A Second Special Session, Hurricane Helene’s Aftermath and Repurposed Power Plants, This West Virginia Week

West Virginia Week is a web-only podcast that explores the week’s biggest news in the Mountain State. Emily Rice is our host this week.

On this West Virginia Week, we start with the legislature’s second special session of the year. The Governor’s original call for this special session prioritized childcare tax credits and cutting the income tax by 5 percent, but once lawmakers gaveled in, discussions quickly devolved.

Statehouse Reporter, Caelan Bailey will tell us about one measure on nuclear regulations that passed with the smallest margin of 73 yeas out of 91 votes cast.

Plus, we’ll hear about the devastation in the southeast from Hurricane Helene and how West Virginia’s National Guard will help recovery efforts.

Also, a ballot amendment could decide the fate of medically assisted suicide in West Virginia this November, a possible transition from coal power to natural gas and a community pushes back against a new city ordinance.

Emily Rice is our host this week. Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert.

West Virginia Week is a web-only podcast that explores the week’s biggest news in the Mountain State. It’s produced with help from Bill Lynch, Briana Heaney, Caelan Bailey, Chris Schulz, Curtis Tate, Emily Rice, Eric Douglas, Jack Walker, Liz McCormick, Randy Yohe and Maria Young.


Learn more about West Virginia Week.

W.Va. National Guard Headed To Areas Hit By Hurricane Helene

Hurricane Helene devastated the southeast and now members of the West Virginia National Guard are heading to help with their recovery. 

Thirty guard members are set to leave for South Carolina on Friday to assist with reconstruction and debris cleanup. The troops will be there for around two weeks.

Busick, North Carolina received nearly 31 inches of rain, the highest rainfall in the Appalachians from any tropical weather system. 

Gov. Jim Justice, as the commander in chief of the state’s National Guard, activated the guard to aid communities devastated by the storm. 

“The West Virginia National Guard is running to the fire without hesitation, as we always do,” Justice said in a statement. “That’s what we do in West Virginia – we pull the rope together. I’m proud we can join forces with other states to support North Carolina and South Carolina in their recovery efforts. My thoughts and prayers are with our brave service members.”

National Guard Major General Bill Crane said he is grateful the governor has activated the Guard to help other states that have been impacted by the catastrophic weather. 

“You’ve seen the devastation. The governor has seen the devastation, and we want nothing more than to go in and try to help as much as we can,” Crane said.  “That’s what we’re here for. That’s why we work so well together.”

Crane says the guard will be teaming up with other state’s air teams to access areas that are still currently not accessible by land due to flooding, and infrastructure damage. 

Originally 12 more guard members were slated to head to North Carolina to assist in fatality search and recovery. However, that has been canceled. Guard officials said the North Carolina National Guard has put their request on hold as they continue to assess their response needs.

New Food Entrepreneurship Hub Slated For Charleston

The West Virginia National Guard is opening a new entrepreneurial center in Charleston with a nearly $600,000 grant from the U.S. Small Business Administration.

A business center slated for Charleston aims to provide new resources to entrepreneurs in the culinary sector, including office areas, recipe design spaces and a test kitchen.

The United States Small Business Administration (SBA) announced Thursday it will grant the West Virginia National Guard $595,000 to establish a small business hub in the state capital “with a specific emphasis on food production and innovation.”

The new center will find good company in Charleston, a city already home to multiple other small business incubators — like the University of Charleston Downtown Innovation Hub and the West Virginia Small Business Development Center.

Adjutant General for the State of West Virginia William Crane said in a press release that the new funding will allow the National Guard to expand current entrepreneurial resources within the state’s veteran community and beyond.

The West Virginia Military Authority currently operates a program called Patriot Guardens, which provides “agricultural education and hands-on learning opportunities to veterans, active duty members of the military and their​ families,” according to the program’s website.

Crane said Thursday that the Patriot Guardens program serves as a stepping stone for veteran and military-affiliated West Virginians looking to enter agricultural entrepreneurship. He expects the new small business hub to expand upon those resources.

