Lawmakers who negotiated a version both sides could agree on were unable to get the measure passed before midnight Saturday, the deadline for the regular session.
Earlier in the session, the House of Delegates held a public hearing on the issue. But members could not agree on the terms of the bill and late Saturday evening it ended up in a conference committee.
The bill would only allow seven landfills in the state that have already applied to do so to create a separate area on their properties where they could store the waste. Those landfills are located in the Northern Panhandle and Northwest portion of the state.
The measure calls for the waste to be separated from municipal waste and monitored for radioactivity. It also requires drilling companies to pay an extra $1 per ton of waste. The first $750,000 will go toward a scientific study of the drill cuttings, the rest to road repairs in drilling counties. Senator Herb Snyder said the bill was good news for the environment.
Crayfish are one of the most endangered animal groups in the country, but recently a scientist at West Liberty University discovered three new species–and says there may be more on the way. That’s not a big surprise if you know Zachary Loughman. He’s one of only nine crayfish biologists in the country and maybe the most enthusiastic.
“Any second of any day I will look for crayfish. Period,” Loughman says.
He says Appalachia is the perfect place to research crayfish because it’s such an ecologically diverse region.
“If you would have told me when I was here at West Liberty as a student that I would be naming new species of crayfish I would have looked at you like you were a crazy person,” Loughman says.
I recently spent a day with him and his team to learn all about the multi-colored, lobster-like creatures, and how West Virginians can keep them healthy.
New Species of Crayfish in West Virginia:
Cambarus hatfieldi —named after the famous feuding Hatfield family because species is found in Mate Creek, the same creek on which the Hatfield’s homestead was built
Cambarus theepiensis —the root word there theepi is the Shawnee word for “river” since the crayfish is found in a historically Shawnee territory throughout the Guyandotte River
Cambarus smilax —‘smilax’ being the plant genus name for ‘Greenbrier,’ because this new species lives in the Greenbrier River
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Zachary Loughman, has been studying crayfish for about a decade. He says he chose crayfish because no one else really has.
A World Unknown
A lot about crayfish is shrouded in mystery, from simple things like, how long they live, to more complicated queries like, how they raise their young. Loughman says that makes the job very exciting—nothing but discoveries.
“We definitely found out that they aren’t little robots—they all kind of do their own thing,” Loughman says with a half-smile.
For all we don’t know about crayfish, we DO know that they are the 3rd most endangered animal group in the country. Two of the major threats are:
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Today you can find more than 60 crawdads living in a variety of aquariums in Loughman’s West Liberty lab. And so, so many more pickled and cataloged. It’s crazy.
#1 Threat to Crayfish: Stream Sedimentation
Loughman says not finding crayfish in a stream is a pretty good indicator that something, or more likely someone has disturbed the ground in the watershed around the stream causing sediment to clog all the little spaces between the rocks where crayfish like to chill.
Loughman explains that while they are still working to discover all of the roles that crayfish play in stream ecology, one key role is creating avenues by which many other stream-dwellers move about.
“So when the crayfish go away,” he says, “slowly but surely all of the creatures that depend on them fade out, too.”
Loughman says the Big Sandy Crayfish is an example of a species that needs protection now, or it might face extinction:
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Big Sandy Crayfish (Cambarus veteranus) In the late 80s, it was known from seventeen streams throughout the southern coalfields. It is now only known from three streams.
#2 Threat to Crayfish: Invasion
“All it takes [to introduce devastating effects of invasive species]—it’s been proven in other states—is one person repeatedly bringing crayfish from one stream to another stream,” Loughman says.
He explains that crayfish have developed home-turfs over a millennia, and it’s easy to disrupt those ecosystems and throw everything out of whack. Invasive species hijacking steam systems is resulting in big problems for everything from insects to the human fishing industry. Especially in Europe.
URGENT MESSAGE FROM LOUGHMAN TO FISHING FOLKS: “If you’re fishing in Wheeling Creek, get your bait from Wheeling Creek. Don’t get your bait from Wheeling Creek and then drive over to the Potomac River and use that bait,” Loughman says. He says when folks use crayfish as bait, it’s really really important to the ecology of the stream for them NOT TO drop their living leftover crawdads into a stream if the crayfish came from somewhere else. Apparently, it’s a pretty competitive world in crawdad land and we can really mess up the balance of power by flinging crayfish about. Please tell all your fishing friends. Seriously. Thanks.
North America Invades Europe
Quick fact: West Virginia has 30 species of Crayfish that we know of, so far. Europe has 8 or 9.
