Regulators have approved a construction stormwater discharge permit for Mountaineer Gas Co.’s proposed natural gas distribution line expansion in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle.
The Department of Environmental Protection said in a news release Wednesday the permit gives the DEP wide-ranging inspection and enforcement authority for the project.
The 23-mile project through Berkeley and Morgan counties includes crossing several creeks.
Mountaineer Gas has said it also plans to build a distribution line to supply natural gas for the expansion from a Columbia Gas transmission line in Pennsylvania.
Charleston-based Mountaineer Gas has about 220,000 customers and nearly 6,000 miles of pipelines.
In May 2016, a jury found that a coal company owned by then-candidate for governor, Jim Justice, wasn’t responsible for contaminating the water wells of several Wyoming County residents. Still, an order requiring the firm to provide temporary fresh water stayed in place, and the water kept coming — until recently, when it abruptly stopped.
More than 30 families in the Cedar Creek community have accused the nearby surface mining operation, then run by Dynamic Energy Inc. and its parent company Mechel Bluestone Inc., of tainting their water, which the residents said contained arsenic, lead and other pollutants.
Despite the verdict, a judge kept a court order in place requiring the mine company to provide water to the families — a directive the company violated when it stopped paying the vendor to deliver it. Residents said it stopped coming about a week before Christmas.
“Having it just cut off with no warning, not letting us be prepared, that was not right,” said Debbie Browning, who tapped back into her old well for bathing and washing clothes, despite the risks she cited. “I’m just thankful that I was able to use my water, even if it was iron and rust and all [the] brown stuff that’s in it. I’m just thankful I was fortunate enough to turn it back on.”
Scientists from the state Department of Environmental Protection found no correlation between the mine and the wells in question at trial. Kevin Thompson, an attorney for the families said the DEP geologist who testified “told the truth about the science [but] fudged the conclusion.”
The surface mine in question is currently run by CM Energy Operations LP, which is not affiliated with Mechel Bluestone. But the families are appealing the civil case against Mechel Bluestone, still owned by Justice, and asking it to resume paying for water delivery.
Check Bounces
Dynamic Energy and Mechel Bluestone spent about $1 million fulfilling the court order so far, but can no longer afford it, according to one of its attorneys, Billy Shelton. He told the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals last month that a check written to the water vendor bounced. While they await word on an appeal, the families’ attorneys took this matter to court. In a response filed Feb. 5, defense attorneys asked the court to dismiss the order, saying there is “no basis” to continue providing water when the mine company prevailed at trial.
The money spent so far “should reflect the good faith on the part of the [company] to comply with the water replacement orders and clearly establish to this court that if were not the current financial situation of the [company] they would still be complying with the water replacement costs,” the response said.
Each of the initial 16 families who sued were receiving 10, 5-gallon jugs and a tank of water each month since December 2014, paid for by the coal company. Ten more families signed on and began getting water in 2016.
Resident Jason Walker said he dips into the creek now and treats the water with pool chemicals to flush the toilets at his house and his mother’s place next door. He fills used water containers at the auto parts store where he works one of his two jobs and hauls them home. Depending on the weather, the drive to his uncle’s house where he showers can take up to 25 minutes.
“We do have water, it’s just we just can’t use it like you do like you would normally do on a normal daily basis. … If I’m working here at home, say changing my my own oil, I get dirty, I have to go 10 miles to take a bath,” he said.
His family has had water issues in the past, he said, but they had always been manageable. Then about four or five years ago — around the time he said the coal company started blasting — he could no longer treat the water with his usual methods, such as a salt filter.
Shelton said he couldn’t discuss a pending lawsuit, but noted “we always disputed the claims of the plaintiffs that the mining operation had affected their residential water supplies.
“This position was confirmed by the ladies and gentlemen who served on the Wyoming Circuit Court jury, who listened to all the testimony and evidence in the four-week trial and who unanimously decided the case in favor of the my clients,” he said in an email. “We expect those unanimous verdicts to be affirmed by the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals very soon, putting an end to this matter.”
Still Supporting the Governor
Justice has failed for years to pay off various debts associated with his companies. He sold the mine in question to Russian mining and metals company Mechel OAO in 2009 and bought it back in 2015, after the initial water complaints. (CM Energy Operations took over ownership last year.) Justice didn’t respond to requests for comment through representatives. But he can count Browning and Walker among his supporters.
