Energy & Environment Story Archives - Page 2 of 330 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Capito Open To Renewal Of Water Bill Subsidy Program

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said Thursday she is open to extending a water bill subsidy program, following requests from the Public Service Commission of West Virginia.

Since it was established four years ago, the Low-Income Household Water Assistance Program (LIHWAP) has helped more than 17,000 low-income households access water services across West Virginia.

But without renewed federal funding, the program is soon set to expire.

In February, Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., introduced the Low-Income Household Water Assistance Program Establishment Act, which would make the program permanent.

Now, West Virginia officials like Charlotte Lane, chair of the Public Service Commission (PSC), are urging the state’s lawmakers to back Padilla’s bill and support the creation of a permanent version of the program.

On Wednesday, Lane wrote a letter to Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., asking her to help renew funding for LIHWAP.

“Water is our most important resource. Our local communities rely on water systems to provide safe drinking water,” she wrote. “We believe it is imperative that Congress take action to… ensure that low-income households do not lose access to this critical assistance.”

Without a program like LIHWAP in place, Lane said access to water and wastewater services would become more insecure for many West Virginians.

“If the LIHWAP program lapses, there is no question that many will suffer,” she wrote. “LIHWAP has proven to be a successful program in getting assistance to those who need it the most.”

During a press briefing Thursday, Capito indicated that she would consider renewing LIHWAP’s funding.

But she stopped short of endorsing a permanent version of the program, and said lawmakers were considering adjustments to how LIHWAP operates.

“We’re looking at extending it. I think we have to look at some reforms, maybe, to the program,” she said. “But we will be looking at the letter that the PSC sent us, and [seeing] how it most directly impacts our West Virginians.”

After a brief extension period, February marked the last month for LIHWAP to accept new applicants. Without renewed funding, this will be the final year for LIHWAP to distribute its one-time subsidies to households nationwide.

A similar program, the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, is permanent. States are granted a pool of money annually, and distribute it to low-income households to support their heating and cooling needs.

Destructive, Powerful Tornado Touched Down In Northern Panhandle

A tornado touched down in Hancock County, destroyed multiple structures before turning to head into Pennsylvania on Tuesday night.

Tornadoes are ranked on a scale ranging from 0-5 known as the Fujita scale. This tornado is believed to be a 2-3 level tornado.

Meteorologists have currently estimated that the tornado had winds of 140 miles per hour, double the wind speed of what is considered a weak tornado. Crews are still working to confirm the locations, and the strength of the storm.

The tornado decimated a barn and blew the second story off of a house. Lee Hendricks, meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said when sturdy structures are destroyed it is indicative of a powerful storm.

“The damage was pretty substantial,” Hendrick said. “So we can look at the type of damage, what structures or trees or the surrounding indicators that we can see in the damage path. And we can take that and calibrate that to the Enhanced Fujita scale to give us a wind estimate on what caused that damage.”

This tornado marks the 11th tornado to touch down in the Mountain State this calendar year, which meteorologists at the Weather Service say is abnormally high.

Hendricks said warm air coming through the gulf is stirring up weather in the midwest, which has recently been battered with powerful tornadoes. Then that weather heads east.

“It seems like every three days, we’re getting a fairly active weather system moving through our area,” Hendricks said. “Now as the weather starts to warm up and we get more opportunities for getting warm, humid air being pumped out on the gulf, and we’re still getting the strong systems coming out of the Midwest, we are increasing our chances for severe weather.”

Teams from the National Weather Service are still surveying the damage from a separate storm in Jefferson County.

Superfund Sites, Education Emergencies And The Attorney General’s Role, This West Virginia Week

On this West Virginia Week, Gov. Jim Justice declared a state of emergency for the state’s educational system. We’ll also learn more about a group of organizations asking the state Supreme Court to side with Cabell County and Huntington in their lawsuit against opioid distributors. And we’ll hear about a South Charleston landfill listed as a Superfund site.

On this West Virginia Week, Gov. Jim Justice declared a state of emergency for the state’s educational system. We’ll also learn more about a group of organizations asking the state Supreme Court to side with Cabell County and Huntington in their lawsuit against opioid distributors. And we’ll hear about a South Charleston landfill listed as a Superfund site.

We’ll also talk about new investments in energy communities spurred by tax credits and federal programs. We’ll dive into the attorney general’s role in the state and what each candidate brings to the upcoming election. And we’ll learn about a group that works to give prisoners access to books.

Emily Rice is our host this week. Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert.

West Virginia Week is a web-only podcast that explores the week’s biggest news in the Mountain State. It’s produced with help from Bill Lynch, Briana Heaney, Chris Schulz, Curtis Tate, Emily Rice, Eric Douglas, Jack Walker, Liz McCormick and Randy Yohe.

Learn more about West Virginia Week.

Abandoned Mine Turns Apple Orchard With Help Of National Guard

A long winding road, once frequented by coal trucks, leads to the top of what used to be a mountain. At its end are flat fields filled with budding apple trees.

Major General Bill Crane said this apple orchard was an abandoned mine seven years ago.

“We’ve got about 20,000 apple trees in the ground,” Crane said. “It’s an experimentation site that we work with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).”

This is one way the National Guard is taking on climate change and pollution. The Guard has teamed up with scientists from the USDA and West Virginia University (WVU) to find ways to grow apple trees on land that was previously thought to be somewhat of a waste land.

