State regulators say snowmelt has sent wastewater at a former coal impoundment site spilling over sediment control ponds and into a McDowell County creek.
Department of Environmental Protection mining and reclamation acting director Harold Ward said Wednesday the spill occurred in Gary at a site formerly owned by U.S. Steel Mining.
DEP spokesman Tom Aluise says the amount that spilled wasn’t immediately known.
The Charleston Gazette reports DEP officials took over the impoundment site a decade ago after a burst drainage pipe sent polluted water into the Tug Fork River. Gary Partners LLC had reactivated the site’s mining permit and was more recently recovering buried fine coal particles.
But Ward says a closure order had been issued because Gary Partners had stopped paying the DEP under a royalty-permit deal.
The trial of a Virginia man charged with killing the mayor of War is underway in McDowell County Circuit Court.The defendant is 28-year-old Earl Click of…
The trial of a Virginia man charged with killing the mayor of War is underway in McDowell County Circuit Court.
The defendant is 28-year-old Earl Click of Grundy, Va.
Click is charged with first-degree murder in the death of 72-year-old War Mayor Thomas Hatcher.
City workers found Hatcher’s body in his home on July 17, 2012.
Click’s sister and co-defendant, 32-year-old Rebecca Hatcher, was acquitted of a murder charge in November. Judge Rudolph J. Murensky II declared a mistrial on a conspiracy charge. A retrial is scheduled next month.
Officer McCoy with Kimball Police Department say 17 cars derailed around 8:30 Friday morning.
KIMBALL, W.Va. (AP) — Hazardous material crews are cleaning up following a trail derailment.
Officials say at least 16 cars of the Norfolk Southern train derailed around 8:30 a.m. Friday in an area of McDowell County along U.S. Route 52. No evacuations were ordered and there were no injuries.
The train has five locomotives and 111 cars and is about 7,000 feet long. It was headed from Bellevue, Ohio to Linwood, N.C.
State emergency officials say booms are in place to prevent the tar leaking from a ruptured tanker car from going any farther down into Elkhorn Creek.
About 700 feet of track was damaged in the derailment and will have to be replaced. Norfolk Southern expects train traffic to reopen Saturday afternoon.
A public transit service in southern West Virginia has a new location. An official opening ceremony is planned for Friday morning.
The vehicles of the Bluefield Area Transit, or “B.A.T.” buses, now have a new ‘cave’ to call home… of a sort.
The construction of the administrative and maintenance facilities for BAT is now complete. The public transit program serves Mercer and McDowell counties with routes into Bluefield, Princeton, Athens and Welch.
The new facilities on John Nash Boulevard in Bluefield, are more than 14,000 total square feet, with more than 5,000 square feet serving as administrative offices.
The project cost nearly $3.9 million and was paid for by a federal State of Good Repair Grant administered by the West Virginia Division of Public Transit.
Danhill Construction Company of Gauley Bridge worked on the project.
Often referred to as, ‘the greatest job in the world’, taking care of a child with special needs can be challenging for parent. Parents of children in Mercer County have formed their own support group.
Living in rural areas often means living significant distances from medical specialists, and sometimes treatment. For example the best form of treatment for Autism is applied behavioral analysis. While there are limited specialists across the state, there is not a single specialist south of Charleston in West Virginia.
Support groups are no different. There are very few in the region.
“Unfortunately where we are in a very rural area there’s not a lot of access to support groups like you would see in bigger cities,” Carla Poseno said.
Carla Poseno is the Vice President of the K.I.D.S Project.
“So what we decided to do is make an all-inclusive special needs support group to work in the community,” she said.
While the support group is meant to help parents and caregivers of children with special needs, the group is also to help remind the children that they are kind, important, determined, and strong … which is what the “KIDS” in “K.I.D.S Project” stands for.
“It’s really helped me because my daughter is kind of my full time job,” she said. “Best job on earth but at the same time it can be stressful.”
Poseno knows that raising a child with special needs isn’t always easy.
“Sometimes it can be hard it can be stressful,” Poseno said. “You have sleepless nights there are days that sometimes you are lucky to get a shower because your child needs so much from you.”
“It’s worth the fight to fight for your kids when they have special needs.”
Children with various diagnoses and disabilities are all welcome and so far parents of children with special needs that range from autism, to spina bifida, to bipolar have attended meetings.
Kristal Jones, coincidentally a McDowell native, is the president of the group.
“The very first meeting it struck me that this is something that we really need in our area,” Jones said.
The group is also a place for parents and caregivers to share resources and advice. Jones’s daughter has A.D.H.D.
“If you don’t request certain things they may not know that your child needs that additional help on testing per say,” she said.
The group meets every fourth Monday of the month at Princeton Public Library. The next meeting on December 30, however, will be at the Glenwood Green Valley Fire Department. The K.I.D.S project is hosting a holiday party for families with members with special needs.
The life expectancy for American females is 81 years.
In West Virginia, Marshall County has the longest life expectancy for women, with 80 years, while those in McDowell deal with about 6 years shorter life span.
The life expectancy for American males is about 76 years.
For West Virginian men, the longest life expectancy is also 76 years in Monongalia County and once again, McDowell County men have the shortest life expectancy in the state at 66 years.
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont hosted a hearing to highlight the new report that says Americans living in some neighborhoods have lower life expectancies than people living in Ethiopia and Sudan.
Sabrina Shrader shared her story of growing in ‘holler’ in the small town called Twin Branch in McDowell County. She was invited to speak at a hearing with the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions after McDowell County was listed to have the shortest life expectancy for men and second lowest for women in the country.
“I have had family members, friends and classmates all die young,” Shrader said. “This past year both of my stepsisters died.”
Sabrina Shrader grew up in McDowell County.
“It was kind of heartbreaking to hear that just because you are from a certain place you are likely to die young,” Shrader said after returning from the hearing.
Analysis: Behavior, Health Care, Education, Income All Play a Factor
McDowell County has suffered major job loss and mass exodus of people after many coal mines closed. In 1950 there were close to 100,000 people. The population has plunged to about 21,000 in 2012.
The median household income in McDowell County between 2007-2011 was about $22,000; far less than the national median of about $53,000 and even West Virginia’s median, $40,000.
Dr. David Kindig with the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, has studied and mapped population health for decades. He joined Shrader to speak with federal lawmakers on this issue.
“Health is produced by many factors including medical care and health behaviors but equally importantly or more importantly issues like income education the structure of our neighborhoods as my colleagues have been showing,” Kindig said.
The common theme across the panel seemed to focus on education and income.
“The bottom line is that we will not improve our poor health performance unless we balance our financial and policy investments across this whole portfolio of factors.”
