On this West Virginia Morning, the Mountain Valley Pipeline is under scrutiny from federal regulators after it failed a pressure test in Virginia last month. Curtis Tate spoke with Cynthia Quarterman, the former head of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration from 2009 to 2014, about the federal agency’s role in regulating 3 million miles of pipeline.
On this West Virginia Morning, the Mountain Valley Pipeline is under scrutiny from federal regulators after it failed a pressure test in Virginia last month. Curtis Tate spoke with Cynthia Quarterman, the former head of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration from 2009 to 2014, about the federal agency’s role in regulating 3 million miles of pipeline.
Also, in this show, just before the start of the fall semester last year, the band director at Midland Trail High School left for another job. With no one else to take over, senior Carol Nottingham stepped in. We bring you this story from student reporter Kelsie Carte.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.
Emily Rice produced this episode.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
The Disaster Unemployment Assistance program is accepting applications from residents whose employment was affected by severe weather incidents in April that spanned West Virginia.
West Virginia’s Disaster Unemployment Assistance (DUA) program is now accepting applications from residents whose employment was affected by the storms, mudslides and tornadoes that struck the state in April.
The DUA program provides unemployment benefits to individuals whose jobs are “lost or interrupted as a direct result of a major disaster,” according to WorkForce West Virginia, the state labor agency that administers the program.
DUA benefits are made available when a natural disaster is declared a major disaster by the president of the United States.
President Joe Biden approved a FEMA major disaster declaration last week, opening the state to the program’s benefits.
Residents living or working in Boone, Cabell, Fayette, Kanawha, Lincoln, Marshall, Nicholas, Ohio, Putnam, Wayne or Wetzel counties — designated disaster areas by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) — can apply for the benefits.
Individuals who can qualify for the program include those unable to commute to work due to the disaster; those who were unable to start a new work position; those with a financially supportive household member who died due to the disaster; and those who were injured due to the extreme weather incidents.
DUA benefits are also available to self-employed workers and farmers, who are not typically eligible for unemployment insurance benefits, according to WorkForce West Virginia. These individuals must submit proof of past earnings within three weeks of their application to qualify.
The deadline to submit DUA claims over the April disaster is July 22. To apply for the benefits, residents must contact WorkForce West Virginia via email at ucpolicy@wv.gov or over the phone at 304-558-3340 between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.
Residents who suffered property damage during the April storms might also be eligible for financial assistance through FEMA. For more information, see West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s previous reporting.
Appalachia produces less coal than it once did, but that coal is still desired around the world for making steel. The demand is now creating problems for people who live near the terminals where coal is moved from train to ship, to then be carried overseas. Residents of Norfolk and Newport News, Virginia, say airborne coal dust from export terminals is getting on their cars, on their houses, in their lungs. Residents have started to take matters into their own hands.
This conversation originally aired in the May 26, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.
Appalachia produces less coal than it once did, but that coal is still desired around the world for making steel.
The demand is now creating problems for people who live near the terminals where coal is moved from train to ship, to then be carried overseas. Residents of Norfolk and Newport News, Virginia, say airborne coal dust from export terminals is getting on their cars, on their houses, in their lungs. Residents have started to take matters into their own hands.
A new podcast called Crosswinds links that fight to communities in West Virginia. It’s produced by an environmental justice research project at the University of Virginia called the Repair Lab.
Mason Adams spoke with Crosswinds producer Adrian Wood, as well as Lathaniel Kirts, a pastor and activist in one of the affected communities.
The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.
Adams: The podcast that you all are working on, looks at a problem affecting communities in Norfolk and Newport News, Virginia, but then zooms back out to trace this issue to its roots in Appalachia. Lathaniel, you live in the Hampton Roads area of Virginia. Can you share how you became aware of this coal dust issue?
Kirts: In the Hampton Roads area, there are two different distinct communities that we’re focusing on. One being Norfolk, and the other being Newport News. I am from Norfolk, Virginia — a native of the area. I grew up there. I applied for a job with a coalition called New Virginia Majority. They were focusing on environmental justice. This was back in 2017, and it was about the coal dust issue that was happening in the Lambert’s Point area of Norfolk. so I began working with them building their social media campaign, and helping to spread awareness to try to find something meaningful to change about the coal dust issue.
