Officer McCoy with Kimball Police Department say 17 cars derailed around 8:30 Friday morning.
KIMBALL, W.Va. (AP) — Hazardous material crews are cleaning up following a trail derailment.
Officials say at least 16 cars of the Norfolk Southern train derailed around 8:30 a.m. Friday in an area of McDowell County along U.S. Route 52. No evacuations were ordered and there were no injuries.
The train has five locomotives and 111 cars and is about 7,000 feet long. It was headed from Bellevue, Ohio to Linwood, N.C.
State emergency officials say booms are in place to prevent the tar leaking from a ruptured tanker car from going any farther down into Elkhorn Creek.
About 700 feet of track was damaged in the derailment and will have to be replaced. Norfolk Southern expects train traffic to reopen Saturday afternoon.
The state is providing a useful way for West Virginians to dispose of their Christmas trees.
The Department of Environmental Protection will collect trees and sink them in four West Virginia lakes to provide fish habitat. The Register-Herald reports that the department’s ninth annual Christmas tree recycling event is set for Jan. 4 at the Capitol Market in downtown Charleston.
According to the department, thousands of trees have been put in lakes across West Virginia to give fish a safe place to reproduce. Warmwater Fisheries Management assistant chief Bret Preston says the sunken trees also provide hiding places for small fish and attract bigger game fish for fishermen.
The trees will be placed in Beech Fork, Burnsville, Stonewall Jackson and Summersville lakes.
The most prominent resident of a bird rehabilitation center in Fairmont has died.
Liz Snyder of the West Virginia Raptor Rehabilitation Center says the bald eagle Thunder died Dec. 21 — exactly 21 years after arriving at the center with a gunshot wound that left her unable to survive in the wild.
According to the Times-West Virginian, Thunder was being treated for a respiratory infection before dying in the arms of center director Michael Book, who had taken care of the bird since 1992.
Snyder says Thunder was the center’s most visible symbol. Her picture appeared on the center’s website, and Snyder says that when people thought of the center, they thought of Thunder.
Book says he will always remember Thunder as “proud, intelligent and fearless.”
West Liberty University is getting a $24,760 grant from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection to continue its recycling efforts. The…
West Liberty University is getting a $24,760 grant from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection to continue its recycling efforts.
The school says the award will allow its voluntary recycling program to grow from its infancy into a full-fledged, mandatory program.
The money will be used to help buy recycling storage buildings, recycling containers, a utility vehicle, recycling bags and an industrial scale.
The funding program was made possible by the West Virginia Legislature through a $1 fee imposed on every ton of solid waste disposed of at state landfills. The money is available to any county, municipality, public or private entity in West Virginia interested in planning and implementing recycling programs or related public educational programs.
Snow crunches under foot as Jim Baker gives a mid-December tour on about 170 acres his hunting club just acquired. The property sits along the Morgan-Hampshire County line in the shadow of Cacapon Mountain bordering Cacapon State Park.
“Basically some rolling hills at low elevations before you see the larger Cacapon Mountain in the background,” Baker said. “It gives you an idea of what I call the diversity in topography around here.”
This diversity in landscape is one of the factors that make this property resilient, which is why the Cacapon and Lost Rivers Land Trust worked to obtain an easement preventing future development.
This property is part of an area in the Potomac Headwaters region of West Virginia designated as some of the most resilient land in the eastern United States.
David Ray is the southern field coordinator for the Open Space Institute, a New York State land trust. The Institute created a $6 million fund with a goal of protecting some of the most resilient land in the northeast and mid-Appalachian region.
Four areas are targeted: Southern New Hampshire and Maine forests, the highlands and Kittatinny Ridge on the New Jersey-Pennsylvania border, the Middle Connecticut River and the Potomac headwaters region of West Virginia and Virginia.
“A good way to think about it is sort of like actors on a stage and you may have a stage or a theater where the play is going to change over time, the actors will come and go, but you have that stage and it’s a place where things happen,” Ray said.
The program’s goal is to focus on that stage, in this case natural places where plants and animals can thrive and adapt to changes in the future.
Ray said the hunting club property meets the criteria of being resilient that include variety in the landscape, having the right kind of soil and the connection to other unbroken land- in this case about six thousand acres of Cacapon State Park.
Credit Cecelia Mason / West Virginia Public Broadcasting Landowner Jim Baker describes his property to David Ray of the Open Space Institute and Kelly Watkinson of the Cacapon and Lost Rivers Land Trust.
“We have choices we have to make with the limited funding that’s available for conservation,” Ray said. “By protecting the land areas that are going to be more enduring, we’re going to protect as much of the broad range of biodiversity that we have as possible.”
And Ray pointed out protecting these highly resilient areas also benefits humans.
“The sort of side benefits to that kind of work includes things like maintaining the quality of water that goes into our drinking water sources, preventing flooding from occurring and recreational opportunities,” he said.
The Open Space Institute gave the Cacapon and Lost Rivers Land Trust a $210,000 grant to help acquire an easement on a total of about 900 acres owned by the hunting club that will prevent the property from being developed in the future. Land Trust Executive Director Nancy Ailes says her organization raised matching money that included about $60,000 and an easement donation from the hunting club.
“We always like to hug our landowners,” Ailes said. “If it isn’t for them and their willingness to do this and desire to protect their land none of us would be here at the table today.”
Baker said it’s comforting to know that this rugged piece of property that he and other shareholders have come to love since the hunting club was founded in 1962 will remain untouched.
“You become attached to it over time after hunting on it, walking on it, maintaining it, seeing it through all the seasons and knowing that it’s yours,” Ray said.
“For some of us anyway we want to see that piece of property as it is so at night we can think that’s the way it’s going to be forever,” he added.
The Open Space Institute’s work protecting resilient landscapes is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
