Capito serves on two Senate committees that could investigate the East Palestine derailment, Commerce, Science and Transportation, and Environment and Public Works.
U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito says she expects hearings in Washington on the Ohio train derailment.
Capito serves on two Senate committees that could investigate the East Palestine derailment, Commerce, Science and Transportation, and Environment and Public Works.
Speaking with West Virginia reporters, she said she’d want to hear from affected residents, the Ohio EPA, the U.S. EPA, Norfolk Southern executives, as well as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
Capito said she’d work with her fellow senators on both sides of the aisle to schedule a hearing.
“I would imagine, you know, within a month, we should probably try to schedule a hearing while all of the information is very, very fresh,” she said. “We also don’t want to divert away from the cleanup and the care that’s being given in the in the area and the testing that’s going on on the air and water.”
Capito also said she expected the House of Representatives would get involved.
The West Virginia Emergency Management Division has received reports of flooding in the Northern Panhandle and is monitoring the situation with local emergency officials.
The West Virginia Emergency Management Division has received reports of flooding in the Northern Panhandle and is monitoring the situation with local emergency officials.
Marshall County Emergency Management has reported flooding within the county. The flooding has mostly affected roads and yards, but the water is working its way toward homes and into the school at Cameron. Public schools within Cameron dismissed at 12:30 p.m. today, with the remaining schools in Marshall County dismissing at 1 p.m.
The National Weather Service in Pittsburgh reports 1.5 to 2 inches of rain have fallen and an additional half inch is possible through this evening. The agency has issued a Flood Warning for Marshall, Monongalia, Ohio and Wetzel counties through 5:30 p.m. Tuesday.
Across the Mid-Ohio Valley, the National Weather Service in Charleston has issued a Flood Warning for Jackson, Mason, Pleasants, Ritchie, Tyler, Wirt and Wood counties through 7:45 p.m. Tuesday.
If you live in or near these areas, stay safer by:
Monitoring local forecasts
Making sure you can receive weather alerts, especially at night
Staying away from creeks, rivers, streams and storm drains.
Listening to instructions from emergency officials
Staying off bridges over fast-moving water
Turn around, don’t drown! NEVER try to drive through flood waters.
The funding for the grants was made available through the Inflation Reduction Act, which Congress passed over the summer.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is awarding grants to monitor air quality in the Ohio and Kanawha valleys.
The FracTracker Alliance will get nearly $500,000 from the EPA to monitor air quality in Brooke, Hancock and Marshall counties.
In part, the grant will help measure emissions from hydraulic fracturing, the unconventional technique used to drill for oil and natural gas known as fracking.
Appalachian Voices will receive more than $100,000 to measure particulate matter in Raleigh and McDowell counties, as well as the city of Institute.
The funding for the grants was made available through the Inflation Reduction Act, which Congress passed over the summer.
They’re part of the Biden administration’s effort to direct federal dollars to communities with disproportionately high health and environmental impacts.
The West Virginia Public Service Commission on Tuesday gave three coal-burning power plants an extended lease on life that will be paid for by the state’s electric power customers.
West Virginia ratepayers will be responsible for covering the $448 million cost of upgrading the plants to keep them in line with Environmental Protection Agency regulations. Kentucky and Virginia regulators declined to impose on their ratepayers any cost of keeping the plants open beyond 2028.
Supporters of extending the lives of the plants, particularly the West Virginia Coal Association, said the number of jobs they support and the tax base they provide to communities outweighed the increase in monthly power costs for consumers.
Consumer and environmental groups, as well as large industrial users of electricity, said power bills have gone up enough and make it harder to attract new residents and economic development.
With the rapid changes in the economics of electric power generation, as well as potentially stricter regulations on fossil fuels from the federal government in the coming years, there’s no guarantee any of the plants will operate until 2040. American Electric Power executives acknowledged this during recent testimony to the commission.
The company had sought a decision from the commission by Wednesday. That was the deadline for AEP affiliates Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power to declare that they would proceed with the upgrades at the three plants or announce their retirement in 2028.
