Since last summer, the plant has hardly operated at all, including during a cold snap in January that resulted in a record for electricity usage in the PJM region, which includes West Virginia.
Despite record electricity demand in January, the Pleasants Power Station barely operated.
The plant went idle for a few months, but a buyer eventually stepped up, promising to continue generating electricity with coal, and eventually, hydrogen.
Since last summer, though, the plant has hardly operated at all, including during a cold snap in January that resulted in a record for electricity usage in the PJM region, which includes West Virginia.
Dennis Wamsted, an energy finance analyst for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, says it shows a plant that was in trouble in 2018 is still in trouble.
“It says to me, it’s not economic,” he said.
A $12 million a year tax break approved by the legislature and signed by then-Gov. Jim Justice in 2019 kept the plant running for another five years until Omnis Fuel Technologies stepped in.
West Virginia Public Broadcasting has reached out to the company for comment, and will include a response if one is provided.
West Virginia is also attempting to land more data centers, which require a lot of electricity, though few are powered by coal.
PJM, which includes 13 states and the District of Columbia, set a record for winter electricity demand on January 22 of 145,000 megawatts, breaking a record set in February 2015.
According to Wamsted, Pleasants ran under 5% of the time in January. The average coal plant in PJM operates close to 40%.
In an agreement filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia last month, the companies agreed to pay $125,000 by Feb. 27 and the remaining balance due by May 1.
A federal court has given coal companies owned by U.S. Sen. Jim Justice until May 1 to pay fines they owe or face contempt.
Numerous Justice-owned coal companies owe a total of more than $400,000 in delinquent mine safety penalties.
In an agreement filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia last month, the companies agreed to pay $125,000 by Feb. 27 and the remaining balance due by May 1.
Under the court agreement, if Tams Management and Frontier Coal fail to pay the amount owed by May 1, they will be held in contempt and fined $1,000 a day by Senior Judge Michael Urbanski.
The companies may be subject to additional sanctions, including a debt collection surcharge, civil fines, civil confinement of officers – or jail time – and receivership.
The court ordered Justice to pay the debt, cite an exemption or appear in court in Harrisonburg, Virginia, on March 28.
Tams Management, Frontier Coal and Bluestone Coal had originally agreed to pay more than $5 million in Mine Safety and Health Administration civil penalties by March 1, 2024, but they missed that deadline.
Demonstrators with the group Mountaineers Indivisible are calling on West Virginia’s Congressional delegation to oppose the Trump administration’s broad-reaching cuts to federal programs.
Hundreds of people rallied in front of the Monongalia County Courthouse in downtown Morgantown Tuesday in opposition of the ongoing cuts to federal staffing and funding.
Demonstrators with the group Mountaineers Indivisible are calling on West Virginia’s Congressional delegation to oppose the Trump administration’s broad-reaching cuts to federal programs. Formed just one month ago, the group’s numbers have swelled to more than 300 attendants at a meeting over the weekend.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., told reporters last month that she was “pretty comfortable with the direction” Elon Musk’s cuts were taking at the time and that she would need to wait and see.
“Does this ‘Make America Great Again’?” a speaker asked the crowd Tuesday.
In January, prior to taking his oath of office for the Senate, and prior to Pres. Donald Trump’s inauguration, then-governor Jim Justice signed onto a letter with 25 other governors “supporting President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Initiative.”
“The goal is to streamline government, cut wasteful spending, and balance the federal budget. Let’s make it happen,” Justice said via X, formerly Twitter.
“No!” they replied in unison.
I’ve joined 25 other Republican governors in supporting President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Initiative. The goal is to streamline government, cut wasteful spending, and balance the federal budget. Let’s make it happen. pic.twitter.com/h2etrGLmje
Tim Buckman works at the Louis A. Johnson Veterans’ Administration Medical Center in Clarksburg. He told the crowd that he has seen firsthand the impact of DOGE cuts to workers and funding.
“They lowered all our government credit card limits to $1,” Buckman said. “They’re still open, but you can’t buy anything. That means for the buses for the disabled veterans to get back and forth to the hospital, can’t buy gas. If it snows, can’t blow the parking lot. We need critical things to keep the place running.”
Buckman said he works in the medical center’s boiler plant, which provides heating and cooling for the West Virginia Veterans Nursing Facility, as well as sterilization and humidity control capacity for the hospital. He warned that if a critical component fails, the center cannot purchase a replacement.
