A group is working to create a transportation plan for Raleigh and Fayette Counties. The Metropolitan Planning Organization, or MPO, is working to identify transportation investments needed to move the region forward.
The MPO office is federally and state funded but it’s made up of local governments, business leaders, and others. The group is responsible for long range transportation planning.
When the 2010 Census was published in 2012 is showed six towns across Route 19 in Fayette and Raleigh Counties had a population density of 50,000 or more. This makes the region “urbanized.” The municipalities included with this new designation include Fayetteville, Mt. Hope, Oak Hill, Sophia, Mabscott, and Beckley.
When an area is deemed ‘urbanized’ the federal government mandates the formation of an organization to come up with a transportation plan. As mandated by the federal government, the MPO is working to develop a 25‐year Regional Transportation Plan, which addresses travel by all modes, including streets and highways, bikeways and walkways, public transportation, aviation, rail and waterways.
Folks are encouraged to attend the second meeting to share ideas with leaders on what should be included in this plan. The is Tuesday, September 30 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. at the Beckley City Hall Council Chambers in Beckley.
You can also share your ideas for the Fayette Raleigh County 25 year transportation plan online.
When 19-year-old Nathan Thomas Cooper first took the infantry man’s creed, it wasn’t clear where the United States Army would take him.
Friday marks the 239th anniversary of America’s Independence. A few years later, in 1789, Congress officially created the Department that helps protect and keep the American freedoms…the United State Military.
But the oldest active duty regiment can be traced back to 1784 … The Old Guard. A soldier from Princeton was recently chosen to help carry on the traditions of the troop.
Private Cooper of Princeton was honored when he was selected to serve in The Old Guard straight out of basic training.
To be a member of the 3d U.S. Infantry Regiment, among other things, a soldier must:
Stand at least 6 feet tall
Weigh between 150 and 180 lbs.
Have a specific bone structure
Besides the physical characteristics, Cooper’s mother, Nicole Ellis, suspects that his attitude was also important. “He’s everything to me and to his family,” Ellis said, “but to the rest of the world he’s just a nobody from just a nowhere little town and they picked him. He was chosen.”
Taps, a standard part of U.S. military funerals since 1891, gets played in Arlington on a regular basis. And again, it’s soldiers of The Old Guard who are responsible for carrying out these traditions at Fort Myer and around the Washington D.C. area. Other responsibilities of The Old Guard include guarding the tomb of the unknown soldier – an honor that Cooper hopes to earn, but he says won’t happen any time soon.
In the meantime, he’s currently in the Firing Party – a group that participates in the “21-gun salute” for honored military veterans. Cooper will be trying out for the Caisson Platoon, which includes the soldiers that ride on horses that escort the fallen soldiers to the final resting place at Arlington National Cemetery.
“I said before I didn’t want to go to war,” Cooper said, “but if necessary I will fight to my death. I am always there now and forever. I am the infantry, follow me. I’ll lead the way.”
Nicole Ellis, mother (left), Private Nathan Thomas Cooper
While Senator Jay Rockefeller is standing by Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki, Congressman Nick Rahall and Congresswoman Shelly Capito are calling for his resignation amid the scandal that has embroiled the Veterans Administration for weeks.
Rahall added his name Friday to the growing list of Democrats joining Republicans calling for Shinseki to step down, signaling mounting pressure on the Secretary.
President Obama and other congressional Democrats, including Sen. Rockefeller, have so far stood by Shinseki as the claims mount that veterans were made to wait for medical care at various facilities contributing to the death of dozens of veterans and that VA employees engaged in a cover-up.
Rahall released a statement saying Shinseki has served with dignity and honor but by stepping down “Secretary Shinseki will help to restore the trust our veterans must have in the VA and will demonstrate a commitment by this Administration to address the system’s serious shortcomings.”
Rockefeller, the longest-serving member of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, released a statement Friday noting under Shinseki the backlog of pending VA claims has been cut in half, and millions of veterans continue to receive top quality care.
He said the root of VA problems is a budget that has been drastically cut.
Capito released a statement Thursday also calling for the Secretary’s resignation.
The Senate Finance Committee will vote Wednesday on whether to approve West Virginia Native Sylvia Matthews Burwell as the next Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Burwell currently serves as Office of Management and Budget Director, a job she started last year after the Senate voted April 24, 2013 96-0 to confirm her nomination.
Burwell appeared at a Finance Committee hearing last Wednesday where senators asked her questions about how she would handle the HHS job if confirmed.