The small business center will offer “greater educational, financial and business opportunities,” and will support the Patriot Guardens program “as it continues to mature,” he said.

Sen. Joe Manchin, I-W.Va., said in the press release that he is eager to see the entrepreneurial work that can be accomplished through the new Kanawha County facility.

“I’m pleased the SBA is investing… [in] the West Virginia National Guard’s creation of an innovative small business center in Charleston,” he said. “This funding will support our veterans’ entrepreneurial endeavors, especially in food production.”

National Guard No Longer Stationed In Correctional Facilities

As of May 10, no members of the West Virginia National Guard are stationed in state prisons or jails. This follows more than a year of National Guard support over understaffing.

Members of the West Virginia National Guard are no longer stationed in West Virginia jails or prisons.

William Marshall, commissioner of the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation, shared the news Tuesday at a meeting of the state’s Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority, which convened for an interim meeting.

Marshall said the final National Guard members left their positions May 10.

“We have relieved the National Guard of their obligation to us,” he said. “We have no National Guard working in our facilities.”

Hundreds of service members have staffed West Virginia correctional facilities since 2022, when Gov. Jim Justice declared a state of emergency over understaffing in state-owned jails and prisons.

Overall, Marshall said position vacancies were down to 12 percent for correctional officers, and 20 percent for other positions across the state’s facilities.

Marshall said that some service members were hired full-time in the prisons, and other jobs were filled externally with help from new recruiting efforts.

“A lot of great candidates we’re bringing through the door right now,” he said.

Abandoned Mine Turns Apple Orchard With Help Of National Guard

A long winding road, once frequented by coal trucks, leads to the top of what used to be a mountain. At its end are flat fields filled with budding apple trees.

A long winding road, once frequented by coal trucks, leads to the top of what used to be a mountain. At its end are flat fields filled with budding apple trees.  

Major General Bill Crane said this apple orchard was an abandoned mine seven years ago. 

“We’ve got about 20,000 apple trees in the ground,” Crane said. “It’s an experimentation site that we work with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA).” 

This is one way the National Guard is taking on climate change and pollution. The Guard has teamed up with scientists from the USDA and West Virginia University (WVU) to find ways to grow apple trees on land that was previously thought to be somewhat of a waste land. 

First they had to tackle one major problem: No topsoil. The solution: Chicken poop from pastures in the state.

“The nice thing we’re doing here is we’re bringing chicken manure from the Eastern Panhandle, we bring it here to help make the soil better,” Crane said.  

Chris Dardick, a scientist with the USDA, said taking the chicken manure from the Eastern Panhandle to the orchard helps mitigate farming runoff into rivers. He said nitrogen from animal waste has been running into rivers, and creating algae blooms, which cause other aquatic life to die. 

“Much of [chicken manure] contains nitrogen,” Dardick said. “Bringing it out here, out of the Chesapeake Bay watershed, and using it to amend the soils for apple production or other crops, that’s sort of a win-win.” 

Tracy Leskey works with Dardick at the USDA as the research leader for this project and said the trees absorb another climate changing element — carbon. 

“One of the things that we recognized a few years ago is this opportunity for apple trees to sequester carbon from the atmosphere,” Leskey said.  

Trees take in carbon, and store it in their trunks and roots, or deliver it to the ground. The process is known as carbon sequestering and is one tool for fighting climate change.

And where the land had carbon removed from the soil in the form of coal, Leskey said the soil can now hold, or sequester, more carbon than the typical soil can.  

But this project isn’t only aimed at helping the earth. Melissa Stewart, director of Patriot Guardens, hopes this project will also help the mental health of both active and retired service members. 

“When they come back home from a deployment, and maybe they have seen some things that they don’t want to remember, they can’t have a conversation with somebody to get that out of their mind?” Stewart said. 

She hopes that service members can create a “side hustle” and learn a hobby that brings peace and healing. 

“Through agriculture, they can work with their hands, in an atmosphere like this,” Stewart said. 