“As a governor, I think he’s doing a good job. I like him myself, I voted for the man,” Browning said. “So I’d appreciate it if he’d just take care of our water situation, you know? That’d be nice.”
Like many in the area, both families have connections to the mining industry.
“None of us in this lawsuit is against the coal mining company. I mean, that’s the way of life here in West Virginia,” Walker said. “Only thing we have a problem with is they’re damaging our resources to our natural water, and we want them to clean the mess up.”
Warren McGraw, the Wyoming County circuit judge who issued the court order, couldn’t be reached for comment. His order reinforced laws requiring mine companies that contaminate a residential water supply to provide temporary water and work toward a long-term solution. Thompson posited that the judge left the order unchanged after the trial “based on the evidence.”
“He kept it in place because he knows those people need water, plain and simple. … Gov. Justice thinks he’s above the law and he doesn’t have to follow this injunction,” Thompson said.
Walker said he soon plans to drill a new well, hoping to find a new seam of water. His current well is full of sediment, and he has to replace the filter system that’s gone bad from being idle. But even then, he said, he’s taking a risk.
“Clear water might be contaminated, you just never know what you’re going to drink,” Walker said.
Attorneys expect the Supreme Court to issue a response this week concerning the water delivery. A decision about the appeal is likely to come this spring.
This story has been updated to clarify the mine’s current owner.
When you picture the Appalachian Coalfields, you might think of those scenic photographs of mist rising from the mountains. But there are the less picturesque landscapes too — views of mountaintops that have been stripped away from coal mining. Imagine if these barren landscapes were covered with purple fields of lavender.
That change may be coming because some people in West Virginia think growing lavender could give the state’s struggling economy a boost.
The farm is located in Boone County, on land that looks like a moonscape, with parched, gray dirt, and jagged, blasted-off mountaintops in the distance.
A Reason to Stay in W.Va.
Donnie Facemyer is a laid-off coal miner. He helped strip this mountain, back when he was working for Pritchard Mining. “A year ago I would have laughed at you if they would have said they were gonna farm on a strip job,” Facemyer said. “Cause it’s all just shot rock. But these plants seem to be doing real good in it.”
These lavender plants are little more than scrawny bushes now, barely a foot tall, but Facemyer is hopeful this mountaintop will soon be turned into fields of purple. He’s one of the farmers taking part in a new project launched by the West Virginia Regional Technology Park in Kanawha County to grow lavender on former strip mines. Turns out, the plants actually thrive in the dry rocky soil that surface mining leaves behind.
This job is what’s keeping Facemyer and his family from leaving the state.
“Me and my wife were going to, until we ran into this job, we were going south,” he said. “Just anything, we were gonna sell everything we owned; take off, start all over.”
Money for Students to Learn Farming
Like Facemyer, other new farmers are hoping the lavender industry can provide a steady source of income to support them in West Virginia.
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Students working at the Green Mining work site in Boone County
It’s a new industry here in Appalachia, but the idea was enticing to a handful of people who signed up for a training class, even some who moved to West Virginia for the program. Some came from Texas, others from Ohio.
One family came from Florida. Debra Ritchie says a fellow veteran told her about the lavender project, and so she and her husband sold everything they owned and moved from the Sunshine State to the Mountain State.
“We moved up here to turn a new chapter in our lives,” Richie said.
As part of the program, the Ritchies get paid an education stipend of $10 an hour for the 6-weeks they spend learning about lavender and how to grow it. The program is called Green Mining and it’s just getting started. Last year, it received a $1 million grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission’s Power Initiative, which helped pay for salaries and students’ stipends.
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Debra Ritchie, veteran with PTSD, with her therapy dog named Ranger. Debra and her husband Sky moved to West Virginia from Florida for the lavender project.
Can They Make a Living Off Lavender Alone?
We reached out to more than a dozen lavender farmers across the United States, and each of them told a similar story — it’s a lot of fun and a great way to earn a small side income, but two farmers, both in Washington state, said they make a full-time living from lavender alone.
Shelly Keeney has a small lavender farm in her backyard in Huntington, West Virginia. It’s a peaceful place with wind chimes, and the scent of lavender wafts through the air.
