On this West Virginia Morning, an explosion last year at a fracking waste disposal site near Fairmont left a lot of residents concerned about impacts to health and the environment.
Also in this show, parts of the state prepare for the first winter storm of the season and high school football playoffs are back on track.
On this West Virginia Morning, an explosion last year at a fracking waste disposal site near Fairmont left a lot of residents concerned about impacts to health and the environment.
Also in this show, high school football playoffs are back on track after court delays, increases to public health insurance rates prompt a rally and parts of the state prepare for the first winter storm of the season.
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 and Marshall University School of Journalism and Mass Communications.
Maria Young 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
Every Halloween, children across the United States don costumes and knock on doors as part of a beloved Halloween tradition. But trick-or-treating can come with challenges for some children with accessibility needs.
Cheyann McQuain is a program director at the Disability Action Center, a nonprofit based in Fairmont that focuses on supporting people with disabilities. She said there are simple ways parents and candy-givers can ensure folks with disabilities enjoy the holiday, too.
Listen to an extended version of this conversation below:
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Halloween brings impressive decorations and costumes to town streets nationwide. This can be fun for some children, but overstimulating for others, McQuain said.
For parents, McQuain said it is good to consider how a child responds to overstimulation, and be prepared to step away if things become overwhelming. Parents can also provide noise canceling headphones for their children to wear while visiting houses, she said.
Some Halloween decorations can also include flashing lights, which could trigger seizures in children with epilepsy. McQuain said parents should be on the lookout for decorations that could pose a danger.
Many organizations throughout the state offer sensory friendly trick-or-treating events specially curated to provide a calmer environment to children with disabilities. McQuain said families can seek events like these in their own communities if traditional trick-or-treating feels difficult.
But some kids might just not like the experience of trick-or-treating. That is perfectly valid, too, McQuain said.
“It’s one of those experiences that we as a society look forward to, and we think, ‘Oh, our kids need to go and do this,’” she said. “Just remember that if your kid doesn’t like to do that, then that’s okay.”
Avoid Assumptions
On Halloween, some candy-givers may be surprised to see teenagers or adults come to their doorstep and request candy.
McQuain said these individuals might have disabilities. Avoiding assumptions or comments about their age can make them feel more welcomed during the holiday, she said.
“Sometimes, it might be clear that they have a disability, and other times it’s not as clear,” McQuain said. “If somebody’s coming up trick-or-treating, maybe [do] not give them a hard time.”
Other children might have difficulty communicating verbally. So McQuain said it can be good for candy-givers to be open minded and understand that not all children say thank you in the same way, even if they appreciate the free treats.
Consider Physical Obstacles
Children with mobility issues or wheelchairs may struggle to move through a neighborhood during Halloween, especially if its sidewalks and roadways are unpaved or uneven.
For residents passing out sweets, McQuain said it can be helpful to consider the best place on their property to operate.
“If it’s difficult for you to walk up the stairs, then it’s probably going to be almost impossible for a child with a disability to be able to do that as well,” she said. “Uneven sidewalks, cobblestone sidewalks, stairs, all of those things [can be harder] for somebody with a physical disability, especially at night time.”
Individuals with stairs or difficult pathways can consider sitting at the edge of their lawn or sidewalk, passing out candy from a more approachable location, McQuain said.
Offer An Alternative
Even beyond disabilities, some children have allergies, dietary restrictions or medical conditions that make them unable to eat certain types of candy.
To make sure everyone gets something they can enjoy while trick-or-treating, McQuain said residents can consider providing non-food alternatives to candy as well.
“You can’t accommodate everybody,” McQuain said, but “having that option” and “being mindful” can make a big difference in someone’s holiday.
“Overall, for any of these topics, think of if it was your kid, or somebody you cared about,” she added. “What would you do to accommodate them?”
students from the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf & Blind will visit the NASA facility in Fairmont as part of a kickoff in support of students’ new competitive robotics, rocketry, and aerial drone teams.
Relaunching the robotics teams at the West Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind is about to get a boost.
