Wendy Crites is a single mom, a Christian and a recovering addict in the Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia. She’s on parole and receiving substance abuse treatment through the Jefferson Day Report Center. Crites has been using drugs since she was 13, intravenously since she was 15.
“Everyone has some kind of addiction,” she said. “I believe it’s that hole everyone has in their heart that you’re trying to fill — I’ve filled it with drugs. I think it’s really something only God can do. And I think he uses our weaknesses to bring us to him.”
Crites has a 26-year-old daughter, Ashley, and a 12-year-old son, Devin.
“I have the sweetest son – half of his life he’s saw me be strung out on drugs. He’s getting ready be a teenager, and I just want to be a good role model for him.”
WATCH: Wendy’s Story
Crites has worked a variety of jobs since she was 16-years-old but dreams of having a stable job with benefits that would allow her to save money and provide for her kids. That’s a tall order for anyone with felony charges, albeit nonviolent charges in her case.
She relies on her faith and her desire to be a good parent to motivate her through recovery.
She also relies on the services provided through the Jefferson Day Report Center. These services include transportation, mental and behavioral health, and various forms of medically-assisted substance abuse treatment — all covered under the Affordable Care Act. Through the center, Crites receives Suboxone, a medication used to treat opioid addiction by reducing withdrawal symptoms and the urge to use.
Credit Rebecca Kiger
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Wendy Crites in a waiting room at the Jefferson Day Report Center, where she receives counseling and medical treatment for addiction.
“Between the meetings, the counseling, the Suboxone, and God … that program saved me.”
Without the support of these services, a simple misstep could jeopardize months or years of sobriety. Crites recently broke her ankle while working.
“My daughter, when she first found out I broke my foot, her first thought was: ‘I’m afraid mom’s gonna use again.’ ”
Credit Rebecca Kiger
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Wendy Crites with her 26-year-old daughter, Ashley, and 12-year-old son, Devin.
Despite having a broken foot, lacking a vehicle, being denied food stamps because she’s a drug offender, and having to build a new social support system from scratch at 50 years old, Crites is, so far, maintaining her sobriety.
Mike Caudill runs Mountain Comprehensive Care Corporation in five eastern Kentucky counties. Many of his 30,000 patients gained insurance through Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act. No one knows if or when those folks might lose coverage. But, Caudill said, the impact could be considerable.
“I don’t want to be a Chicken Little that the sky is falling. On the other hand, neither do I want to stick my head in the sand,” he said. “A lot of it is the unknown. We don’t know what is going to happen.”
Credit Courtesy Mountain Comprehensive Care
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Mike Caudill
Caudill runs federally qualified health centers, providing primary and preventive care such as doctor’s visits and vaccinations. They also support community programs including a day care and a service providing fresh fruits and vegetables to 700 people who are chronically ill. If there are significant changes in his revenue because of a repeal of the ACA, Caudill said, those programs that improve the quality of life in the community would be the first to go.
Caudill is not alone. There are hundreds of federally qualified health centers in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio. And there are hundreds of rural hospitals providing inpatient and emergency care dependent on government funds to function.
President Donald Trump’s pick of Dr. Tom Price to lead the Department of Health and Human Services is worrisome, said Caudill. In Congress, Price supported big changes in Medicaid and Medicare. Price has also been a consistent foe of the ACA, also known as Obamacare.
“Certainly it gives us some concerns about how it will impact community health centers in general but also us in particular here in Kentucky,” Caudill said.
How To Get Paid
There are hundreds of federally qualified health centers in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio. And there are hundreds of rural hospitals providing inpatient and emergency care.
Michael Topchik works for IVantage, a health care research group. He said rural health is a system in jeopardy.
“Right now, I think, we are at a nadir of the ability of that safety net to provide that care in a way that meets local folks’ needs,” he said.
Credit Courtesy Mountain Comprehensive Care
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Dr. Van Breeding, director of clinical affairs, examines a patient at Mountain Comprehensive Care Corporation.
