Tag: Kanawha County

Drug Offender Treatment Program Touts 3 Years of 'Success'

A program aimed at offering low-level drug offenders treatment instead of jail time has been deemed successful years after it began in a West Virginia county that includes the state’s capital.

WCHS-TV reported on Wednesday that Charleston city leaders say most of those who enter the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program implemented three years ago in Kanawha County are not arrested again.

The Prestera Center offers mental health services in several counties. Its addiction services director, Dana Petroff, says she has seen more than 150 offenders go through the program and that 74 percent had not been rearrested.

Petroff says LEAD is expanding into southern West Virginia and cities north of Charleston. She believes the expansion is largely based on the program’s success in and around the city.

BB&T to Cut 56 Positions from West Virginia Service Center

BB&T has announced it is cutting 56 jobs from its processing service center in West Virginia’s capital city.

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports the financial services company announced on Tuesday the layoffs will come from a company center in Charleston that focuses on operations such as the processing of loans, credit cards and mortgages.

BB&T spokesman David White says each associate has been provided a 60-day notice, career transition services and a severance package.

White says the center still will have employees, and that the layoffs are not expected to affect the company’s operations elsewhere in the city.

Charleston Area Alliance President Matt Ballard says the layoffs indicate shifts in the banking industry in the digital age, and the Charleston area will have to prepare for and adapt to those shifts.

Us & Them: 'You're Either a Hiller or a Creeker'

In most schools, you’re likely to find yourself labeled as a jock, theater geek, stoner or even a loner.

But at my alma mater in West Virginia, we had a unique “Us & Them” sorting classification: you were either a “hiller” or a “creeker.”

On this week’s episode of the “Us & Them” podcast: the legacy of class division in Kanawha County, West Virginia, between the Hillers and Creekers.

We call it a union, or the United States, but our nation’s political divisions run deep, as they always have. And while the “Us & Them” podcast explores this political divide, it’s not all about politics. It’s about the deep social divides (or sortings) that lead to deep political divides.

This sorting can start early, and it reminds me of my school days…

From West Virginia Public Broadcasting and PRX, this is “Us & Them,” the podcast where we tell the stories about America’s cultural divides.

Subscribe to “Us & Them” on Apple Podcasts, NPR One or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Watch a live performance of the “Hillers & Creekers” episode as part of the PRX Catapult Podcast Showcase.

Share your opinions with us about these issues, and let us know what you’d like us to discuss in the future. Send a tweet to @usthempodcast or @wvpublic, or leave a comment on Facebook.com/usthempodcast.

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County Board of Education Proposes E-Cigarette Ban

A West Virginia board of education is listening to public comments on a policy revision that would ban e-cigarettes and all substances containing nicotine from property that the school system owns or operates.

The Charleston Gazette-Mail reports the Kanawha County Board of Education put the changes out for public comment Monday. School system General Counsel Jim Withrow says concerns were raised regarding e-cigarettes or vapes that don’t contain tobacco, but have nicotine.

The school system currently has a 1997 policy in place, banning tobacco. The proposed changes would add nicotine and e-cigarettes to the existing tobacco prohibition policy. It would also ban substances containing nicotine from all property that is owned, leased or operated by the school system.

August 4, 1805: Railroader Ralph Swinburn Born in England

Railroader Ralph Swinburn was born in England on August 4, 1805.

As a boy, he was working on a coal-hauling railway, when he met George Stephenson, a pioneer in steam locomotives. This friendship steered Swinburn toward a career in railway civil engineering—first in England, then in America.

He emigrated to the United States in 1851 and landed a job with the Winifrede Mining and Manufacturing Company in Kanawha County. Winifrede was one of the earliest coal operations in present West Virginia.

Swinburn built a narrow-gauge railroad that ran from the Winifrede mines to a barge facility on the Kanawha River. It also was one of the region’s earliest railroads, preceding the mainline Chesapeake and Ohio Railway by two decades. Swinburn soon built another railroad to serve coal mines along nearby Paint Creek. These achievements established him as possibly the first railroad engineer in Western Virginia.

He retired in 1855, only four years after his arrival in America. He purchased land southwest of Charleston, where he lived the rest of his life as a farmer. Ralph Swinburn died in 1895 at age 89.

EPA Says Toxic Sediment in Kanawha River will be Capped

The Environmental Protection Agency has announced an agreement to address dioxin contamination in the Kanawha River by constructing a cap over nine acres of sediment containing the toxic substance.

According to the EPA, the Superfund cleanup in West Virginia’s Putnam and Kanawha counties will focus on a 14-mile (22.53-kilometer) stretch beginning at the Kanawha’s confluence with the Coal River.

The capping is intended to keep concentrations of the known carcinogen contained and protect fish.

The agency says the most significant human health risks are from eating fish.

Pharmacia, formerly Monsanto Co., manufactured an herbicide in Nitro from 1948 to 1969 that was a principal component of the defoliant Agent Orange used by the U.S. military in Vietnam.

The dioxin in the river was a waste byproduct.

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