“That’s someone’s critical surgery. That could be life or death,” Buckman said. “Guess what? They die.”
A protestor with a message to Sen. Shelley Moore Capito in Morgantown March 4, 2025.
Former state delegate Barbara Fleischauer came with a lengthy list a friend had compiled of local effects of the federal cuts.
“These are the numbers: 80 plus fired at the Parkersburg Bureau of Public Debt, 20 plus at NETL, the National Energy Technology Lab, Department of Energy,” she said. “Morgantown Veterans Administration included 10 probationary employees, four of them 100% service disabled veterans. NIOSH, there are three critical programs that are going to be affected.”
Fleischauer’s list also includes 10 inspectors at the Mine Health and Safety Administration that took deferred resignation, as well as 27 probationary employees subject to termination.
“Most of those jobs that were lost were mine inspectors or expert mine safety trainers,” she said.
Two miners have died in West Virginia already this year.
“We want our federal representatives to stand up for us,” Fleischauer said. “The people need to be a check if Congress won’t be.”
Protestors like retired teacher Ray Wilson say they are appalled by Musk’s access to their personal information and the real-world effects of cuts to departments like Veterans’ Affairs.
“When you cut all the projects that help the poorest to get tax breaks to the biggest billionaires in the country, that’s wrong,” he said.
Wilson said the country was built on protest.
“Consequently, we’re telling the President and the Congress and so forth that we can’t have this anymore,” he said.
Monongalia County Commissioner Tom Bloom said the issue is bringing people together across political divides.
“If you look at the group here, there are people that, we may not get along, we may have different philosophies, but we’re here for one reason, and that’s this egregious act that’s going on that’s destroying our country, hurting our economic base, destroying individuals,” he said.
Bloom said the federal cuts have left a long-planned infrastructure project without a clear path forward, but have also taken an immediate personal toll as well.
“We have funds to build Exit 155, Harmony Grove. Are they still there or not? No one can give an answer,” he said. “On the smaller side, a lady called me up yesterday, hysterical, five and a half months pregnant, was just cut from a federal job, and all it said was, ‘You have three more weeks of medical and you’re gone.’ She’s like, ‘What am I supposed to do?’”
Organizers, who have demonstrated in front of Capito’s local offices in recent weeks, say more action is planned.
Protestors hold up signs of solidarity at a demonstration in Morgantown March 4, 2025.
Last June, when Justice was still governor of West Virginia, the court ordered him to pay Western Surety, a Chicago-based insurance company, $3.2 million, plus $100,000 in interest.
Late last month, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia issued a garnishment summons to U.S. Senator Jim Justice.
Last June, when Justice was still governor of West Virginia, the court ordered him to pay Western Surety, a Chicago-based insurance company, $3.2 million, plus $100,000 in interest.
Kentucky Fuel Corp. must pay a total of nearly $850,000 in attorney fees to plaintiff New London Tobacco Market, including nearly $650,000 over a judgment issued five years ago.
U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove also increased a contempt fine against Jim Justice’s son, Jay Justice, and associate Stephen Ball, to $1,000 a day from $250 a day.
The original contempt order was issued after Jay Justice and Ball failed to comply with a 2021 discovery request from a federal magistrate judge.
Justice and Ball are also required to pay almost $200,000 in previously awarded attorney fees. The payment deadline was in October 2023, but the defendants claimed an inability to pay it.
This story was distributed by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKYU in Kentucky and NPR.
U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove increased a contempt fine against Jim Justice’s son, Jay Justice, and associate Stephen Ball, to $1,000 a day from $250 a day.
A federal judge in eastern Kentucky has imposed new penalties on a coal company owned by U.S. Sen. Jim Justice.
Kentucky Fuel Corp. must pay a total of nearly $850,000 in attorney fees to plaintiff New London Tobacco Market, including nearly $650,000 over a judgment issued five years ago.
U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove also increased a contempt fine against Jim Justice’s son, Jay Justice, and associate Stephen Ball, to $1,000 a day from $250 a day.
The original contempt order was issued after Jay Justice and Ball failed to comply with a 2021 discovery request from a federal magistrate judge.
Justice and Ball are also required to pay almost $200,000 in previously awarded attorney fees. The payment deadline was in October 2023, but the defendants claimed an inability to pay it.
Justice and Ball made a payment of $30,500 toward their contempt sanctions in October 2024.
“As the court has already identified,” Van Tatenhove wrote earlier this week, “this case has been marked by delay and obstruction on the part of the defendants.”
