RFA 2019 Story Archives - Page 4 of 24 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

W.Va. Corrections Testing All Of Charleston Jail Population For Coronavirus

West Virginia corrections officials will test all people incarcerated at the South Central Regional Jail for the coronavirus this week, after reporting eight prisoners with COVID-19 there on Monday.

The Charleston jail was on lockdown as of Sunday night, according to a press release from the DCR. Diagnosed prisoners were quarantined to two housing units with the 29 others they had contact with.

The DCR reported 17 employees had COVID-19 Monday afternoon.

At least 10 of those employees work for the Southern Regional Jail in Raleigh County, according to Gov. Jim Justice, where another prisoner also tested positive has recently recovered from the coronavirus, according to the DCR.

The DCR said Sunday it was monitoring the situation in Raleigh County for more cases.

“I don’t know how we’re going to do it because testing supplies and testing availability in labs and so on like that,” Justice said during an online press briefing Monday. “But we need to develop plans right now to go back through and retest every single person that’s in all the nursing homes again. And, we need a plan to be able to go through and retest every person in our correctional facilities again.”

Retesting all of the state’s incarcerated population and corrections staff for the coronavirus would be a “daunting” task, Justice said, due to the state’s other system-wide testing needs in universities and potentially long-term care facilities.

There are also several hundred more people in the state’s regional jails than there were in June, when the DCR first tested everyone in its custody and employment after an outbreak at the Huttonsville Correctional Center in late May. Tests were administered then by in-house medical providers, according to DCR spokesperson Lawrence Messina.

Eight out of West Virginia’s 10 jails are over capacity, according to coronavirus data from the DCR Monday.

The Charleston jail had about 70 more prisoners than its bed count on Monday, and the Raleigh County jail had roughly 270 more people than its bed count.

Messina called the over-crowding “challenging” in an email to West Virginia Public Broadcasting Monday, but said each facility is still “able to medically isolate and quarantine inmates in accordance with the DCR’s response policy for COVID-19.”

More than half of the jail populations in each facility were pretrial defendants, according to a press release from the DCR Sunday night.

At Southern Regional Jail, Messina reported Monday 75 people were there on state misdemeanor charges, about 320 on state felony charges and just under 30 as federal pretrial defendants.

At South Central Regional Jail, Messina reported 45 people were there on state misdemeanor charges, almost 200 on state felony charges and about 65 as federal pretrial defendants.

Staff for the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals asked county prosecutors in March to identify and release pretrial defendants who don’t constitute a public safety risk, making them eligible for pretrial release.

That guidance is still in place, according to spokesperson Jennifer Bundy, who said the court still regularly sends county judges and magistrates a list of eligible pretrial defendants.

Supreme court staff reminded county judges on June 30 to reconsider who it sends to jails, according to Bundy.

Earlier in the pandemic, jail counts dropped from 5,200 people on March 2 to 4,100 April 20. But by late May jail populations began creeping upward, despite legislation that went into effect June 5 to reduce the number of pretrial defendants behind bars.

All 10 jails combined have more than 1,100 people over capacity, according to DCR data Monday afternoon. The DCR reports none of its prisons are over capacity.

In June, the DCR reported one prisoner who had died there on July 17 had tested positive for the coronavirus on July 21. Corrections officials said COVID-19 was not a contributing factor to the death of the Mount Olive prisoner, who was in hospice care for stage 4 metastatic cancer.

This story was corrected on Tuesday, August 11, 2020, to reflect that none of the state’s prisons are over capacity according to the DCR. This story previously stated the Mount Olive Correctional Center in Fayette County was over capacity.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

W.Va. PSC Gives Page-Kincaid 30 Days To Reach Deal With West Virginia American Water

The state’s topmost regulatory agency is giving a small, struggling Fayette County water utility 30 days before it forces a nationally funded, statewide provider to take over.

The West Virginia Public Service Commission announced May 20 it was investigating the Page-Kincaid Public Service District in upper Fayette County. Roughly a year before the investigation took off, 400 of Page-Kincaid’s 650 customers sent the PSC a petition, alleging dirty water and poor quality of service.