The problem is that both health centers and rural hospitals are dependent on federal dollars to survive. In Kentucky they receive about 70 percent of their revenue from Medicare and Medicaid. Elizabeth Cobb of the Kentucky Hospital Association said financial constraints are forcing rural hospitals to close.
“There has been an increase in the loss of rural hospitals nationwide, and that’s very alarming,” she said.
According to the University of North Carolina’s NC Rural Health Research Program, Kentucky has 16 hospitals at risk for financial distress. West Virginia has two. Ohio, currently, has none. The report does not name the at-risk hospitals and did not expand upon the reasons for the different rates of risk.
Simon Haeder is an Assistant Professor of political science in the John D. Rockefeller IV School of Policy & Politics at West Virginia University. He said Southern states in general have had a greater struggle to provide health care to large, poor sections of their populations. Kentucky, he said, seems to share more characteristics with Southern states. And, he said, in some ways Kentucky hospitals have seen greater benefits from the ACA because so many more rural poor are now insured.
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Rural hospital leaders say they face an uncertain path without the ACA.
Rural Challenges
There are a lot of common challenges that rural hospitals share and a hospital closure can have a disproportionate effect for rural communities. Transportation is a practical challenge in rural areas, said the Kentucky Hospital Association’s Cobb. A large number of people in rural communities lack access to a car, public transportation is scarce, and additional travel could mean people simply won’t get care. And she said you can also lose something else when you have to leave home — something intangible but no less important.
“It can separate you from your family and from your support community both physical support and emotional support,” she said.
Plus, she said, people in rural communities are often sicker and older than patients at other hospitals. Many who received health insurance under Obamacare had chronic illness that had gone untreated for a long time.
The hospital has to have the technology to treat those patients. IVantage’s Topchik said as medical technology gets more expensive, a hometown hospital may need to shift to only providing emergency services and outpatient care. That may be the only way to survive.
Changing Times, Changing Health
Caudill agrees times have changed.
“I wish it could be like in the old days of ‘Marcus Welby,’ where a person would walk in and see a doctor and it never would show them paying a bill,” he said.
But Caudill just spent $350,000 for a 3-D mammogram machine. It will also require thousands of dollars a year in maintenance. But it provides the care his people deserve, he said
Topchick said these tough choices that rural hospitals and clinics struggle with are often absent from the national debate.
“There really is a tale of two cities,” he said. “There is just not an even distribution. Our country is clearly divided or a rural and urban front.”
The national debate over Obamacare has largely focused on a couple of items: the ACA mandate that everyone have health care; and rising premiums many pay for their insurance. Haeder, the WVU political scientist, said that debate misses some important facts. Private insurance rates and the rates for those who get insurance through their employers have been going up for decades, long before the ACA took effect.
Part of what the ACA has done, Haeder argues, is to highlight the effects some demographic shifts in the country have on insurance systems. Many rural areas now have a higher percentage of people who are sicker and older, as many younger, healthier folks have gone elsewhere for jobs.
“All the problems of rural America are just highlighted in accessing health care,” he said.
Coal Country Concerns
Credit Courtesy Mountain Comprehensive Care Corporation
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Teresa Fleming
Teresa Fleming is the financial officer for Mountain Comprehensive Care. Despite the campaign rhetoric, she doesn’t think it’s likely that President Trump will bring back mining jobs to eastern Kentucky’s coal country. And she fears coal families in her community will suffer further under an ACA repeal.
“The Affordable Care Act came at the right time and basically correlated with the mine layoffs,” she said. “So that gave our patients safety or at least some security that they would have some kind of coverage so they could go see their providers.”
It is a security under threat in a shifting health care landscape that could also threaten health care jobs, often the biggest source of well-paying jobs still available in rural communities.
The ReSource’s Benny Becker contributed to this report.
As Congress considers repealing the Affordable Care Act, health professionals in Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia grapple with what that might mean for a region where many depend on the law for access to care. This occasional series from the ReSource explores what’s ahead for the Ohio Valley after Obamacare.