The Justice family owes Caroleng Investments, a subsidiary of the Russian mining company Mechel, more than $10 million.
Justice-owned companies are entangled in myriad lawsuits with multiple creditors involving tens of millions of dollars in debt.
Jim Justice, a two-term Republican governor of West Virginia, was elected to the U.S. Senate in November and took office last month.
This story was distributed by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKYU in Kentucky and NPR.
During his first week in office, Gov. Patrick Morrisey delivered a picture of the state’s fiscal health in stark contrast to his predecessor’s projections of strength for the state.
“The state will have a projected deficit of approximately $400 million and that number is projected to rise more and more in the out years,” Morrisey said. “This is where we stand on day one.”
For the upcoming fiscal year, West Virginia’s budget is facing a turning point. After years of tax cuts, federal funds for many social services are set to expire – and the legislature will have to adapt to Morrisey’s new budget proposals.
In the time since, Morrisey has made it clear that his office sees these issues as “inherited” and structural from former Gov. Jim Justice – pointing to one-time funds used for large ongoing costs like Medicaid rather than finding consistent funding sources.
“I think it’s coming across as more dire sounding than it is,” Sen. Eric Tarr, R-Putnam, said.
Tarr is the outgoing Senate Finance Chair, having held the seat for three years. He says he has worked to create flat budgets with the legislature.
While Justice ceased providing six-year budget projections during his time in office – a practice Morrisey plans to bring back — Tarr worked with available legislative data to create revenue reports, within a margin of error.
Still, he says Justice’s priorities could diverge from the concrete realities of running the state.
“Governor Justice was a very big, big picture guy on going out and, you know, let’s tackle the biggest mountain we can find,” Tarr said. “And really, sometimes there wasn’t as much a plan for tackling that biggest mountain you could find, but that went at sometimes the sacrifice of having somebody who was who really had an operational knowledge of the agencies.”
While Tarr is cautiously optimistic about Morrisey approach, he says Morrisey’s plans to audit expenditures could still be difficult logistically.
In the meantime, Tarr says he expects job growth through past legislative funds designated to companies like Nucor to propel job growth in the state – but those just come a little later than expected in projections’ margin of error.
And incoming jobs will also mean an incoming demand for social services.
“If you have people who are coming in in order to go to work, they need childcare for their kids, in order to be able to get away from the house to go to work, rather than somebody having childcare and still sitting at home,” Tarr said.
But those services – like health care costs and investments in childcare – have always been in the push and pull of balancing the state budget with years of tax cuts.
Sean O’Leary is a senior policy analyst at the West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy. He says the state’s position with those social services, which often enable and attract workforce participation, is already weakened.
“The risk that you run when you make cuts to the services is that you make the state uncompetitive to our neighbors,” O’Leary said. “When it comes to public services, we already spend less per child on child care. We already spend less per student on (K-12) education. We already spend less on health care and Medicaid. That’s not good for the state.”
As for the promise of tax cuts, O’Leary said the state’s strategy for job growth has long been lagging.
“We’ve been down this path before, when we tried this under the Manchin administration by cutting the corporate net income tax, the business franchise tax, the parts of the income tax and the sales tax,” O’Leary said. “At the time, it was called the most pro-growth tax reform in the country, and it was supposed to create jobs. It was supposed to pay for itself. All these things ended up costing in 2015 when they were all fully in effect, cost about $425 million which you adjust for inflation, it’s about the size of the income tax cuts that we’ve recently passed. And since then, West Virginia has lagged the rest of the nation when it comes to job growth.”
And many federal funds, like Medicaid expansion, are no longer in play for the state budget as pandemic-era federal bills have lapsed. This lapse also comes amid questions about what President Donald Trump will preserve as he plans to reassess and cut trillions in federal program funding – Morrisey says almost half of the state’s overall budget currently comes from federal funds.
O’Leary says his analysis sees a need to preserve social programs – while passing legislation that thinks more expansively about the potential for taxes that would not be levied against most West Virginians directly.
“You know, we could keep the current income tax cuts and add new brackets on top, so that no one below $100,000 would would see their taxes increase and would still raise hundreds of millions of dollars,” O’Leary said. “Doing that, you know, almost closes our budget gap.”
The governor releases his annual budget proposal along with his state of the state on the first day of the legislative session. From there, it’s up to the state legislature, including new Senate leadership, to come up with a budget that both chambers can pass and the governor will sign.