A news release from Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) says the committee plans to vote in an open executive session Wednesday at 2 p.m. in Room 215 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.
If she’s approved by the committee, the full Senate would then vote on Burwell’s nomination.
The Senate Finance Committee is expected to vote this week on whether to approve West Virginia native and current Office of Management and Budget Director, Sylvia Matthews Burwell, as head of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
If the committee approves Burwell the full Senate will take up her nomination.
Republican Endorsement
Burwell faced another round of questions Wednesday April 14, 2014 as the U.S. Senate Finance Committee considered her nomination to head the Department of Health and Human Services.
This was Burwell’s second confirmation hearing and she received an endorsement from a key republican and questions about the Affordable Care act. The hearing opened with an introduction by Republican Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) who said he plans to vote for Burwell’s nomination.
“She’s competent,” Coburn said. “To me that says something because so often we have people placed in positions in Washington that aren’t competent for the task at hand.”
Coburn went on to say Burwell has an outstanding character, something he’s witnessed as he’s worked closely with Burwell and others at the Office of Management and Budget over the past year on problems in that agency.
“When you have somebody that’s competent and also has strong character you find a way to get past your differences to solve problems.” Coburn said.
West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller also helped introduce Burwell and pointed out what he considers some of her strengths. Rockefeller called Burwell brilliant, yet humble and always hard working.
“So the central devotion of your purpose of public service is to help people better their position in life,” Rockefeller said.
During her opening statement Burwell told committee members that she plans to focus on three areas should she be approved: building strong teams, strengthening relationships and delivering results.
“If confirmed I look forward to working alongside the remarkable men and women of the Department of Health and Human Services to build on their work to insure that children, families and seniors have the building blocks of healthy and productive lives,” Burwell said.
Republican committee members took the opportunity to make their dissatisfaction with the Affordable Care Act known, and expressed frustration with lack of communication from HHS under current Director Kathleen Sebelius.
Concerns Expressed
The Ranking Republican, Senator Orin Hatch of Utah, was the first to ask if Burwell would answer queries from Congress. Democrat Bill Nelson of Florida brought up the problem of Medicare Fraud, calling south Florida ground zero and asking Burwell how she’ll address it.
Other topics committee members touched on included health care for minorities, whether states that used federal money to launch failed health care web sites should have to repay it and fixing what some called the ‘broken system of reimbursing physicians under Medicare.’
At the end of the hearing Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) it’s his intention to work with other members to push the nomination through the Senate as quickly as possible.
A feature article in April’s edition of National Geographic Magazine examines what America and other key countries are doing to limit carbon dioxide emissions.
The article comes as new regulations from the Obama Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency are up for public comment.
The article assumes that humans are inducing global climate change, an idea that some Republicans as well as the West Virginia Coal Association, still question.
Wacky Weather
The calendar says it’s Spring but for West Virginia and other states across the country it’s been the seemingly never ending winter.
But doesn’t climate change theory say that the earth is warming?
The West Virginia Coal Association has picked up on what they called the “inconvenient truth” for Mr. Al Gore in a tweet that showed a picture of snow in the usually sunny Florida.
January 27, 2014
Well…. Oh, Mr. Gore…. here is an "inconvenient truth" for you! Snow in Florida. pic.twitter.com/Kd1Lb9I85Z
The tweet refers, of course, to the documentary the former vice president hosted called, “The Inconvenient Truth” that predicts catastrophic events that could happen on earth if the climate continues to change as most scientists predict.
Another tweet from the West Virginia Coal Association on January 25, 2014.
Scientists and climatologists have pointed to ‘extreme weather patterns’ as evidence that the climate is changing because of increases in carbon dioxide into the atmosphere–a change largely contributed to by ever-increasing energy demands by growing human populations.
The West Virginia Coal Association did not immediately return our request for comment on this story.
Update March 28, 2014 10:25 p.m.
Three days later, the West Virginia Coal Association has not returned our request for comment.
To understand an element of the current political climate of climate change, perhaps we should look back at a federal subcommittee hearing hosted in December 2013.
In a release Republican Chairman Lamar Smith of Texas said, "“Administration officials and the national media regularly use the impacts from hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts and floods to justify the need for costly climate change regulations. The fact is there is little evidence that climate change causes extreme weather events. Instead of trying to scare the American people and promote a political agenda, the administration should try to protect the lives and property of our nation’s residents from extreme weather by better weather forecasting. Politicians and others should rely on good science, not science fiction, when they discuss extreme weather. Otherwise, they will lack credibility when advocating new policy changes.”