The chemical giant DuPont made an offer Monday to pay more than half-a-billion dollars to settle water contamination lawsuits pending in federal court.
3,550 plaintiffs from the mid-Ohio Valley filed suit claiming contaminated drinking water led to diseases linked to chemical exposure. The chemical they were exposed to is known as C-8, or PFOA, and is used in Teflon and other products. More than a decade ago residents near the company’s Washington works plant in Wood County, West Virginia, learned that their water was contaminated with C-8, and had been for years.
Now DuPont and a spin-off company, Chemours, have agreed to pay a total of $670.7 million to settle the suits.
Rob Bilott, one of the lead lawyers for the plaintiffs, is pleased with the settlement offer.
“This is a tremendous positive step toward resolving the litigation in a way that provides compensation for our injured clients without the need for additional, lengthy, and expensive trials,” Bilott said. “We look forward to working with DuPont to finalize this settlement and get these injured class members paid as quickly as possible.”
The companies also have agreed to pay up to an additional $50 million a year for the next five years for any additional claims that might arise.
“This agreement provides a sound resolution for area residents, Chemours, and the public,” said David Shelton, Senior Vice-President, General Counsel & Corporate Secretary for Chemours. “It settles all indemnification obligations between Chemours and DuPont for all of the approximately 3,500 claims in the Ohio multi-district litigation and allows us to move forward with a renewed focus on our customers, product innovation and application development.”
Both companies continue to deny any wrongdoing.
DuPont phased out U.S. production of C-8 several years ago. Now it’s made in China. Although it’s still a widely used compound found in non-stick cookware, stain-resistant fabrics, and food wrappers here in the U.S.
Credit Glynis Board / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
The Chemours facility, formerly the Dupont company’s site, in Washington, West Virginia.
A Chemical Legacy
For more than half a century along the Ohio River, DuPont provided jobs for thousands of people. One chemical they produced is PFOA, commonly known as C-8. It was a remarkably useful compound, used in “Teflon” non-stick cookware, stain-resistant fabrics, and even in some food wrappers.
Over time, researchers have found that C-8 is also toxic. DuPont and other companies phased out U.S. production a few years ago. Now it’s made in China.
The contamination in this region eventually lead to a class action lawsuit that resulted in a broad medical study of affected residents beginning in 2005. Over 30,000 community members were involved. The study linked C-8 to multiple health problems from cancer to reduced immune function. A series of additional health studies followed, and further proved that chemical compounds like C-8 are dangerous, even in small doses.
The medical testing of residents paved the way for lawsuits and the settlement agreement announced this week. But the studies also raised questions about what the chemical might do to people who are ingesting the chemical in very tiny amounts in drinking water.
Far-Reaching Concerns
Credit Dave Mistich / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Drinking water distribution center in Vienna, West Virginia.
Because the chemical can persist in water, communities along the Ohio River — and around the U.S. — are still grappling with the environmental fallout of contamination from C-8 and similar chemicals. The ReSource generated a map using water testing data available from the U.S. EPA. It shows 12 water systems in 10 counties in Ohio, Kentucky, and West Virginia where these chemicals were detected in the water.
The Environmental Protection Agency issued a health advisory in 2016 for C-8 levels in drinking water, and many of the water systems that detected C-8 and related chemicals found them at levels lower than the EPA advisory. EPA officials say the C-8 advisory levels were calculated to protect fetuses during pregnancy and breastfed infants, and was based on “the best available peer-reviewed studies.”
However, a growing body of science indicates that the EPA advisory level is not sufficiently protective of human health, and many researchers recommend far more restrictive thresholds for exposure.
PFOA-expert, Dr. Philippe Grandjean
Dr. Philippe Grandjean of Harvard’s School of Public Health, an expert on health effects of perfluorinated chemicals like C-8, says the EPA’s advisory doesn’t go far enough. One of his latest studies looks at long term effects of these chemicals on the immune systems of exposed children.