In addition to the upgrades needed for EPA compliance, the commission’s order on Tuesday said West Virginia ratepayers would be responsible for covering any operating and maintenance costs for the plants beyond 2028.
In their testimony, AEP officials declined to provide an estimate of such costs.
“We are evaluating the order and working to determine what other actions need to be taken to move forward,” said Phil Moye, an Appalachian Power spokesman, in a statement Tuesday.
The first thing that strikes you about the Mountaineer power plant is its sheer size.
Its stacks rise more than 1,000 feet over the Ohio River floodplain, almost as tall as the Empire State Building. Its massive cooling tower can hold 8.5 million gallons of water.
A 20-story building houses its 1,330-megawatt generator. It produces enough electricity to power a city of a million people. Or more than half of West Virginia.
Mountaineer has been generating electric power since Jimmy Carter was president.
But due to changing environmental regulations and the competition from natural gas and renewable energy, time could be running out.
Virginia’s Corporation Commission, however, rejected it.
The regulatory snag shows the limits of what supporters of West Virginia’s coal plants can do to keep them from shutting down as the country moves away from fossil fuels.
‘Closing of a Culture’
Shutting down the plant would deliver an economic blow to Mason County. It employs more than 150 workers and supports other jobs in the community. Local schools depend on tax revenue from the plant.
Upstream, coal mines in northern West Virginia supply the plant with its fuel, which is delivered by barge. Those jobs are at stake, too.
“This is closing of a culture, this is closing of a community,” said Rick Altman of Wheeling, who’s been a coal miner for 44 years. “This is closing of a generational lifestyle that has really fueled this country.”
When Mountaineer opened, coal was the nation’s dominant source of electric power. Four decades later, natural gas dominates and renewables are catching up.
Coal plants like Mountaineer are becoming more expensive to operate. American Electric Power, the parent company of Appalachian Power, has two other coal-fired plants in West Virginia: the John Amos plant in Putnam County and the Mitchell plant in Marshall County. They face the same pressures.
The company has set a goal of becoming 80% carbon-free by 2030. Reaching that goal will require more coal plants to shut down.
President Joe Biden wants the nation’s power supply to become carbon-neutral in 2035. That’s five years before the West Virginia plants are scheduled to shut down if they are upgraded.
The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that drastic action is necessary to curb the most devastating impacts of global warming — which in the Ohio Valley would mean less predictable weather, more flooding, and second-hand impact from coastal displacement and global disruptions.
One path forward: Replacing the coal plants with carbon-free sources of energy.
Gypsum and Molasses
It isn’t only the jobs at the power plants, the coal mines or the barge companies on the line. The plant produces and consumes other materials that contribute to the local economy.
Fly ash is collected and hauled off by the truckload. It gets recycled in concrete and asphalt.
The exhaust is filtered through a huge drum that spins with powdered limestone and steel balls.
“We mix limestone and water inside of that drum that’s got them rotating balls in it,” said Brett Watt, the plant’s senior maintenance superintendent. “And it crushes this limestone up to where it’s a slurry. It’s actually finer than the coal is.”
That removes sulfur dioxide and produces gypsum, which is used to make the drywall.
Probably the strangest part of the process involves molasses. Yes, molasses.
It’s used to grow bacteria that eat mercury and selenium.
“We bring in tanker trucks of molasses to feed the bacteria,” said Brian Mabe, the plant manager. “There’s, you know, a living organism that removes that.”
The plant’s closure would be bad news for the drywall plant and the molasses maker.
Curtis Tate
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WVPB
The stacks at the Mountaineer power plant in Mason County, West Virginia
Fossil Fuel Allies
One thing the plant, and most like it, can’t remove from the exhaust stream is carbon dioxide.
West Virginia lawmakers have made an effort to bolster the state’s remaining coal-fired power plants. This past spring, they passed a bill that makes it harder for coal plants to shut down.
Gov. Jim Justice has also taken steps to save the state’s coal plants. He reactivated the dormant West Virginia Public Energy Authority and appointed fossil fuel allies to serve on it and find ways to keep the plants from closing.