“I have about 100 lavender plants, and I do fairly well, but as far as having a full time business, I would probably have to have, let’s say, 10-acres at least, to do just solely lavender,” Keeney said.
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Shelly Kenney is a lavender farmer in Huntington, W.Va.
The plants Keeney has keep her busy enough, especially since she also has a full-time job. Inside her garage, she has a small workshop. Fresh lavender hangs from the wooden beams to dry. Keeney has jams and jellies she sells at farmers markets.
“This one is a strawberry jam,” she said, “with just a hint of lavender. You don’t want to overpower anything you’re gonna eat for culinary purposes. This is great on scones and biscuits.”
She says she gets requests from farmers markets across West Virginia — more requests than she has time for. One product that’s in especially high demand is essential oil.
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Lavender oil
Examining the Potential for Essential Oil
The coordinators for the Green Mining Lavender Project want to tap into the essential oil aromatherapy industry. too. But they’ll need to produce at least 2,000 gallons of oil to sell to the larger companies.
At the Green Mining headquarters in South Charleston, a former Dow Chemical coal-testing lab has been transformed into a distillation station for lavender.
Project Coordinator Mariana Sawyer says Green Mining is prepared to meet demand. They want Appalachia to be the new home for USA-sourced lavender oil.
“It hasn’t been that big of a crop in the U.S. before. Unless you buy locally grown or something that was made out of Washington, then it’s probably from overseas,” Sawyer said. “Because that’s where most of the lavender comes from. It hasn’t been that big of a crop in the U.S. before.”
W.Va. Economist: ‘We Need More Innovators’
Lavender could bring in some revenue to southern West Virginia, but it’s unlikely to bring back the thousands of coal jobs that have disappeared in the past decade.
West Virginia’s chief economist John Deskins says that although coal production has bounced back some, “it’s still far below what it was a few years ago. So ultimately in the state we desperately need to diversify our economic mix.”
Deskins says what the state’s economy desperately needs now is more innovators; people who will try out new business ideas. “You know cause nobody knows, for sure. People like me, or government officials, study the economy, we try to figure out what might have potential, what might not have potential — but ultimately, it’s up to an entrepreneur to experiment, and they’ll find what works and what doesn’t work.”
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Not a 100 Percent Solution
Back up at the Boone County strip mine, the students in the program are busy planting baby lavender plants.
One man is drilling holes with an electric rototiller. Retired Army Officer James Ross is helping troubleshoot a problem the crew had where they accidentally planted in the wrong area. Now, they have to go back and replant the crop.
Ross is one of the program instructors. In the Army, he led missions for a battalion of 11,000 people. Now, he’s channeling that energy into teaching West Virginians how to farm.
“Have we got a 100 percent solution on helping the state’s economic problem? No, I’m not saying that. But it’s a good starting place,” Ross noted. “Taking this land that was deemed unusable and doing something good.”
Not everyone has stuck with the program. Last summer, 16 people signed up for the class, but only half completed it. The second course had 20 graduates.
Many of the trainees say they’ll grow lavender on a strip mine — especially if they are able to lease the land for cheap. The coordinators with the Green Mining Program say they’re applying for another federal grant to help them transition to a co-op model. If they succeed, the lavender farmers would be the owners of the entire business and operation within three years.
This story is part of the Appalachian Innovators series, which is made possible with support from The Benedum Foundation and the Appalachian Regional Commission. Thanks to TVW, Washington Public Affairs Network, for footage of lavender farms in Washington state.
On Friday, January 22nd, 2016, I was in New York City preparing to head to West Virginia. So was a blizzard called Jonas. The blizzard that took the East Coast by storm hadn’t hit by the time I rolled into in Harrisburg, PA. I was assured by meteorologists that I shouldn’t try driving down I-79 to Charleston, but that I could make it to Pittsburgh without encountering snow. This podcast tracks my experience on the Pennsylvania Turnpike between the Bedford and Somerset exits, and the TWENTY-SEVEN AND A HALF hours I remained there, trapped in snow.
Attorneys for 16 Wyoming County families who accused a coal company of contaminating their water asked the state’s highest court Wednesday, Jan. 24, for…
Attorneys for 16 Wyoming County families who accused a coal company of contaminating their water asked the state’s highest court Wednesday, Jan. 24, for another chance to prove their case.