Last year a coalition of scientists from around the world called for limits on C-8 production altogether. Health officials in New Jersey are suggesting that C-8 levels should be five times lower than what EPA advises (at about 14 parts per trillion). Grandjean’s work and other scientific studies have recommended an acceptable level of 1 part per trillion, which is what the European Union recommends for surface water.
Many of the water systems that detected PFOA or similar chemicals found levels that fall somewhere in a range below EPA’s health advisory but well above what scientists such as Grandjean have recommended. These communities include: Louisville and part of Pendleton County, in Kentucky; Gallia County, Ohio; and Parkersburg, West Virginia.
She asked to not be identified. And it’s understandable given the stigma attached to addiction. For this story, we’ll call her “Mary.”
Mary lives in eastern Kentucky and has struggled with an addiction that began with painkillers and progressed to heroin.
“As soon as I opened my eyes, I had to get it,” Mary said. “And even when I did get it, then I had to think of the next way that I was going to get.”
Mary was using when she learned she was pregnant with her first child. She sought treatment but the disease had a tight grip on her.
The child was born dependent on opioids and went through the pains of withdrawal shortly after delivery.
“To see that little boy go through that stuff, you’d think that I would, like, change my life around immediately but I didn’t,” Mary said. “I didn’t want to believe it. I was in complete denial that because of my choices, it was my fault that he was going through that.”
Mary sought treatment but relapsed. Then she learned she was going to have a second child.
Startling Statistics
The number of babies born suffering from neonatal abstinence syndrome — the medical term for being born dependent on a drug — is on the rise.
A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association-Pediatrics found “incidence rates for neonatal abstinence syndrome and maternal opioid use increased nearly 5-fold in the United States between 2000 and 2012,” and appears to be most pronounced in rural areas.
In the Ohio Valley the statistics are startling. Ohio and Kentucky both have rates well above the national average. In West Virginia the most recent data show that for every thousand live births there are fifty drug-affected newborns, the highest such rate in the nation.
Health care workers across the region are responding, finding new ways to treat both babies and mothers.
‘Get Addicted to Motherhood’
Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus treats babies transferred from other hospitals when the symptoms are at their most severe…excessive crying, unable to self-console, unable to eat appropriately, all the way up to seizure activity.
“Based on each symptom and the severity of it, that baby is assessed a number,” Neonatal Intensive Care Unit’s Administrative Clinical Leader Amy Thomas said. “If that number reaches a certain level, then that tells us we have to treat that baby.”
Credit Courtesy Nationwide Children’s Hospital
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Some drug-affected babies are treated here at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
The staff has been developing the treatment plan since 2013. This was around the time when staff noticed a correlation between increasing length of stay and drug-affected babies.
Treatment begins with non-pharmacological methods like cuddling and music therapy.
But if the withdrawal cannot be managed, morphine is administered. As the baby shows signs of improvement, the dosage is decreased until they are no longer dependent.
Educating the parents on how to care for the baby through methods like skin-to-skin comforting and breastfeeding is also important. And Thomas said treating mothers and fathers as parents, rather than as addicts, can have an impact on the baby’s life.
“I have that window of opportunity there to get her to fall in love with her baby, get her addicted to motherhood,” Thomas said.
Credit Aaron Payne / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Amy Thomas, R.N., is the NICU administrative clinical leader at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
The hospital has seen its admission numbers for drug-affected babies go down as birth hospitals have improved their ability to provide care.
Improved quality of care has also decreased the length of stay for the young patients, which can also help cut costs. The Ohio Mental Health and Addiction Services found in a 2014 study that each drug-dependent newborn can cost the healthcare system $56,000 or more, and most of the patients were on Medicaid.
Lily’s Place in West Virginia
A unique facility in Huntington, West Virginia, aims to reduce the burden on hospitals.
At Lily’s Place, babies are cared for in individual nurseries where the lights are low and noise is kept to a minimum.