The NASA Independent Verification & Validation (IV&V) Program’s Education Resource Center (ERC) will welcome students from the West Virginia Schools for the Deaf & Blind (WVSDB) this weekend as part of a kickoff in support of students’ new competitive robotics, rocketry, and aerial drone teams.
WVSDB students and their new STEM coaches will visit the Katherine Johnson Facility in Fairmont Saturday for a series of hands-on workshops where they will build and launch model rockets, assemble and program robots, and learn to pilot and program aerial drones.
“The NASA ERC has a long tradition of supporting robotics teams at the WVSDB, but sadly, many after-school initiatives were another casualty of the COVID-19 crisis,” said NASA ERC Program Manager Dr. Todd Ensign in a press release. “We are excited to be collaborating with WVSDB Superintendent W. Clayton Burch and the new coaches to not only restart, but also to expand competitive STEM opportunities for their students.”
Fairmont State University inaugurated its new president Thursday. Mike Davis has held the position since last July, but he was formally invested as president Thursday evening, formally conferring the authority and symbols of the office to him.
Fairmont State University inaugurated its new president Thursday.
Mike Davis has held the position since last July, but he was formally invested as president Thursday evening, formally conferring the authority and symbols of the office to him.
Fairmont State University President Mike Davis.
Photo Courtesy of Fairmont State University
“It’s interesting that we do inaugurations after the President has been at a place for a particular amount of time, partially so they can get a sense of what the campus and the community in the state are like,” he said. “It’s pretty typical, but it’s actually interesting. This is the one year anniversary of my first round interview here at Fairmont State.”
Davis said he has spent the past nine months getting to know the university’s campus and staff. He is now leading the creation of a 10-year strategic plan for the university, set to be released in fall 2024.
“I think there’s different models of being a university president and mine is very much relying on the expertise of the people who work on my campus,” Davis said. “The past nine months have been figuring out where that expertise lies on campus, where people may not have been empowered in the past to utilize their expertise. And then what are gaps where we might have to hire some people or help people develop on our campus?”
He notes programs like aviation, surveying, nursing and education — where academics meet real world experience — as opportunities for growth and improvement.
“That’s what we’re going to look at more of, how do we create more of those hands-on opportunities for our students because our faculty are already great at the academic pieces, and they’re very good at the hands-on pieces,” Davis said. “We’re gonna find ways to augment those sorts of opportunities for our students.”
Davis comes into the leadership role just as the state’s campus carry law takes effect this summer. He said the short timespan for implementation, compounded by his new ascendance to leadership, makes the process frustrating, but that the university is moving forward.
“Part of how we enact this is not just what we do, but how we talk about it,” Davis said. “It was the most common question I got during my interview, ‘What do you think about campus carry?’ It’s the law, we’re gonna follow the law. I actually don’t think it materially will change many of the things we’re doing on campus. But I think how we talk to each other about it, how we treat each other, if you want to carry a firearm on campus, you’re now legally allowed to, but if people feel unsafe about that, let’s not rub it in their face, let’s not make them feel more unsafe than they do.”
Davis said there are days he still cannot believe he has the opportunity to lead a university, and Thursday’s ceremony is an opportunity to celebrate.
“It’s definitely a humbling experience to get to stand up there today and talk about who we are, who we’re going to be and how people have helped me get to where I am.”
In some places, the oil and gas industry is leaving behind industrial sites that are radioactive and dangerous — like Fairmont Brine in Fairmont, West Virginia. This abandoned site became a popular hangout spot for unsuspecting local residents. Investigative journalist Justin Nobel has written about Fairmont Brine. Inside Appalachia Host Mason Adams spoke with Nobel to learn more.
This conversation originally aired in the Feb. 25, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.
In some places, the oil and gas industry is leaving behind industrial sites that are radioactive and dangerous — like Fairmont Brine in Fairmont, West Virginia.
Inside Appalachia Host Mason Adams spoke with Nobel to learn more.
Investigative reporter Justin Nobel.
Photo courtesy of Justin Nobel
Adams: Your story describes an abandoned industrial site where locals are hanging out. That rings true to me from my teenage years a little bit. But in this case, there’s something else going on here. What did you find out?