“We know these plants won’t run forever,” Hamilton said. “You know, we’re looking for about a 20 year run. Maybe a couple of decades.”
Justice also appointed the former top coal lobbyist in West Virginia to the Public Service Commission, which regulates coal plants. Justice himself owns companies that mine coal.
The federal government is poised to spend billions of dollars to reclaim abandoned mines in Appalachia, and that could help communities that are losing jobs.
Altman started working in the mines when he was 19, and he said he’s heard the promises before. As more power plants and coal mines close, he said, the government needs to step up.
“Don’t just have a plan and say, ‘don’t you worry.’ I’m 63 years old. I got laid off the first time in 1979. You know what I was told by the government? ‘Don’t worry about this, we got you covered. We’re going to educate you, we’re gonna do this.’ I’m still waiting for that to happen. I’m truly waiting for that to happen.”
Mayors from eight cities in the Ohio Valley, including Pittsburgh, Morgantown, Huntington and Louisville, have joined forces to call for a new effort to revitalize the region.
In an essay in the Opinion section of the Washington Post, the group called for a 21st Century version of the World War II-era Marshall Plan, the U.S. aid program that helped rebuild Europe after the war.
Now the mayors want to see that type of investment in the Ohio Valley. They are requesting the equivalent of $60 billion a year, over 10 years, in private and public investment, and tax breaks.
Mayor Steve Williams, from Huntington, West Virginia, was one of the signers of the Washington Post essay. He spoke with Eric Douglas to discuss the group’s ideas.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Douglas: The analogy that’s used in the essay is the Marshall Plan, the post-World War II reconstruction plan for Europe. Why do you feel that’s an appropriate analogy to what we’re facing in, in the Ohio Valley?
Courtesy photo
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Steve Williams, mayor of Huntington, West Virginia.
Williams: I believe, particularly in the Ohio River Valley, and Appalachia, we are the forgotten part of the country. Everybody seems to talk about the Northeast and the South and the Midwest, and the West. But when you look at the Ohio River Valley, the mountainous area that we’re in, including the Great Lakes area, there are a lot of folks that come in wanting us to help them but when we absolutely need the help, all of the sudden we’re forgotten. And that’s why I believe that we’re the forgotten America.
Douglas: I see the point made that Appalachia powered the Industrial Revolution, powered the great build up of the nation.
Williams: None of us here will ever allow ourselves to be seen as a victim. Ever. That’s within our culture. You look at what has happened here. There are some things that we have within our DNA that we need to take full advantage of. And we believe that we need to have a federal partner in order to be able to accomplish these things.
Douglas: You mentioned the Appalachian Regional Regional Commission. Are you thinking this would be a program under the ARC?
Williams: It could be part of the ARC. None of us are coming in saying that we have to build a new federal agency. I believe that the ARC would be perfectly capable of doing this.
Douglas: You mentioned that this is not a Green New Deal. That’s not the direction you’re heading. But you made several points in the essay that you are looking for greener jobs.
Williams: It just makes sense. Much like when the automobile was coming into the Detroit area. What do you think happened to those horse and buggy manufacturers? Did they continue doing that? Were they a buggy manufacturer? Or were they a transportation company?
Are we oil and gas? Are we coal? Or are we energy? We’re starting to see these companies focusing on energy. And in that regard, we’re saying green energy. Let’s make sure that we’re doing things where the investments are being made.
Douglas: The estimate for this program is $60 billion a year over the next 10 years. So $600 billion in federal block grants, tax credits. It’s not just cash, obviously.
Williams: Theway that I look at it, that’s a small price to pay. A $600 billion investment will turn into a trillion dollars — trillions of dollars. I’m not looking at something that turns over five times, where then all sudden it is $3 trillion. I’m looking at thousands of times.
My background is finance. I used to be a stockbroker. I was an investment banker. If somebody is coming to me saying, “You place an investment here and you’d be able to get a tenfold return.” But the fact of the matter is, you recognize what the return on investment truly could be, we can’t afford not to do this.