“These babies are born very easily overstimulated,” said Rhonda Edmunds, the director of nursing. “We feel a quieter, more homelike environment is the environment that they need.”
Credit Aaron Payne / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Rhonda Edmunds directs nursing at Lily’s Place in Huntington, W.Va.
A staff of registered nurses provides another option of care for drug-affected babies outside of hospitals.
The facility is one of only two of its kind currently operating in the U.S. and it wasn’t easy to get started.
“The state allowed us to be part of a pilot program but all the babies had to be in state custody for that, which was a hinderance to getting babies over here,” Edmunds said. “But we don’t have to do that anymore.”
Since it opened in 2014, Lily’s place has been working to help other facilities get started and get through the red tape.
Credit Aaron Payne / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
A nursery where drug-affected babies are treated at Lily’s Place in Huntington, W.Va.
The group published a book in 2015 on how to start a neonatal withdrawal clinic and is updating it to reflect changes in federal regulations that came with the passage of the Comprehensive Addiction Recovery Act last year.
MOMS in Ohio
Treatment for pregnant women, meanwhile, can be difficult to come by in the Ohio Valley. The ReSource analyzed data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration on treatment centers across all three states and found only a quarter of those centers accepts pregnant women.
A group of organizations in Athens County, Ohio, took a collaborative approach in addressing this issue.
“I could see there was some burnout in my providers because these patients had so many other issues, social issues that we didn’t even know how to address,” Practice Manager Pam Born said.
So she reached out to the nearby Health Recovery Services organization in hopes of getting these mothers treatment.
The collaboration was so successful, they looked for other resources.
“As we identified a new problem, we would identify who in the community could meet that problem,” Born said.
Soon they were offering housing, childcare, and other services for the whole family.
Interest from lawmakers led to the creation of the Maternal Opiate Medical Support (MOMS) project. Athens County and three other areas are provided funding to assist the programs in the hopes that others would follow.
Born said collaborations can form in any community and take many forms depending on a community’s unique needs.
In Athens County, Born would like to work toward offering residential treatment for pregnant women and mothers in their program, which is difficult to find throughout the region.
Addiction Recovery Care –with treatment centers throughout mostly rural Kentucky– operates the new facility offering a balance of medical treatment, counseling, and a faith-based element.
“There are no centers doing what we’re doing in this part of Central Appalachia,” CEO Tim Robinson said. “And we felt we had the infrastructure and resources to do it.”
Credit Aaron Payne / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
One of the bedrooms for clients who stay at Karen’s Place Maternity Center in Louisa, Ky.
The 16-bed facility at Karen’s Place is a refurbished home in a secluded area, with 24/7 staff support and amenities for both mother and baby.
By focusing on the moms, Robinson said they are investing in the family as a whole.
“We’re not going to have true compassion for the babies until we have true compassion for the moms,” he said.
Mary’s Recovery
Karen’s Place in Louisa is where I met “Mary,” the mother of two whose first child was born drug-dependent. Mary is now in recovery. She was the first woman to come live at Karen’s Place before it was opened to the public in late January.
She sought treatment again after the birth of her first child and was able to get clean for a while. However, she relapsed around the time she found out she was pregnant again.
Mary was determined to give this baby a healthy start. She reached sobriety in October and her second child was born about a month ago with no signs of being affected by opioids.
“It’s been amazing,” she said. “He’s healthy, happy. He’s a calm little guy.”
Living at the maternity center has allowed Mary to focus on her continued recovery, motherhood and her faith. She aspires to further her education and someday help other mothers suffering with addiction.
“I’ve always encouraged people, if they’re still breathing, there’s still hope,” she said.
One of the Trump Administration’s first moves once in office was to freeze all grants issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That move raised a lot of questions and a further directive limiting public statements from the EPA added to the confusion.
The freeze has since been lifted but the move brought attention to an overlooked part of the EPA’s work: a grants program that has pumped more than $3.6 billion into projects in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia over the past 20 years.