In 2016, a jury found that Dynamic Energy was not responsible for the pollutants the families said they found in Clear Fork along Cedar Creek Road, about a half-hour northwest of Pineville. The West Virginia Supreme Court will consider the appeal and decide later this year whether to allow another civil trial. Ten more families are expected to join the suit if it’s allowed to proceed.
The residents maintain that Dynamic Energy, a subsidiary of Mechel Bluestone Inc. and owned by West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice, violated state law and damaged wells. The state Department of Environmental Protection testified in the 2016 trial, though, that there was no link between the wells and a nearby surface mine.
In the meantime, the families are grappling with a more pressing issue: Since April 2015, Dynamic Energy has provided them water, under a court order that remains in place. But defense attorneys told the justices Wednesday that Dynamic stopped delivering water in early January because the company said it could no longer afford to pay for it.
On the campaign trail and in his first State of the State address in February 2017, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice talked about boosting furniture manufacturing in West Virginia.
One of the most successful furniture manufacturers in the state is in Berkeley Springs.
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Gat Creek owner and CEO Gat Caperton.
Gat Creek, which produces handcrafted solid wood furniture, is among the highest-quality furniture made in America. Gat Caperton, 50, is the owner and CEO.
“We bring a truckload of wood in every week. That truckload typically comes from the Frank E. Wilson Lumber Company out of Elkins, West Virginia, and we’ll unload it and literally cut through a truckload of lumber a week,” he said.
Gat Creek specializes in premium Appalachian hardwoods – mostly cherry, maple, ash and walnut – that grow within a 250-mile radius of Berkeley Springs.
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Dried lumber arrives at Gat Creek. Workers sort through each board by hand.
“What I often like to tell both our customers and our suppliers is – the best furniture comes from the best wood. And we’ve got fantastic wood all around us,” Caperton said. “We have fantastic suppliers in terms of mills and drying operations that really give us a fantastic product. No one has done a better job that we’ve done here in West Virginia, Pennsylvania and New York in maintaining a healthy, vibrant, growing, diverse forest. It also happens to be a forest that has the most beautiful woods in the world.”
The people who unload the lumber sort through it, board by board.
‘A Big Check, but a Lot of Work’
“In manufacturing, we’re very conscious of what you automate, and what you don’t automate. When you have variability in the input, like a board of lumber – and I promise you every board here is different, they’re snowflakes – we try to keep wide boards, the randomness and the natural variation that makes wood so beautiful – we try to capture that,” Caperton said. “And so here at the front end where we are making panels and the beginning parts for furniture, it’s all done on a board-by-board basis. So we are manufacturing panels that become furniture, instead of buying engineered panels that we cut up.”
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Gat Creek furniture is stained by hand — sometimes each board is stained separately — to bring out the natural grain of the wood.
Next, the boards move to an automated part of the process — a bank of three sophisticated machines that use the latest technology to cut furniture parts, such as a table leg. It’s called CNC technology, or a computer numerically controlled machine. These machines can do the work it used to take 30 machines to do in an assembly-line fashion.
“[The machine] will take a square or rectangular board, and cut it into a three-dimensional shape for a leg. This technology has changed the face of manufacturing in this country – especially with woodworking,” Capeton said. “It is wildly fast and wildly exact in what it does, and it gets better every year. These machines are $350,000 machines – a big, big check – but it does a lot of work.”
A Changing Business
Gat Creek started out in the 1960s as Tom Seeley Furniture, which specialized in antique reproductions. Gat Caperton purchased Tom Seeley Furniture in 1996, and continued that tradition, but also introduced more contemporary lines. Today, the company employs 140 people who work from 6 am to 2.30 pm, five days a week. Outside this facility, they also employ 20 independent Amish and Mennonite workshops that supply furniture to Gat Creek.
After the sophisticated technology area that creates panels and parts, there’s an area of 40 or so individual workstations.
This is not traditional assembly-line manufacturing.
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Table builder Paige Wagner sands a table top. Wagner has built 4,800 tables for Gat Creek.
“Each of our folks that are builders here has their own workbench. They specialize in five or 10 pieces, and they’ll build the entire piece of furniture at their bench. When they finish building it, they’ll sign it, date it and then they’ll send it to the Finishing Room to be finished,” Caperton said.