Nobel: Over the course of my reporting into oilfield radioactivity, I’ve learned that a lot more comes to the surface with oil and gas development than just the oil and gas. The industry brings a lot of really toxic materials up from deep in the earth. Often you have heavy metals, you have carcinogens, like benzene volatile organics, and you have radioactive metals as well.
One of the most concerning ones is the radioactive metal radium, which is a known human carcinogen. You have this really big waste stream in the oilfield brine that comes up. The industry also calls that “produced water.” This is a major waste stream across the U.S. — three billion gallons of oilfield brine a day comes to the surface with oil and gas development, and the industry has to do something with that. So the industry has had an interest in trying to “treat” that brine — trying to take out the toxicity. Take out the heavy metals, take out the radioactivity, and you’ve got a lot of salt. So you can transform that into a usable product, maybe like road salts. Then with the watery component, you can use that to frack new wells. And that sounds really great to the industry. They love to promote that they can take the waste stream and repurpose it for something beneficial.
The problem with brine is it has such a complex brew of toxic elements that it’s actually really, really hard to treat. It’s really hard to remove all the different contaminants from brine and get this clean product that you can then send back out into the world. Even if you do that successfully, you collected all the toxicity, right? And if part of that toxicity is radioactivity, you’ve created a facility where you are concentrating and collecting radioactivity.
At this particular site in West Virginia, this is exactly what they were trying to do: They were trying to treat the oilfield brine. And if your plan isn’t working perfectly, you’re gonna get gunked up really quickly. And you’re building up heavy metals, you’re building up radioactivity, and you’re building up potentially all sorts of problems. And across the board, these plants fail.
The Fairmont Brine Processing site was covered with graffiti and littered with detritus such as beer cans and condoms, indicating the place has become a recurring party spot for locals. Yuri Gorby expressed particular concern about the highly elevated levels of the extremely dangerous radioactive element polonium. Anyone partying at the site is “going to be getting dosed,” says Gorby. “There are going to be long-term chronic effects from this.”
Photo courtesy of Justin Nobel
Adams: At Fairmont Brine, your Geiger counter reads about 7,000 counts per minute, which maxes out the unit. You later drive home the point that working at those levels of radioactivity for one week will take a worker over a yearly limit set by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But yet, teenagers could wander in here without being stopped. What’s the status of this facility?
Nobel: I think anywhere in America, if you have this kind of busted up industrial site, it’s going to be a place where kids are going to want to hang out. You’ve got this site sitting there up on a hill, just outside the city limits of Fairmont — it’s an attractive place to just go and hang out. There’s grassy fields, there’s this big parking lot. There’s these weird, beat up buildings that you can wander around in. And then containers of stuff, all this different equipment.
What we realized and learned when we went there is wild. Parts of it are really, really dangerous and radioactive. But as soon as the article came out, the EPA really kicked into high gear. They had found levels of radioactivity even higher than we found. The EPA is now working with the community. They’ve set up a call center for local residents to get information on the site. I was told by an EPA official they’re in the process of fencing it off, and moving forward to see if it fits the role of a national Superfund site. So they’re in the process of — I wouldn’t say cleaning it up — but setting it up for a possible cleanup and at least making sure that people from the town can’t move around in it.
Adams: The other piece of this that’s alarming is that this is not a unique situation. You found sites like this elsewhere in Appalachia as well as the U.S. So this is not a singular phenomenon limited to Fairmont Brine.
Nobel: Some of these sites, they often don’t operate for longer than a year or two or three, because it’s a really difficult task to remove all the contaminants. To treat oilfield waste is a lot harder than these companies make it out to be. So what you find is, you have a bunch of sites that are currently operating, they’re hard to access, no one’s gonna let you in there and want to show an investigative science journalist around. And then you have these abandoned sites that aren’t operating anymore, but maybe they’re fenced off and they’re deep in the woods, and there’s still a security person guarding it.
Fairmont Brine was different. It was just right off the main road, and it was all open. Other people were hanging out there and they were entering it, and we entered it just like them. So it was really a rare window to ground truth. The concerns that had piled up over time.
Veolia’s Clearater facility in Doddridge County, West Virginia.