Meeting Requirements
Of the $3.6 billion in EPA grants awarded to projects in the Ohio Valley region, almost half went to water infrastructure improvement projects. Those include Ohio’s Environmental Protection Agency, which offers low interest loans to public water utilities to fund improvements.
Credit Alexandra Kanik / Ohio Valley Resource
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Ohio Valley Resource
Gail Brion, a professor and researcher at the University of Kentucky, once worked for the EPA. She explained that many states apply for grants so that they can make water infrastructure improvements and stay in compliance with state and federal water quality requirements.
Industrial Cleanup
EPA grants have also played a major role in dealing with the toxic legacy of the Ohio Valley’s long industrial history.
Patrick Ford is the executive director of the Brooke-Hancock Business Development Corporation in West Virginia’s northern panhandle. One of the major challenges his organization faces is securing the flat land that lines the Ohio River Valley. Ford says it’s mostly abandoned, contaminated mills – called brownfields – all along the Ohio River.
The Taylor factory in Chester, West Virginia, was one example. It sat empty and decaying for decades before BDC acquired it in 2012.
Ford says it took coordinating public, private, local, state and federal partners to navigate a path that led to demolition, remediation, and, today, construction of the beginning of a new industrial park at the site along the Ohio River.
To get to this point, BDC first had to demolish and remove the dilapidated remnants of the 80,000 square foot factory – which was laced with asbestos and lead. Then the soil, also contaminated with toxic chemicals, had to be trucked away. Finally, the river had to be dredged for pottery shards since, for decades, factory employees threw all the broken, lead-leaching pottery over the bank into the river.
Only then could phase one of construction of the Rocksprings Business Park begin.
It took five years and $3 million from 14 different funding sources. All told, $600,000 came from EPA grants.
Ford says similar funds have come from EPA through remediation programs to clean up industrial legacy pollution all through the Ohio Valley, funds that are used to leverage other investments. He says his region has seen $32 of private investment for every grant dollar received.
The Trump administration reported that cleanup funds would not be affected going forward.
Research Investments
The EPA also funds a lot of research and many scientists who apply for federal grants are worried. Including Gail Brion, a professor of civil engineering and environmental health at the University of Kentucky.
“It’s not a big amount of money, but it’s very closely targeted to things that I think are important – the right to clean water, the right to a clean environment,” Brion said of her lab’s EPA-supported programs. “If that money doesn’t exist the data we have to make decisions on will be old data.”
Brion’s EPA-funded research in the past uncovered new ways to monitor dangerous fecal matter in drinking water sources, allowing for more efficient, smarter water management. She’s applying for another grant now to continue her work studying water in Kentucky.
Credit Benny Becker / Ohio Valley ReSource
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Ohio Valley ReSource
Gail Brion directs the Environmental Research and Training Laboratories at the University of Kentucky.
History Repeats?
Brion was on staff when Ronald Reagan signed an executive order in 1981 that initiated the now-required cost-benefit analysis that comes with issuing environmental regulations. She refers to this time as the beginning of the “great dismantling” of the EPA.
“The great dismantling happened when we started mixing money with ethics,” Brion said in an interview with WMMT.
Brion remembers watching Reagan install administrators who thought federal regulations amounted to government overreach, and, as in Trump’s administration, the White House attempted to control the agency’s communications with the public. She said the result was that many “highly trained and regarded scientists” left the EPA.
“What I saw was a shift from the EPA being predominantly run by scientists to being run by policy analysts.”
Brion believes the EPA’s effectiveness ever since has been significantly curtailed and points to Flint, Michigan, and its water woes as evidence of a less effective agency.
What’s Ahead
A spokesperson from the EPA reports that the new administration’s review of the nearly $4 billion in grants the agency annually hands out is mostly complete, and that nothing has been delayed or cut. But this comes amid reports that the agency could face draconian funding cuts if the Trump transition team’s recommendations are implemented.