At that moment, they were focusing on covering the coal. Now, I have recently moved to Newport News, and I realized the same thing that was happening in Norfolk was [also] happening in Newport News as well. So that’s when I started this project with a dear friend of mine, who I was raised with in Norfolk [named] Malcolm Jones. He and I are both practitioners-in-residence with the University of Virginia’s Repair Lab. The Repair Lab’s goal is to help focus on environmental justice in predominately African-American communities, and try to build a coalition around these individuals who do meaningful changes around the work of environmental justice — namely in this area, coal dust.
Lathaniel Kirts and Malcolm Jones of the Repair Lab.
Photo Credit: Crosswinds
Adams: Can you describe these neighborhoods, a little bit in Newport News in Norfolk, that are near these coal terminals? Who are the folks that are being affected by this?
Kirts: Two distinctly different communities, [with] some very similar traits. I love them both. Norfolk is of course the biggest military hub in the world. The world’s largest naval base is in Norfolk. It has a diverse population. In Norfolk, when you get to Lambert’s Point community, it is a predominantly Black community, which also has a hub of college students from Old Dominion University there as well. So you’ve got a lot of young people coming in from all over the commonwealth and all over the nation to this place.
Then you have Newport News, which is right across the water. Where the coal terminal sits is a predominantly Black community as well. A lot of poverty as well in the area, a lot of systemic issues are there. I am also a pastor in this community. So this is something that is near and dear to my heart, because I want to see the people — who I pastor, who I work alongside, who I live alongside — to be able to thrive and have a meaningful life, to be able to breathe fresh and clean air.
Adams: These communities are dealing with issues involving coal dust blowing off of the ships and trains into their communities. What are the folks there doing to try to address this problem?
Kirts: There’ve been petitions signed. Yard signs have been put up that say, “Coal dust kills.” They are going out and they’re protesting. They’ve been doing it for years with protests at the former Norfolk Southern headquarters in Norfolk (they have since moved on to Atlanta). They’ve written letters. They’ve contacted their legislators on a national, state and local level. They have gone to city council meetings. They have recorded oral histories through the University of Virginia. We’ve had so many different things that they’ve been doing because, once again, this is affecting their community. What we want to do is to make more people aware, and hopefully come up with some type of meaningful legislation that can stop the spread of coal dust in our area.
Coal yards at Norfolk Southern’s pier at Lambert’s Point, Norfolk, Virginia.
Photo Credit: Crosswinds
Adams: Adrian, how did you get involved with this community effort?
Wood: I first met Lathaniel through working with the Repair Lab. I’m the full-time multimedia producer for the Repair Lab. Part of what the Repair Lab does is offer resources to our practitioners-in-residence who work with us for a one-year duration residency, and we offer them resources like academic access to libraries or different kinds of academic connections and policy research and also multimedia production around the topic or the issue that they’re bringing to us. I work as a resource for our practitioners-in-residence, and support the work that they’re doing with environmental justice storytelling that shows the work that’s already been done and also tells us about the work that’s to come.
Adams: How did the idea for the podcast take off?
Wood: The idea for the podcast came because podcasts can be really versatile forms of media. Also, my expertise is in sound and audio editing, so it was maybe the best use of my talents. With the resources at-hand, it made sense. It worked for what we were trying to do, which is to disseminate the story about coal dust, environmental racism and Hampton Roads to the rest of the nation and even the rest of the world. Podcasts work really well for that, because little segments can be picked up by other media entities, and it’s a lot easier to get something broadcast on radio than it is to get something on Netflix. Podcasts also work really well for amplifying and elevating the voices of community members and really allowing them to tell their own stories and speak for themselves around the issues that have been affecting them sometimes for generations.
Adams: So as y’all begin to develop this podcast series, you traced the route of these coal cars back up the railroad tracks and to where the coal was produced, including in West Virginia. So what did you find there?