Paige Wagner builds tables, for example.
“It’s very interesting, because each one is different. All the woods are beautiful, and you know that the table you build is going to be in someone’s home for a hundred years. And we sign everything that we build, so they’ll know,” she said.
Wagner said she’s built almost 4,800 table to date.
A table-builder will typically build three or four tables a day, though each one may be different. Not far from Wagner’s workbench is Chuck Hampe, who builds table bases. He happened to on his very last shift at Gat Creek Furniture during our visit. He joined the company a long time ago.
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Chuck Hampe and Gat Caperton celebrate Hampe’s accomplishments on his final day of work.
“Thirty-one years, six months and 27 days,” Hampe said, adding that he’s built 64,872 table bases during his time with the company.
Each piece here is made-to-order, including pieces for special projects such as bespoke furniture for courtrooms or university offices.
Rick Kidwell lays out and builds the prototype of each new design.
“I’ve worked here 34 years, and I do something different every day, so I’ve got the best job in here,” he said. “And you always get a sense of accomplishment – it’s like mowing the grass – when you get done, you see where you’ve done something. I get that feeling every day.”
CEO Gat Caperton said people often ask how people learn these skills – not many people are natural bed-builders or table-builders.
“We essentially have an informal apprentice system here,” he said. “We’ll bring people in who have the aptitude for building, and we’ll typically start them with another builder and have that person build really simple pieces of furniture. After a few weeks if they’re good at it on one or two different pieces, they’ll get a third or fourth piece. Ultimately, the folks who are the best will have the biggest portfolio pieces they build, and they’ll build the most difficult pieces.”
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The finishing process aims to bring out the natural beauty of the wood itself.
Scaling Up
This type of handcrafted furniture doesn’t come cheap. As Caperton likes to say, it’s what people buy the second time they buy furniture, not the first. It’s also the sort of furniture that lasts a lifetime, or possibly two.
But, if given the right capital investment and larger-scale production, Caperton believes West Virginia could become a major manufacturer of mid-priced furniture.
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A finished gate-leg cherry table, ready to ship.
“We’re a niche manufacturer, but it doesn’t have to be that way. West Virginia manufacturers will never be the cheapest guys, but we could certainly be at a point where you could manufacture for the masses,” he said. “Every once in a while you get discouraged, because you see someone importing something at a ridiculous price, and I like to remind myself that the best-selling car in America is not the cheapest car in America – by a long shot. And so, we’ll never build the cheapest furniture in West Virginia, but we certainly could be building the best-selling furniture in West Virginia.”
Gender Equity
Caperton said a majority of the people in his operation are women, which you might not expect in a woodworking shop.
“About 53 percent of our workforce is women,” he said. “Until recently, I was the only guy on the management team, so there’s a majority of women in the management team, and a slight majority in terms of production.”
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In the Gat Creek finishing room, each piece of furniture will get its final finish lacquer sprayed on by robots in an ultra-clean environment. This ensures consistency and freedom from dust and other contaminants.
Finishing the Pieces
Moving from the builders who build the furniture into where it’s finished, there are pieces of furniture in every direction you look.
“Everything after it’s built comes into our finishing room. It’s a two-step process – the first is putting a finish or a color on it, which could be a stain or distressing or whatever visual effects you would like,” he said. “The second part of the operation is putting a catalyzed lacquer on it. That’s a protective coat that’s clear, that protects the wood from moisture exchange, primarily water.”
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A contemporary Gat Creek side board, minus the hardware.
Caperton said it runs very much like the woodshop – he has to decide what to do by hand, and what to automate.
“So the first step – the color work – we do not only by hand, but board by board, so you get a beautiful piece of furniture at the end of the day,” he said. “Once that’s completed, it dries overnight, then move on to our finishing room where we’ve done a lot of automation. There we want consistency and cleanliness, so we’ve got an operation that is much like an operating room. We manage all the air inflow and outflow so that we keep it as a ‘clean room’ environment. And we use a lot of robotics there that allow us to spray surface areas that you can’t do by hand – pretty cool technology.”
Though Gat Creek Furniture had its ups and downs through the housing recession, Caperton said 2017 was the company’s best year ever.
The West Virginia Timber series has been made possible by the Myles Family Foundation.