The billionaire Wilbur Ross is headed for Senate confirmation hearings as President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for Secretary of Commerce. Ross made it to ultra-rich status in part by salvaging coal and steel assets in Appalachia and the Rust Belt. His business dealings leave a mixed legacy in the Ohio Valley region, from rescued steel mills to the site of a searing workplace disaster, and raise questions about the leadership he would bring to the president’s cabinet.
Credit Senate Commerce Committee staff
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ommerce Secretary nominee Wilbur Ross meets Sen. John Thune (R-SD), who chairs the Senate Commerce Committee.
Leadership in the Mines
Wilbur Ross made his billions from bankruptcies. He specialized in scooping up troubled steel and coal companies with an eye toward reselling them later at a profit.
Ross founded International Coal Group (ICG) in 2004 when he and other investors bought the assets of Kentucky-based Horizon Natural Resources in a bankruptcy auction. The investors purchased only Horizon’s non-union operations. (A bankruptcy court later stripped the workers at Horizon’s unionized mines of many of their benefits.) ICG soon had more than a dozen mines in Kentucky, Ohio, and the Illinois coal basin and was looking to buy more.
Early in 2005 the company initiated the purchase of mines from the financially struggling Anker Coal Group in West Virginia. Anker would expand ICG’s holdings of “metallurgical” coal, used in steel production. One of the Anker mines, the Sago Mine in West Virginia’s Upshur County, had a particularly poor record of worker safety, with hundreds of violations on record. But ICG pushed ahead with the deal and owned Anker mines by October of that year.
On the second day of 2006, a lighting bolt somehow met methane gas underground sparking an explosion at the Sago Mine that would leave 12 miners dead.
Credit Aaron Shackelford / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Media at the scene of the explosion at the Sago Mine in January, 2006.
The Sago Disaster
The Sago disaster unfolded in dramatic and particularly bitter fashion. Miners trapped by the explosion had barricaded themselves in a sealed-off chamber deep in the mine to await rescue. But all but one had succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning before rescuers could reach them.
As family members huddled in a nearby church, an error in communications led them to think the miners had been found alive. Even the state’s governor, Joe Manchin, burst out of the church to share with reporters news of a miraculous rescue, only to learn shortly after that a dozen men were dead. (Manchin, a Democrat, is now the state’s senior Senator and sits on the Commerce Committee, which will question Ross Wednesday. The ReSource asked Sen. Manchin and Mr. Ross for comment. Neither responded.)
An independent investigation found the disaster could have been prevented. An idled portion of the mine could have been more securely sealed. Authorities could have been notified sooner (more than an hour passed before federal officials were told of the explosion) and rescuers could have entered the mine earlier. Mine safety expert Davitt McAteer led that investigation.
“Mr. Ross was noticeable by his absence,” McAteer said, recalling the nearly two-day ordeal at the disaster scene. “He didn’t show up, though — being president of ICG — he was the ultimate responsible party.”
Ross later told New York magazine that he’s haunted by the deaths at Sago. The company set up funds for families of victims but also faced wrongful death suits and penalties and fines from mine safety regulators.
Now, a decade later, you’d be hard-pressed to find people in the region who even know who Ross is.
Roger Nicholson, general counsel at ICG when Sago exploded, said that’s normal.
“I think it’s an unreasonable expectation that he be known perhaps in any of the areas where his portfolio companies operate,” Nicholson said. “We don’t expect that of the chairman of McDonald’s Corporation to be at every operation of everything that he might have an investment in.”
Still, some remember him. Bill Hamilton, a West Virginia state legislator from the Sago region remembers Trump’s early announcement for secretary of commerce.
“My first thought was, if Wilbur Ross is going in there, well – he’s a businessman,” Hamilton said. “He buys companies that are bankrupt, tries to reorganize them, sells them for a profit and moves on.”
Hamilton said he was immediately concerned about potential influence of this shrewd businessman on the extension of the Miners Protection Act – a federal bill that provides health benefits for retired miners and their widows. The bill hasn’t yet been fully funded by Congress.