Photo Credit: Ted Auch/FracTracker Alliance, 2020
In other instances, such as the Clearwater plant, which is in Doddridge County along Highway 50 in northern West Virginia, I didn’t have access to the site and I still don’t, but there’s an equal amount of concern, in my opinion. This is another facility that was processing oilfield wastewater. This facility claimed that they could take 600 truckloads a day.
So if you go around the oilfield, you see the brine trucks. They look like these little septic tank trucks can hold maybe like 4,000 gallons. Six hundred of those trucks a day. That is a lot of oilfield wastewater, and they had grandiose language for how they were going to operate this plant. I mean, they claimed that this Clearwater plant was going to be one of the greatest environmental assets for the oil and gas industry in recent American history. The West Virginia governor was there giving a statement for the opening. There was really big money behind this plan. It cost like a quarter of a billion dollars, and involved a union between a Colorado energy company and Terra resources, which is big in northern West Virginia, and this really savvy fancy French waste and water management company called Veolia, which has operations all over the world.
It kind of represents an opposite end of the spectrum from Fairmont Brine, which was operated by a company based out of Pittsburgh. It’s pretty local. They’ve got investors, but it’s on a different scale than this company where you actually have a really major company that is known all over the world. But I was skeptical from the beginning. I visited that site with oilfield workers, and then after less than two years of operations, the site was shut down. I think what’s significant there is, the local news story was that it was shut because gas prices went down and it wasn’t economically viable any longer. But what I learned in reporting that story is the site was actually shuttered because it just wasn’t working again.
Whether it was the local capital setting up this small plant in Fairmont, or whether it was international capital setting up this major facility with a lot of gusto — both of them did not work. The difference though, is with Fairmont Brine, we go in and we saw the mess, and the mess is devastating. We were able to test to know exactly how radioactive the waste left on site was — and it’s very radioactive. Clearwater is a bit more of a black box, because I don’t have access to that site, and so I think there’s a huge concern of what is left on site there. But until I can connect maybe with a former worker who can serve as a whistleblower and lay out just what happened there, or get access to the site, or work with the state to try and enable them to get access, we still don’t know just what sort of mess is left up on that particular hillside.
Part of what strikes me, as I talk to community members as they learn about this, it’s kind of like I went down the rabbit hole as a reporter, and when I publish these stories, and a community member or worker reads what was actually happening at these facilities and what was left behind, they go down their own rabbit hole. They suddenly are learning about a part of the oil and gas industry they never knew about. And what I think has been really unfortunate is that these facilities are still getting built, they’re still getting permitted by the state, and in most cases, the community is still unaware.
You have these harms piling up, and people are not informed about them. And this is especially the case in communities where there’s a legitimate need for jobs. And so you know, it makes our mission of trying to spread awareness on this topic really important. It’s like profiting off the lack of knowledge that’s really worrisome to me. These are the things we try and get to the bottom of, and dig up. So I appreciate [that] I have a chance to expose this, because it does need to be exposed.
On this West Virginia Morning, parts of Appalachia saw a natural gas boom from fracking, but as fortunes have changed, the industry has left behind dangerous industrial sites — including one near Fairmont, which became a popular hangout spot for the young. Investigative Reporter Justin Nobel has been looking into this and spoke with Inside Appalachia’s Mason Adams about what he discovered.
On this West Virginia Morning, parts of Appalachia saw a natural gas boom from fracking, but as fortunes have changed, the industry has left behind dangerous industrial sites — including one near Fairmont, which became a popular hangout spot for the young. Investigative Reporter Justin Nobel has been looking into this and spoke with Inside Appalachia’s Mason Adams about what he discovered.
Also, in this show, our Mountain Stage Song of the Week comes to us from Wilco. We listen to their performance of “Cruel Country” from their twelfth studio album of the same name.
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.
Our Appalachia Health News project is made possible with support from Marshall Health.
West Virginia Morning is produced with help from Bill Lynch, Briana Heaney, Chris Schulz, Curtis Tate, Emily Rice, Eric Douglas, Jack Walker, Liz McCormick, and Randy Yohe.
Eric Douglas is our news director and producer.
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