This is one of many projects the National Guard is working on to produce food like peaches, strawberries and arugula in the state. These projects are aimed at combating food insecurity in West Virginia where one in seven children experience hunger. Stewart says this is where the farming work takes on a special meaning for service members who are transitioning out of the service.

“To take that need to serve and give it purpose as they come out a uniform, being able to illustrate that they’re still serving our state as they transition into more of a civilian status by helping grow the food that helps feed our families helps feed our state,” Stewart said.  

Regional Jails Undergo Investment Reform, Recruitment Efforts

Regional jails in West Virginia have long struggled with staffing and safety issues. Investment reforms and recruiting efforts from state leadership aim to solve these issues.

As West Virginia’s strained jail system faces ongoing safety concerns, reinvestment and recruitment efforts aim to amend facility issues on a state level.

The Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority convened for a public meeting Monday at the State Capitol. Their meeting centered around changes to staffing and oversight in the state’s jail facilities.

West Virginia’s jail system has come under national scrutiny for the alleged mistreatment of people who are incarcerated, including neglect, water deprivation and the deaths of tens of individuals in less than five years.

Last year, eight correctional officers at Southern Regional Jail in Beaver were charged over an assault that led to the death of a man who was incarcerated in the facility.

Carl Reynolds, senior legal and policy advisor at the Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center, spoke to lawmakers about “justice reinvestment” — the reallocation of funds from jails to other areas of the criminal justice system.

By providing investments “further upstream,” like in law enforcement, victim services and parole supervision, Reynolds said the state’s jail system can reduce expenses associated with incarceration.

The CSG Justice Center uses federal funds to work with officials on the state level and analyze data pertaining to state criminal justice systems. They then advise state leadership on potential changes to make.

Justice reinvestment refers to the reallocation of funding for jails toward other areas of the criminal justice system.

Photo Credit: Will Price/WV Legislative Photography

Reynolds said representatives from his organization have met with leaders from all three branches of government in West Virginia and have received approval to pursue this work in the Mountain State.

Justice reinvestment is an idea that West Virginia has recently begun to embrace.

Gov. Jim Justice awarded more than $2.6 million in grant funds to treatment supervision programs across the state in 2023, followed by an additional $2.4 million in 2024. These programs offer substance abuse interventions to some individuals convicted of felony drug offenses.

Reynolds said that his organization is currently collecting information and ideas from state officials on how to approach reinvestment efforts in West Virginia.

“This is an open-minded, open-ended process where we want to find out what’s important to you all and to the other stakeholders in the system,” he said.

In the meantime, recruitment efforts in West Virginia jails could also address issues in the West Virginia corrections system, according to Pat Mirandy, chief of staff for the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR).

Mirandy said Monday that recruitment efforts have been “nothing more than miraculous over the past few months.”

Since Jan. 1, Mirandy said the DCR has hired 291 correctional officers and 49 additional, non-officer personnel members. Also since Jan. 1, 162 individuals have completed DCR corrections training, he said.

Pat Mirandy, chief of staff for the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation, updates lawmakers on recruitment efforts in West Virginia’s jail system.

Photo Credit: Will Price/WV Legislative Photography

Union representatives have long said that understaffing in the state’s jail system has created additional safety risks for workers, which also extend to individuals who are incarcerated.

In 2022, Justice issued a state of emergency proclamation over the staffing issues, which allowed members of the West Virginia National Guard to fill in vacancies in the jail system.

But the ongoing recruiting efforts could mean National Guard members will no longer be needed in the state’s jail system, Mirandy said.

At the beginning of the year, Mirandy said 413 National Guard members were working for the DCR. Now, that number has fallen to approximately 80.

During the meeting, Del. Bryan Ward, R-Hardy, said these staffing improvements marked “a lot to be proud of” for the agency.

Mirandy said that by May the DCR anticipates only five guard members will remain with the agency, staying on to complete “paperwork that needed to be done to close out the soldiers that we had in our facilities.”

“Because of the success of our recruiting efforts, we’ve been able to draw down the National Guard’s footprint in our agency,” he said. “Our plan to eventually achieve no guardsmen in our facilities will be a reality soon.”

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