First they had to tackle one major problem: No topsoil. The solution: Chicken poop from pastures in the state.

“The nice thing we’re doing here is we’re bringing chicken manure from the Eastern Panhandle, we bring it here to help make the soil better,” Crane said.

Chris Dardick, a scientist with the USDA, said taking the chicken manure from the Eastern Panhandle to the orchard helps mitigate farming runoff into rivers. He said nitrogen from animal waste has been running into rivers, and creating algae blooms, which cause other aquatic life to die.

“Much of [chicken manure] contains nitrogen,” Dardick said. “Bringing it out here, out of the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and using it to amend the soils for apple production or other crops, that’s sort of a win-win.”

Tracy Leskey works with Dardick at the USDA as the research leader for this project and said the trees absorb another climate changing element — carbon.

“One of the things that we recognized a few years ago is this opportunity for apple trees to sequester carbon from the atmosphere,” Leskey said.

Trees take in carbon, and store it in their trunks and roots, or deliver it to the ground. The process is known as carbon sequestering and is one tool for fighting climate change.

And where the land had carbon removed from the soil in the form of coal, Leskey said the soil can now hold, or sequester, more carbon than the typical soil can.

But this project isn’t only aimed at helping the earth. Melissa Stewart, director of Patriot Guardens, hopes this project will also help the mental health of both active and retired service members.

“When they come back home from a deployment, and maybe they have seen some things that they don’t want to remember, they can’t have a conversation with somebody to get that out of their mind?” Stewart said.

She hopes that service members can create a “side hustle” and learn a hobby that brings peace and healing.

“Through agriculture, they can work with their hands, in an atmosphere like this,” Stewart said.

This is one of many projects the National Guard is working on to produce food like peaches, strawberries and arugula in the state. These projects are aimed at combating food insecurity in West Virginia where one in seven children experience hunger. Stewart says this is where the farming work takes on a special meaning for service members who are transitioning out of the service.

“To take that need to serve and give it purpose as they come out a uniform, being able to illustrate that they’re still serving our state as they transition into more of a civilian status by helping grow the food that helps feed our families helps feed our state,” Stewart said.

WVU Researchers Aim To Convert Mine Water Pollutants Into Industrial Materials

West Virginia University researchers are extracting minerals from toxic mine water runoff and converting it into industry materials, with the help of the U.S. Department of Energy.

Coal mining can expose minerals like pyrite to oxygen from rainwater and the air. In turn, this pyrite creates sulfuric acid — a toxin to aquatic wildlife that frequently enters water runoff.

But new research at West Virginia University (WVU) aims to remove harmful minerals from acid mine drainage, and repurpose them into usable industrial materials.

Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of WVU’s Water Research Institute, began working on the project in 2016. His team has already developed technology to extract minerals like pyrite from local water supplies, effectively ridding it of mine pollutants.

“You have to treat the acid mine drainage… [in] a treatment plant or facility,” he said. “We have a process that basically is a way of treating acid mine drainage while recovering valuable minerals and cleaning up the environment at the same time.”

Ziemkiewicz said that his team helps operate a plant near Grant County that treats from 500 to 1,000 gallons of acid mine drainage per minute. According to Ziemkiewicz, facilities like these help proactively treat drainage before it enters a body of water.

Minerals extracted from this drainage can be repurposed for industrial benefits, which brings additional value to the extraction process, he said.

An additional $5 million in funding secured this week from the United States Department of Energy (DOE) will help the team embark upon part two of the project: converting extracted minerals into industrial materials.

Ziemkiewicz said his team secured the funding after responding to a DOE project solicitation sent out nationally. The group has received funding from the DOE roughly 10 times, he said.

“What we’re doing now is taking that concentrate and developing new processes that are very environmentally friendly, and that will take those mixtures of rare earth and other metals and separate those into individual, usable components,” Ziemkiewicz said.

Rare earth elements are used in a variety of goods ranging from cell phones to alternative energy technology, he said. Many of these elements are primarily imported from China, but Ziemkiewicz said projects like his own could develop methods of obtaining them domestically.

Additionally, state law grants individuals or groups who treat acid mine drainage rights to the usage of extracted materials. This means treatment plants can sell the materials they extract and use them to finance operations, Ziemkiewicz said.

Beyond sustaining environmental upsides, Ziemkiewicz said that the prospect of self-funded treatment plants would also stand to create jobs for coalfield communities devastated by the decline of the mining industry.

“Being able to bring in an industry that cleans up the previously polluted water while creating economic opportunities through the extraction of the rare earth is creating wealth for these communities,” he said. “It creates wealth where previously you had basically environmental degradation.”

Investing In Mountain State Energy Communities, This West Virginia Morning

On this West Virginia Morning, West Virginia is seeing a boom in low and no-carbon manufacturing, thanks to tax credits and other federal programs designed to spur investment in energy communities. Curtis Tate spoke recently with Brian Anderson, a senior adviser on energy communities at the U.S. Department of Energy. They spoke at the University of Charleston.

On this West Virginia Morning, West Virginia is seeing a boom in low and no-carbon manufacturing, thanks to tax credits and other federal programs designed to spur investment in energy communities. Curtis Tate spoke recently with Brian Anderson, a senior adviser on energy communities at the U.S. Department of Energy. They spoke at the University of Charleston.

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