Wood: I traced the coal that gets shipped out of the Dominion terminal in Newport News back to about a dozen coal mines, all in southern West Virginia. I was shocked but not surprised to find a lot of neglect on behalf of the coal companies around a lot of the towns where coal is being extracted — in terms of failure to reclaim sites that had been extracted and mined, and the ways that those costs had been displaced back onto the backs of residents in those communities in a way that eerily echoed what was happening in Newport News and Norfolk with the costs of environmental remediation being displaced, and people paying for that through their health and with their lives.
In West Virginia in particular, some of the mines and some of the depots where the coal gets moved from the mine onto the train are owned either by CSX, the rail company that ships to Dominion terminal, or to some other coal giants that own Dominion Terminal Associates and parts whose names you’re probably familiar with, like Peabody Coal or Arch or Alpha Metallurgical Resources. Those companies all have stakes in Dominion Terminal Associates and not surprisingly they often own the mines that the coal is coming from.
Adams: Are the folks there in West Virginia being affected by blowing coal dust as well?
Wood: Yes, I heard about this from an advocate in Junior Walk, who lives in Eunice, West Virginia, who talked about coal dust settling so thick on records on his record player that the record wouldn’t play after just sitting out for 24 hours in his home. Coal dust affects people there like it affects people in Hampton Roads, and it’s coal dust coming from the same seam in the same mountain that’s being moved from one side of the Appalachians to the ocean, and it’s coal that really should just have been left in the ground.
Activists speak about blowing coal dust from terminals in coastal Virginia.
Photo Credit: Crosswinds
Adams: So what connections do you see between these communities in Appalachia and in Newport News and Norfolk?
Kirts: There’s historic poverty in both communities. These people are bearing the brunt of the health disparities that are spread because of coal dust. That’s one of the main similarities that I see. And then, of course, we’re not reaping the benefits monetarily of that being in our communities. The coal is being transported mostly overseas. Two percent stays within the country; the rest is going over to other places. It’s been labored here, it’s being pulled here, being dumped into our community. And then once that coal dust spreads into our lungs, and we’re sick, we’re not going to be helped, we’re not going to be provided for, we don’t have the adequate health care to be sustained. And then these companies who like to pretend to be benevolent and to be green and friendly, are not who they say they are. They are cancer-causing agents in our community, and they’re doing damage.
That is what the similarities I see: that we’re all being negatively affected, and seeing none of the benefits of what they’re seeing being the manufacturers of coal dust.
Wood: I agree with that. And I would just add that these communities are not being protected by existing regulatory pathways through the EPA or through state environmental departments. The regulations that exist around coal dust right now through the EPA, which recently were strengthened, are still not enough to protect communities in Newport News, Norfolk or West Virginia because of the way those regulations work, which is, averages that are regional and over every 24 hours.
So a regional average may not address a high amount of coal dust concentrated in one place when the rest of the region is not being affected by that dust. Similarly, a 24-hour average doesn’t address coal dust that’s getting blown really hard for 30 minutes and covering your whole porch in black dust, and then the wind doesn’t blow for the rest of the day. That may not be enough to affect the 24-hour average. So the way that the regulations are designed are not addressing the health needs and the lifestyle needs of these communities.
And we know that coal dust is more dangerous than other kinds of dust that these regulations are designed to address, because coal dust can contain lead, mercury, arsenic and cadmium, among other heavy metals that are known to cause cancer and neurological damage and birth defects.
Adams: What’s next for the folks involved in this struggle to tamp down coal dust in these coastal communities?
Kirts: We’re looking for a few changes here in our area. One of the things that we’re trying to do in order to alleviate coal dust within our communities is an ordinance that will either support a coal dome — to enclose the coal into a dome so that the coal dust will not be blown into our communities — and/or a wooden fence that is going to prevent the wind to blow coal dust into the area, and once again alleviate coal that’s being spread into our communities. Anything is better than sitting beside mountains of coal terminals right next door to our playgrounds, where we have our gardens, where we have our worship facilities. These are places that are supposed to be safe places for us to go and to live freely and sit and breathe freely. And that’s what we’re fighting for and advocating for.
Adrian Wood and Lathaniel Kirts’ new podcast Crosswinds is available now.
West Virginia was allotted nearly $2 million in rebates from the United States Environmental Protection Agency this week to purchase electric school buses.