Page-Kincaid was negotiating a deal with West Virginia American Water from November to February, according to the PSC. Those negotiations fell apart when Page-Kincaid rejected two offers from West Virginia American Water. One offer was to acquire Page-Kincaid’s water distribution assets, leaving water treatment assets and the sewer system out of the deal. American Water’s second offer was to sell Page-Kincaid treated water from its nearby New River site.

“The water customers of Page-Kincaid have suffered and waited long enough for an acceptable resolution to the on-going water quality and service issues they have had to experience,” commissioners wrote in an order on Friday.

During a status conference hearing on July 28, an attorney for Page-Kincaid said the utility’s three-member board would consider an acquisition by West Virginia American Water if the company also agreed to take over Page-Kincaid’s treatment assets and its sewer assets, serving roughly 400 households.

The PSC’s order Friday not only demanded that the two groups come to an agreement, but it also ordered the parties to establish a plan for Page-Kincaid’s water treatment assets.

West Virginia American Water has not made an offer on Page-Kincaid’s equipment for treating water, nor has it offered to take over Page-Kincaid’s sewer system. The company’s vice president of operations, Chris Carew, said during the hearing on July 28 that his staff still needed to review information on the sewer assets from Page-Kincaid.

Commissioners wrote they were “frustrated” that American Water had not yet reviewed the Page-Kincaid’s sewer information. According to the PSC, American Water promised to do so in April.

Page-Kincaid customers say they haven’t trusted the water for years. The PSC wrote Friday that staff for the commission found Page-Kincaid has failed to do key maintenance projects on its equipment.

PSC Staff also have raised red flags about nearby abandoned gas wells and coal mining operations, since Page-Kincaid treats and sells groundwater to its customers.

The Fayette County Commission filed petitions in circuit court for the removal of Page-Kincaid’s three-member board in July.

“The [Public Service] Commission believes that all the elements are in place to reach a reasonable and beneficial solution and insists the parties put aside their differences and mutually work out a reasonable solution,” the PSC wrote. “Rest assured that if negotiations are not successful in the next 30 days, the Commission will bring to bear all means available to it to make water system improvements happen with or without the cooperation of the Page-Kincaid Board members.”

Gov. Jim Justice signed Senate Bill 739 in March, also known as the “Distressed and Failing Water and Wastewater Utilities Improvement Act.” The bill gives the PSC the authority to “direct a takeover of a distressed utility by a proximate capable utility.”

If Page-Kincaid and American Water fail to reach an agreement within a month, this would be the PSC’s first time forcing an acquisition under the new law.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

Southern W.Va. Sees Surge In COVID-19 Cases, Higher Potential For Spread

Counties in southern West Virginia are experiencing a significant rise in new COVID-19 cases compared to the rest of the state, which health leaders blame on residents traveling for the summer.

Logan and McDowell counties have higher reproductive scores for the coronavirus than anyhere else in the state, according to Dr. Clay Marsh, who the governor appointed as the state’s “coronavirus czar” in March.

That means the disease has a higher potential for spreading in McDowell and Logan counties, compared to other counties. Mercer and Mingo counties’ reproductive scores are following closely behind McDowell and Logan’s, Marsh also reported.

The area has been hit by a series of recent outbreaks, including more than 40 cases of COVID-19 at a Princeton nursing home and more than 30 cases at a Logan County hospital, infecting both staff and patients.

The Bluefield Daily Telegraph reported Friday four deaths and one physician on a ventilator at the Princeton Health Care Center in Mercer County, where the area’s top three health officials resigned last week.

There were roughly 30 Logan and Mingo county residents who have tested positive for the coronavirus at the Logan Regional Medical Center by Friday, according to administrators for the two county health departments.

More than 50 area residents caught the coronavirus earlier in July from an outbreak spanning four Logan County churches, according to Logan County Health Department Administrator Steve Browning.

Browning said most cases linked to the first three churches – who gathered for a singing competition last month – have recovered.

One Mingo County resident linked to a Logan County church outbreak died and another remains on a ventilator, according to administrator Anthony Keith Blankenship of the Mingo County Health Department.

Gov. Jim Justice blamed the increase in cases on southern West Virginians traveling to Myrtle Beach, during one of three weekly press briefings Friday.