Dr. David Tilly of Pennsylvania State university also testified that while science doesn’t know everything, climate change is real.
But let’s get back to the article in National Geographic Magazine. It doesn’t question where the world currently gets electricity.
Credit Robb Kendrick / National Geographic
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National Geographic
Norfolk, Virginia At the Lamberts Point Coal Terminal, railcars loaded with coal line up to fill waiting ships. Some 20 million tons of coal—about 2 percent of U.S. production—move through this terminal each year, most of it from Appalachia.
Freelance reporter Michelle Nijhuis points out that coal provides 40 percent of the world’s electricity in the article called, “Can Coal Ever Be Clean?”.
“Coal provides a lot of jobs,” Nijhuis said. “Coal provides a lot of power not only in the U.S. but to people throughout the world who are getting power for the first time and many times it’s the cheapest, cheapest in dollar terms.”
Nijhuis also points out that while “cheap natural gas has lately reduced the demand for coal in the U.S., … everywhere else, especially in China, demand is surging,” not only for 80% of china’s electric power, but for things like plastic and rayon production too.
So basically, coal’s not forecasted to go away.
Madison, West Virginia They call it mountaintop removal. For each ton of coal taken from the Hobet 21 mine, 20 cubic yards of mountain are blasted away, then dumped in valleys. Hundreds of square miles of Appalachian ridges have been dismantled this way. Credit Robb Kendrick / National Geographic
Nijhuis begins the article by pointing to West Virginia and the creeks polluted with acid mine drainage and remnants of mountain top removal or strip mining as evidence to say … no, it can’t.
Nijhuis also says that coal “produces 39 percent of global CO2 emissions.”
The American Association for the Advancement of Science just last week released a statement that points to the research of 97 percent of climate scientists, who say human caused climate change is real.
The report says the evidence is increased global temperature over the last 100 years, rising sea level, and the more frequent happenings of some types of extreme weather events – such as heat waves and heavy precipitation events. They say, that “recent scientific findings indicate that climate change is likely responsible for the increase in the intensity of many of these events in recent years.”
Nijhuis has covered the environment and science for about 15 years and says that majority speaks volumes.
“Science never agrees 100% …. on anything,” she said. “Ninety-seven percent very rarely agree on anything.”
So what now?
Credit Robb Kendrick / National Geographic
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National Geographic
Poca, West Virginia The Poca High School “Dots” practice near an American Electric Power coal-fired plant that powers nearly two million homes. Scrubbers clean some of the sulfur and mercury—but not the carbon—from the smoke.
According to the article, we need coal for electricity, and scientists say we need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
The Obama Administration and the EPA is expected to draft new rules meant to limit carbon pollution from power plants under the Clean Air Act by June of this year. The West Virginia Coal Association has launched a campaign encouraging coal mining families to send a message during the comment period to the EPA to say “they are destroying the lives of West Virginians who just want to work.”
The idea is to pay for the amount of carbon dioxide put into the atmosphere. For power companies that would likely mean raising rates for customers. A tough point to sell when you’re not buying the climate change argument.
What about carbon capture? Nijhuis points out that the Mountaineer power plant in West Virginia has successfully captured carbon, but with enormous contraptions collecting small percentages – still, Nijhuis says, it’s something.
“Putting some regulations in place will help jump start innovation,” she said, “and help the coal industry and science figure out how to further reduce carbon pollution from coal plants and make those technologies more reliable more efficient, more reliable hopefully cheaper.”
There’s also a market for some CO2 which can be used in oil fields to pull out pockets of oil as well as in the carbonated beverage industry. On that note, the “Friends of Coal” has also tweeted an article that points to a company that has a more efficient process to use carbon dioxide for making valuable chemical feed stocks.
Why should America bear the brunt of reducing CO2 emissions? China emits the largest amount of total carbon emissions, but the US still produces the highest volumes per capita, the article points out. Well,
Credit Robb Kendrick / National Geographic
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National Geographic
Shuozhou, China The sun is sometimes obscured by soot from the Shentou Number 2 power plant in Shanxi Province, China. A lightning-bolt sculpture stands in the center of the neighborhood that houses the plant’s workers.
Nijhuis says China is working on reducing ‘air pollution’ and has some of the most efficient power plants in the world.
Of course there are renewable energy options.
Nijhuis says the takeaway from this article is about thinking about the “and” and not the “or”.
“We need all of these technologies,” she said. “I think it benefits us all to think broadly now.”
The deadline for comments on the new regulations is May 5.