More than 25 million children across the United States ride the school bus each day, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. In West Virginia, approximately 220,000 students ride the bus each school day, according to transportation news source School Bus Fleet. But these vehicles emit greenhouse gasses that can harm both the environment and public health.
To address this, federal officials are encouraging schools to switch to electric buses. And new funds from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) aims to help four West Virginia school districts do just that.
The EPA this week approved a cumulative $2 million in rebates for West Virginia school districts that plan to purchase electric school buses this year.
The funding comes as part of a national rebate program for school districts making the switch to cleaner buses. In a virtual press briefing Tuesday, EPA Administrator Michael Regan described the program as a national priority.
“We’re advancing environmental justice and helping level the playing field for children who suffer from the higher rates of respiratory issues and other health conditions because of the air they breathe,” Regan said. “When we prioritize the health and well being of our children, we’re not just making a difference in their lives. But we’re also setting the foundation for a safer, healthier and more sustainable planet.”
West Virginia’s slice of the rebate is just a fraction of the $900 million provided by the EPA this year.
Calhoun, McDowell and Summers county school districts will each receive a rebate to purchase one clean school bus, and Randolph County will purchase two.
Efforts to convert West Virginia school districts to lower-emission school buses stretch beyond this latest round of funding.
In January, the EPA granted GreenPower Motor Company more than $18 million to build 47 electric school buses in its South Charleston facility, slated for nine school districts across the state.
During Tuesday’s call, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Natalie Quillian said creating new union jobs through the construction of electric vehicles was an added perk for the Biden administration.
“Not only is this funding providing cleaner air, it’s also helping tackle climate change and creating good paying union jobs and electric school bus manufacturing,” she said.
But not all Americans back the transition to electric vehicles, including some West Virginians.
New federal standards that limit carbon emissions from gasoline-powered vehicles drew criticism from Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va. and U.S. Rep. Alex Mooney, R-W.Va., in March.
The lawmakers expressed concern that an abrupt switch to electric vehicles would place undue burden on American consumers, and potentially force them to rely on vehicles produced abroad.
When asked whether federal interventions like the rebate program are necessary to make a full switch to electric vehicles, Regan said that he didn’t want to get into “local politics,” and that the program has been popular nationally.
“Each year our program is oversubscribed. And so we have a lot of demand out there for electric school buses from districts all across the country,” he said.
Since then, Regan said the EPA has helped fund the purchase of approximately 8,500 electric and low-emission school buses by roughly 1,000 school districts across the country.
For school districts in West Virginia and beyond, rebates won’t come immediately. Schools must first buy the vehicles themselves, then send the EPA documentation of the purchase.
EPA officials said there is no singular timeline for when school districts will receive their new buses, but that purchases are likely to be made over the course of the next several months.
On this West Virginia Morning, federal officials are encouraging more school districts to switch to electric buses. Also, in this show, the appointed watchdog of the state’s Foster Care System has resigned and The Allegheny Front interviews WVPB’s Curtis Tate.
On this West Virginia Morning, more than 25 million children across the United States ride the school bus each day, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. But these vehicles emit greenhouse gases that can harm both the environment and public health. To address this, federal officials are encouraging schools to switch to electric buses. As Jack Walker reports, new funds aim to help four West Virginia school districts do just that.
Also, in this show, the appointed watchdog of the West Virginia Foster Care System has resigned, effective June 6. Emily Rice has more.
And, we have the latest story from The Allegheny Front, a public radio program based in Pittsburgh that reports on environmental issues in the region. Their latest story features an interview on the Mountain Valley Pipeline with our very own Energy & Environment Reporter Curtis Tate.
West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content.
Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University.
Eric Douglas produced this episode.
Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning
Curtis Tate spoke recently with Dan Conant, founder and CEO of Solar Holler, about solar’s growth in the Mountain State.
Solar is expanding in West Virginia, thanks to shifts in federal and state policies. Curtis Tate spoke recently with Dan Conant, founder and CEO of Solar Holler, about solar’s growth in the Mountain State.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Tate: What is the Solar For All Program and how does Solar Holler fit in?
Conant: So it’s a $7 billion program through EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) at the federal level. This all came through the Inflation Reduction Act from two years ago. And there was a competitive program across the country, for states and nonprofits to put together programs to help incentivize solar for low income families across the country. Solar shouldn’t be for just country clubs.