“There is one place that we can absolutely identify that is causing a real life problem in southern West Virginia, that southern West Virginians love beyond belief … it’s Myrtle Beach,” said Justice.

“We are seeing a huge outbreak in southern West Virginia [that] is of our own doing,” said cabinet secretary Bill Crouch for the Department of Health and Human Resources.

When the DHHR first reported COVID-19 cases linked to Myrtle Beach in June, officials also identified several cases of the virus in more northern parts of the state, like Preston County. Today, the DHHR is not tracking all of the state’s cases linked to Myrtle Beach in any official capacity, according to spokesperson Allison Adler.

Contrary to his comments in June, Crouch said Friday the state has tracked no coronavirus cases linked to out-of-state tourists.

“One of the things I assumed was happening in southern West Virginia was that tourists were bringing the disease to West Virginia, as a part of traveling the Hatfield-McCoy trails and visiting southern West Virginia,” Crouch said during the governor’s briefing. “Tourism is not the problem. … They’re not bringing the disease to us. This is West Virginians bringing it back.”

However, Blankenship of the Mingo County Health Department said visitors are equally to blame.

Earlier in July, Blankenship said there were out-of-state visitors involved in a wedding outbreak in Mingo County, where Blankenship said about 10 people from his county tested positive for the coronavirus. Blankenship also referred to a recent funeral in Wayne County with an out-of-state attendee, where the Mountain Citizen reported more than 40 cases of the coronavirus.

“Nobody’s safe from getting COVID-19,” Blankenship said. “You have to treat every single person you come into contact with as a COVID-19 case. … I think the tourists traveling to our state are equally responsible to the West Virginians traveling elsewhere.”

In-person classes for elementary and secondary school are still slated to begin Sept. 8 in all West Virginia counties, including those in the southern part of the state, according to Justice.

“This movement from the south is what I’m worried about,” Justice said, referring to a color-coded map of coronavirus problem areas Friday.

“Now that doesn’t [mean] we’re not going to go to school in those southern counties,” Justice said. “All I’m showing you is that movement from the south is real. It’s as real as real can be.”

There were nearly 1,800 active cases of the coronavirus in West Virginia Friday. The state has recorded more than 7,200 cases total and 127 deaths.

On Friday, the DHHR reported there were more than 170 active cases in Logan County, more than 130 active cases in Mercer County, more than 80 active cases in Mingo County and more than 40 active cases in McDowell County.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

UMWA Endorses Ben Salango For W.Va. Governor

The United Mine Workers of America is endorsing Democratic candidate Ben Salango for West Virginia governor.

According to UMWA President Cecil Roberts, 80 active and retired miners voted unanimously to support Salango on Monday.

Almost five years ago, the UMWA announced a similar endorsement of Salango’s opponent, Gov. Jim Justice.

“Had Gov. Justice been running against Ben Salango, we would’ve endorsed Ben Salango,” Roberts said during a virtual press conference Tuesday afternoon. “We would’ve felt then like we do now, that Ben Salango would’ve made a better governor than the governor we have now.”

Justice was running as a Democrat at the time against Republican Bill Cole.

Justice, a Greenbrier County billionaire whose family owns several mining operations, announced at a Trump rally in 2017 he was changing political parties.

Today, Justice-owned companies owe millions in environmental and labor-related fees and lawsuits. That includes roughly $4 million in delinquent debt for safety violations in 2019, according to a report from the Ohio Valley Resource. The Justice family agreed to pay more than $5 million in fines to the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration in April.

ProPublica reported in May that the UMWA sued Justice in 2019 after the Justice companies stopped paying for retired miners’ health insurance plans. ProPublica also reports that the governor has paid more than $128 million in legal settlements.

Justice campaign manager Roman Stauffer said in an emailed statement Tuesday afternoon that the governor “isn’t a politician and won’t engage in partisan politics.”

Throughout Justice’s time as governor, Stauffer said grants that the UMWA Career Center has received through the West Virginia Development Office – including a $369,000 grant in 2020, awarded quarterly – demonstrates Justice’s support for the union.

Roberts said Tuesday endorsing Salango had nothing to do with political parties, adding the UMWA also has endorsed Republican candidates for the 2020 election, due to the candidates’ support of legislation in Congress that will protect miners’ pensions and retiree health care. Such endorsements include U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito and Rep. David McKinley.