Fouled Water, Faked Records
Since those days Ross has earned several nicknames, including “King of Bankruptcy.” Some call him a phoenix that rises up from the ashes of burnt industries; others think of him as a vulture.
The social justice nonprofit Kentuckians for the Commonwealth was involved in litigation over water pollution caused by ICG mines. The mines were sending runoff into streams with high levels of selenium, which can be harmful to people at high levels and is toxic to much aquatic wildlife. The lawsuit not only pointed out the company’s pollution, it also presented evidence that ICG’s water discharge reports to state regulators were fraudulent.
Teri Blanton, a former chairperson for the citizens’ group, said Ross’ leadership of the company he formed was largely to blame. She worries about his nomination.
“If he would put [ICG] together and have total disregard for people’s lives he was operating around – how could we expect him to take such a high position and care about the people of the United States of America?” Blanton asked.
ICG ended up settling and paying $575,000 in penalties.
In 2011 the company was sold to Arch Coal for $3.4 billion, the largest acquisition in Arch’s history. It yielded a handsome profit for ICG’s owners that the New York Times “Dealbook” called a “vindication” for Ross. Five years later, Arch filed for bankruptcy.
Credit Bob Jagendorf/Flickr
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A Weirton Steel facility in the upper Ohio River valley. Ross’ International Steel Group purchased many of the financially struggling company’s assets.
Saving U.S. Steel?
“From my dealings with Wilbur, he was a believer in domestic manufacturing,” said longtime president of the United Steelworkers, Leo Gerard. Gerard was there more than a decade ago to see Ross buy up major failing steel companies when no one else would.
Ross bought assets from a dozen collapsing steel companies between 2002 and 2004, including Bethlehem Steel Corporation and Weirton Steel. By purchasing only certain assets but not the entire company, Ross avoided taking on some of the company’s more costly obligations, including some health and pension guarantees to steelworkers. He sold the companies in 2005 to a company overseas called Mittal for $4.5 billion — fourteen times what he initially invested. Today Luxembourg-based ArcelorMittal is the world’s largest steel producer.
Gerard points out that many of the assets Ross bought still exist as a result — including thousands of jobs.
He also says the demise of the steel industry in the U.S. has little to do with antiquated mills or labor costs.
“U.S. trade laws don’t work — period,” Gerard stated emphatically.
This is an area where labor finds common ground with the billionaire investor. When pressed for answers about national commerce priorities, Ross also focuses on the shortcomings of U.S. trade policy.
A month ago on Fox Business Network, Ross said addressing current U.S. trade policies was second only to putting a staff together.
“We’re going to go in a scheduled way through trade agreements,” Ross said, “through the [countries] we do have trade agreements with and [countries] we do not. Because we’re not anti-trade agreement, we’re anti ones-that-don’t-make-sense.”
Ross calls President Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership — a trade deal seven years in the making — a “figment of people’s imagination,” and he wants to totally rework NAFTA.
Ross also hopes to see ten percent of environmental regulations undone to make more comfortable business environments – not that the secretary of commerce controls many of those regulations.
Ohio Valley Implications
Gerard believes improved trade agreements will allow the steel industry to grow, and that, he says, would also mean more coal mining.
“You can’t make steel without coal,” Gerard said. “So if we grow the steel industry back by standing up for domestic manufacturing, then you’ll obviously have to have some expansion of the coal industry for metallurgical coke.”
Davitt McAteer is less optimistic about the “King of Bankruptcy” taking over the Commerce Department.
“From the standpoint of looking at how you might build the economy up through the creation of jobs – that’s not been the way he’s operated in the past,” McAteer said. “Mr. Ross is noted for his buying companies that are in trouble, selling off the good parts, and dropping the others.”
A confirmation hearing for Wilbur Ross is scheduled for January 18th in the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
***Editor’s note: Dave Mistich also contributed to the reporting in this story.