The West Virginia Office of Energy submitted an application that we supported to set up a program across West Virginia that’ll help buy down the cost of solar for families that really need it most. There were a couple of other programs in there, including solar for colleges and student housing across the state. And we’re really looking forward to implementing it or helping bring those projects to life in the future. We don’t have any direct involvement, more just that we’re really excited. Excited that West Virginia won over $100 million to really punch above our weight when it came to population.
Tate: The West Virginia Legislature didn’t take up the community solar bill you pushed for. Has anything changed since then?
We have until the end of this year to get folks in under the existing rules. And then everybody gets grandfathered in for 25 years before the new program rolls out in January of next year. That’s probably top of mind for me as far as the most significant change for solar in the state right now.
Conant: That is a really big deal. It’s getting cheaper and cheaper across the country. We’ve seen the technology continue to fall in price over the last couple of years, even while everything else was going up. I think it’s a harbinger of things to come.
Tate: What are the advantages of pairing batteries with solar? Does it help stabilize the grid?
Conant: Absolutely, because you can soak up the sun in the middle of the day and discharge the batteries in the evening, when everyone’s coming home. Over the course of the day, you have pretty consistent curves for how power is used. You get a little spike first thing in the morning when everyone’s waking up and then it’s all predictable. What batteries are allowing us to do is take that midday sun and shift when you use that energy into the evenings when people are coming home when you get those big surges in power demand.
On the small scale side, people are putting in storage because it’s honestly more dependable than the grid. Especially if you live up a holler somewhere, and the power goes out every time the wind blows, folks are putting in solar and battery systems to take them through multi-day outages in a way that the grid can’t. There’s other reasons. You can reduce how much power you draw from the grid at any given time. Because if you’re a big industrial or commercial user, you get charged for the highest peak power use over the course of the month, and you can use batteries to bring those peaks down. So there’s a bunch of different uses for them. But overall, what it’s going to do is allow us to use renewable energy when we want to, not just when it’s produced, and it also just kind of evens things out.
Tate: How much of the new investment in clean energy in West Virginia and other states has been spurred by the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act?
Conant: I don’t know the exact count on it. But there has been just a huge surge in manufacturing announcements in particular, and I’m still continuing to see existing panel manufacturers overseas announce new factories, like I just saw over the last couple of weeks down in North Carolina. I think that pace will probably slow down a little bit just because they’ll build all these factories, and then as panels and equipment start rolling off the lines, you’ve got to have time to soak it up and build it into the supply chain. But the investments that are being made, they’re going to keep pumping out equipment and panels and inverters and all the other stuff they’re making over the next 15, 20, 30 years.
We’ve been buying all our panels from a factory in Georgia for the last five years or so. And they’re going through a massive expansion of their facility right now. The electrical brains of the system are called the inverters, and we put one micro inverter on the back of each solar panel. Because of the Inflation Reduction Act, the manufacturer we use – they’re a California company, but they just opened up facilities in South Carolina and Wisconsin and Texas. So now, all of our inverters are coming out of South Carolina. And that’s been that way for the past year now.
Tate: Is there any concern that a change in the White House could roll back some of these policies? Or is the momentum too strong at this point?
Conant: I’d hate to see anything rolled back. I do think though, that at some point, the train has left the station. One of the really powerful things about the Inflation Reduction Act was extending solar and renewable energy off the coasts. It’s driving an incredible amount of investment in coal country. We’re seeing investments in West Virginia, we’re seeing investments in Kentucky and Texas and Wyoming and all across the country, in the areas of America that have powered the rest of the country. They are really benefiting from the IRA and we’re seeing this resurgence in manufacturing, so I have a hard time imagining a world where Congress would want to take that away.
Tate: How does West Virginia compare with other states in terms of solar development?
Conant: We’ve got a stronger industry here at this point than California does. With how everything’s shaken out between the net metering deal, West Virginia is infinitely better than what California has at this point. Essentially, we’re kind of in an upside-down world now where it’s easier to do solar in West Virginia than in California.
Solar Holler is an underwriter of West Virginia Public Broadcasting.