“Anybody that lives in West Virginia realizes there’s been a struggle now for 10 years, with bankruptcy after bankruptcy after bankruptcy,” Roberts said. “Workers’ pensions, workers’ health care, workers’ jobs are on the line every time one of those bankruptcies occurs.”

The UMWA announced Tuesday it’s also endorsing Democratic candidate Sam Petsonk for attorney general. Petsonk was a legal intern with the UMWA in the mid-2000s. He’s running against Republican incumbent Patrick Morrisey.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

W.Va. PSC Urges Fayette Co. Utility To Consider West Virginia American Water Takeover

The West Virginia Public Service Commission is urging a small, struggling water utility in Fayette County to consider allowing a larger provider to take over its water assets, following requests from hundreds of customers over the last year.

Engineering staff for the PSC said during a status conference Tuesday that they support the acquisition of the Page-Kincaid Public Service District’s water assets by West Virginia American Water.

“There’s a lot of equipment that needs to be replaced in the Page-Kincaid water system,” PSC engineer James Weimer told commissioners. “The plant obviously has some serious problems … missing pumps, pumps that are leaking, check valves that are leaking badly and having to be pumped multiple times a minute …”

West Virginia American Water, one of the state’s largest publicly regulated water providers, offered to take over Page-Kincaid’s water assets Jan. 31, following months of discussions with the small, struggling utility.

During the status conference Tuesday, local vice president of operations Chris Carew shared American Water’s plans for an acquisition, including what the company would replace and how much it would plan to spend.

The PSC initiated a general investigation into the Page-Kincaid Public Service District May 20, after Page-Kincaid declared a boil-water advisory for its roughly 640 water customers May 18.

Page-Kincaid board members and employees maintain they issued the advisory as an overcautious response to one isolated incident of vandalism.

Bart Jackson, operations manager, told the PSC Tuesday that his employees regularly test the water they treat.

However, customers and the Fayette County Commission have said the water was dirty and expensive long before that boil-water advisory. Roughly two-thirds of Page-Kincaid’s customer base signed a petition more than a year ago, demanding action from the PSC.

PSC attorney Linda Bouvette suggested to commissioners on Tuesday that Page-Kincaid is using surface water standards to test groundwater. That would mean Page-Kincaid isn’t testing for contaminants from coal mining and oil drilling that might reach groundwater.

“It’s clear that the situation down there is totally unacceptable. And the people in this room have the ability to do something about it,” said PSC Chair Charlotte Lane during Tuesday’s meeting. “This is just being dragged out and dragged out, and it’s totally unacceptable.”

Lane and other commissioners heard accounts from attorneys for both Page-Kincaid and West Virginia American Water Tuesday.

The two providers spent months discussing a deal, but talks dissipated after Page-Kincaid rejected American Water’s offer in February, stating Page-Kincaid would only consider an offer that included acquiring its sewer system, serving roughly 400 customers.

West Virginia American Water requested information on the assets from Page-Kincaid in December, according to orders from the PSC. Page Kincaid didn’t provide information on its sewer assets until June, following an order from the PSC.

Carew said American Water still has to perform its “due diligence” and review the sewer site in person before it can consider acquiring the wastewater system.

During Tuesday’s hearing, an attorney for Page-Kincaid said the utility’s three-member board would still consider an acquisition if American Water offered to acquire the entire system, for both water and wastewater.

Bouvette from the PSC and representatives for American Water said Page-Kincaid’s request was like “the tail wagging the dog.”

John David, a member of the Page-Kincaid board, told commissioners Tuesday he disagrees an acquisition by American Water would be best for customers.

David said he’s been on the Page-Kincaid board since the 1970s, when the public service district was created. He told the PSC Tuesday he fears an acquisition would result in higher monthly rates to customers.

“The reason that we founded it was because we were concerned about iron water,” he told commissioners Tuesday. “And we tried to then say we need to have a system to deal with that issue. So it’s not a new issue.”

David has said in a previous interview with West Virginia Public Broadcasting that the water is fine to his knowledge. Before replacing one of three old filters in 2019, he blamed problems with the water quality on nearby mining.