Someone up and popped some North American crayfish all covered in fungus, into some European streams. That’s really bad news because that fungus is deadly to native European crayfish.
“As these native European crayfish are wiped out, our guys take over and North American crayfish behave a little differently than European crayfish—they dig a lot more. So you end up with stream bank failure, a loss of diversity, it’s having economical impacts.”
Loughman says there are a BUNCH of crayfish biologists in Europe now, because the invasion is so problematic and ultimately wrecking economic and environmental havoc. But his efforts remain in Appalachia, where he has plenty to keep him busy:
“If you go to places like Mon National Forest to collect crayfish, I’m a very happy guy and everything is wonderful. If I drop down onto the plateau near any of our big cities—Wheeling, Parkersburg, Clarksburg, Huntington, Charleston—then I start to get a little bit sad, because the crayfish numbers are down and there are sedimentation issues everywhere.”
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Blue Crayfish (Cambarus monongalensis) Crayfish come in all colors and sizes!
A law office in Fayette County says the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection violated state and federal law.
The Rist Law Office in Fayetteville wants the DEP to reverse a permit for an underground injection well the DEP granted for Danny E. Webb Construction Incorporated. Residents have been concerned about this site in Lochghelly for years.
According to court documents, the Rist Law Office is representing the Natural Resource Defense Council, the West Virginia Surface Owners’ Rights Organization, the Plateau Action Network and citizen Brad Keenan.
The underground (UIC) permit was granted February 6, 2014 under the condition that the operator close an above ground pit used to collect fluids from oil and gas exploration, development drilling, and production before being injected into the underground well.
In a letter of appeal filed earlier this week, attorney Tom Rist says the permit did not specify the closure requirements and should have been addressed before granting the permit.
The permit had expired in October 2012 but the operator continued to collect waste.
The letter says that’s against state law. Rist also says the well is already at capacity, and does not protect water quality. Rist says the permit violates the state Water Pollution Control Act and the state Groundwater Protection Act.
The DEP did not immediately return request for comment although representatives said the department was working on a response.
The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works had a hearing Thursday in Washington that focused on improving chemical safety. Committee members heard about the recent water crisis in the Kanawha Valley from a West Virginia expert.
Panelists included representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Chemical Safety Board as well as authorities from communities that have witnessed recent chemical strife.
Evan Hansen, president of the Morgantown-based environmental consulting firm Downstream Strategies, spoke about the water crisis in West Virginia where a chemical leak into the Elk River recently polluted the drinking water of some 300,000 residents in the Kanawha Valley.
Hansen made some recommendations:
Spill Prevention, Control, and Counter (SPCC) measures as they exist for oil containment, should be extended to chemical storage facilities.
Develop safe drinking water laws. Public water systems should create protection plans, and both the assessment reports and the protection plans should be periodically updated as well as accessible to all downstream water systems.
Make individual National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits for chemical facilities mandatory within zones of critical concern (above drinking water intakes).
Hansen also took advantage of the opportunity to point out that weaknesses in enforcement undermine any meaningful regulations. Chairwoman Barbara Boxer—a democrat from California—stressed the importance of new legislation in the process of being drafted, saying that a bill to address new chemical concerns brought to light by the chemical spill in West Virginia was forthcoming.
From 2010 to 2012 West Virginia was ranked the most obese state in the country according to Gallup’s Well Being State of the States report.
This year Mississippi bumped West Virginia out of the bottom.
The report says Mississippi’s obesity rate is 35 point four percent, while West Virginia’s is 34.4. The national rate is 27.1 percent, which is 1.6 percentage points higher than the year before.
Mississippi, West Virginia, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Kentucky have been listed among the 10 states with the highest obesity rates in the nation since 2008.
The report is based on telephone interviews conducted Jan. 2 – Dec. 29, 2013 as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well -Being Index.
It says people living in the 10 most obese states have higher rates of chronic disease like high cholesterol, diabetes, heart conditions and cancer.
A state bill would no longer change West Virginia law to require prescriptions for cold medicines that are used to make methamphetamine.
Instead, lawmakers tweaked the proposal to cut in half how much medicine someone can buy each year.
The state House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday amended the proposal dealing with pseudoephedrine medications.
The changes would limit customers to 24 grams of products like Sudafed yearly, instead of the current 48-gram limit. The bill would create a meth offender registry and make previous drug offenders get prescriptions for some cold medications.
The Senate easily passed the original prescription-only bill on Feb. 18.
The House would need to pass the amended bill and the Senate would need to agree on changes for the proposal to become law. The legislative session ends March 8.
