident occurred in the northbound lanes and was reported at 8:37 a.m. Wednesday. Witnesses told dispatchers that road conditions were slippery at the time.
Two other accidents also were reported on I-81 in the area Wednesday morning.
Sgt. Michael Baylous of the West Virginia State Police said in a news release that I-81 is closed in both directions and will remain closed for 2-3 hours or until the investigation is complete.
Baylous said an alternate route has been established along Route 11, which parallels I-81, however, travel is slow on the alternate route due to heavy traffic volume.
Both the northbound and southbound lanes are closed.
When I signed up to be a judge at the Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting, I thought it would just be a bit of fun — a relaxing weekend in an historic West Virginia mountain spa town.
Then came the water crisis: a massive spill of the coal-cleaning chemical MCHM into our water supply, and more than a week under a “do not use” order.
My seven-year-old son, Max, came down with the stomach flu right in the middle of all this. We couldn’t use tap water, not to wash our hands or even our clothes. I’ll spare you the details, but it was rough.
So you can understand how the spill changed my outlook toward a water-tasting competition. On the day of the competition, I arrived completely unsure how to judge the quality of water. I learned to trust my sense of smell — in more ways than one.
This is an event some Berkeley Springs leaders dreamed up 24 years ago to showcase their historic springs (home of “George Washington’s Bathtub.”)
Contestants from five continents entered, as far away as Tanzania, Bosnia, New Zealand, and South Korea. A panel of mostly novices like me were to judge dozens samples of tap water and bottled water (both sparkling and non-carbonated.)
We were trained by watermaster Arthur von Wiesenberger, whose name so perfectly matches his job that I am skeptical whether it is real.
“People will say that water is just like air: it has no taste or smell,” von Wiesenberger told us.
“Well, ask the people in Beijing if the air has no smell — or the people in Charleston about the water,” he said, and looked sheepishly at me.
Ah, the smell. That black licorice smell. After the spill, it wasn’t just emanating from the water. It permeated the air of the entire Kanawha Valley. One night, the anise odor so strong, we could smell it inside our house. It was astringent. It hurt to breathe it too deeply.
After state officials finally stopped the MCHM from entering the water supply, after they told us to flush our pipes, you could still smell it in the water for weeks. I would engage in a nervous ritual: run the tap, lean in a little and sniff three times — and there it would be.
"Well, ask the people in Beijing if the air has no smell — or the people in Charleston about the water," he said, and looked sheepishly at me.
So at the water tasting, when von Wiesenberger told us to sniff the water three times to judge its odor, I knew exactly what to do. I had trained.
Good water, von Wiesenberger told us, should have no odor. It may have a taste, based on its mix of beneficial minerals. But it should not smell.
Soon, I was judging the first category in the event: municipal tap water. I soon realized my sense of smell was one of the best indicators of whether I’d like the taste. If the sample smelled of chlorine or other chemicals, I was sure to hate it.
I’ve never spent much time thinking about smells, but my son does. Max has autism, and he has trouble understanding the world through speech.
Max has this habit of bringing all food and liquids to his nose and smelling it — sniff, sniff, sniff — before deciding whether he’ll eat or drink it. My wife and I joke that he acts as if we’re trying to poison him.
After the water crisis, I get it. Smell is what you depend upon when you don’t trust anything else. It is the most primal sense.
The other day at a grocery store in Charleston, I saw they were selling a t-shirt about the water crisis. It featured a man wearing a gas mask and the phrase, “Trust no one.”
That’s the lasting damage of the spill in my community. We were failed by so many institutions: government, private industry, the water company.
I’m the leader of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, and I feel some responsibility to help turn that distrust and anger into something positive. How can we facilitate a discussion about moving West Virginia forward, and how can we, as a state, rebuild that trust?
Meanwhile, back at the water tasting, they announced the winners. I learned that Clearbrook, British Columbia has the best tasting tap water in the world, and Santa Ana, California is tops in the U.S.
And then I looked at the list of winners throughout the competition’s 24-year history. And there it was: Charleston, West Virginia, in the top five for best tasting tap water, in three separate years.
Having the best water in the world is a proxy for many other things — clean air, clean living, and a well-functioning, competent government. Maybe by following our sense of smell, by making our water tops in the world again, my hometown can convince the world and ourselves that we’re a wonderful little city in the mountains once again.