PSC engineer Weimer touched on contaminants from nearby mining enterprises and old oil-drilling efforts in his presentation to the commission Tuesday morning, as well. He added he couldn’t definitively say what’s contaminating the Page-Kincaid water.

Yet, David told the PSC Tuesday that he believes if Page-Kincaid remains locally run, there’s hope for change through new repairs.

“We feel that we have the capability to operate a really good water system,” David said.

The Fayette County Commission filed petitions for the removal of all three board members in June. The USDA, from which a representative was present for Tuesday’s meeting, reports Page-Kincaid has more than $200,000 in outstanding balance for water loans and more than $813,000 in outstanding balance for sewage loans.

Lane, who chairs the PSC, said during Tuesday’s hearing commissioners will issue an order shortly, referenced two pieces of legislation the governor signed in March during her closing remarks. Senate Bill 739 gives the PSC the ability to deal with failing water and sewer systems by ordering or facilitating an acquisition, and Senate Bill 551 would allow large water utilities like American Water to merge with or buy both smaller utilities’ running water and sewer systems.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.

W.Va. Governor To Sign Order Authorizing Fall Reopening Of Colleges

Gov. Jim Justice announced Friday that he will sign an executive order authorizing universities and colleges to reopen their campuses this fall.

Justice already announced his support for higher education reopening plans on Monday, before holding a closed meeting with public and private university presidents Tuesday. The group discussed coronavirus testing for out-of-state students and the implementation of face mask requirements, according to a press release from Justice’s communications office.

In West Virginia, young adults are testing positive for the coronavirus more than any other age range, according to coronavirus czar Dr. Clay Marsh.

“All around us, we see that there’s a lot of activity from COVID-19, and it’s important to note that across the country, and in West Virginia, we are seeing a rise in COVID-19 [cases] that is particularly isolated to people that are 18 to 29,” said Marsh, the executive dean of health sciences at WVU who the governor appointed in March as the state’s leading COVID-19 expert.

That age range, and people who are 30 to 39 years old, account “for a majority of the new cases in many parts of our country,” Marsh added.

Data from the state on Friday showed West Virginia’s 20-to-29-year-old age bracket was the most active, accounting for more than 23 percent of the state’s total COVID-19 cases.

According to Justice, higher education institutions have demonstrated to him they’re prepared to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.

“I’m absolutely a believer that these universities and colleges have done incredible planning,” Justice said. “Each one of them has their own separate plan of how they can ensure the safety of the kids and the staff and everybody that’s there. … I believe without any doubt that we have flipped every rock, to ensure the parents of these children and all those that are involved, that we absolutely can go back to school and go back to school as safely as we possibly can.”

Across the state, colleges and universities have produced contingency plans for reopening, which include more distanced and outdoor dining options and replacing shared dormitory units with single-occupancy rooms.

The governor also said Friday that signing the order is an important step to reopening K-12. On July 8, Justice and state superintendent of schools Clayton Burch announced West Virginia will reopen classrooms Sept. 8.

The state’s re-entry toolkit for school districts includes recommendations for social distancing in the classroom and the screening of COVID-19 symptoms among children and adult personnel.

The department will issue an updated toolkit early next week, according to spokesperson Christy Day.

West Virginia education leaders have yet to elaborate on the state’s plans for when teachers and other school employees test positive for the coronavirus.

Day said in an email to West Virginia Public Broadcasting Friday that the department will have a better idea of how it’s handling teachers who test positive in either the first or second week of August, after county school districts finalize and share their individual re-entry plans with the state.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shared updated guidelines for K-12 schools on Thursday, July 23, urging schools to resume in-person classes, saying “the best available evidence” shows children with COVID-19 are less often symptomatic.

“[T]he harms attributed to closed schools on the social, emotional, and behavioral health, economic well-being, and academic achievement of children, in both the short- and long-term, are well-known and significant,” the CDC noted at the start of its most recent online recommendations.

Some health experts say it’s still unclear how the virus affects young children and teenagers. Pediatricians told NPR earlier this week it’s also uncertain how the virus spreads among children to adults.

The CDC’s new recommendations come two weeks after the president called the agency’s earlier guidelines for social distancing in the classroom “tough and expensive,” according to NPR.

Emily Allen is a Report for America corps member.