Early one morning this past January, two Clay County school busses pulled up at the state capitol complex in Charleston. Inside were members of the group “What’s Next, Clay County?”, one of twenty-five communities across the state that is organizing to strengthen their local economy as a part of the “What’s Next, WV?” initiative.
Sign up to bring "What's Next" conversations to your community today! http://whatsnextwv.org/organize-discussion
Over seventy people attended their first community meeting last fall—not a small feat in a community of their size. They chose five areas to focus their work: youth and education; infrastructure; small business; drugs; and cleaning up trash and dilapidated properties.
Since then, they realized they would need outside help to accomplish all they have set out to do, so they set off for a day at the capitol. This is a story about a small, rural community fighting for a brighter economic future for their families and neighbors.
To get to know these Clay Countians in living color, check out this short documentary about their day at the legislature.
An annual spring lecture series that explores the heritage of the coal industry kicks off the first week of February with featured musicians and poets.
“The Music of the Coalfields” is the title of the first installment of the Coal Heritage Lecture Series at Concord University’s Beckley campus. It will feature performances by Julie Adams, Colleen Anderson, and Josh Barrett. The trio will perform traditional Appalachian music centered on the coalfields including “Coal Tattoo” and “The L and N Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore.”
February 3rd (snow day Feb. 7): “The Music of the Coalfields” 7 p.m. in Room E 10 at the Erma Byrd Higher Education Center on Airport Road in Beaver, W.Va. and are free and open to the public.
March 3rd: Environmentalists speak out against mountaintop removal and fracking.
April 7th: Bill Raney from the Friends of Coal speaks in favor of mountaintop removal.
May 5th: Guests from the union organization, WV AFL-CIO, speak.
Sponsored by Concord University and the National Coal Heritage Area Authority, lectures are free and open to the public. For more information contact Karen Vuranch at (304) 575-3636 or kvuranch@concord.edu or Concord University’s Beckley campus at (304) 256-0270.
Nuisance and negligence lawsuits have been filed this year throughout West Virginia related to horizontal drilling activities. Noise, air, and water pollution, traffic and debris are among complaints. It’s a new industrial world for many West Virginians living in the growing rural gas fields.
Gas Moved In Next Door, And Made Itself At Home
Lyndia Ervolina stood in her front yard, 75 feet or so from Route 50 in Doddridge County. She pointed to several heavy trucks passing by.
“They’re hauling water, they’re hauling sand, they’re hauling that silica sand, they’re hauling frac fluid. Anything you can think of,” she said with a strained tone in her voice.
Drill cuttings, heavy machinery, pipe… Ervolina sees it all from her front porch. For the past thirty years, she’s lived in her charming home that rests in a nook off of Route 50, but she says the traffic wasn’t an issue until four or five years ago when horizontal drilling took off in this neck of Doddridge County. She’s not an industry expert, but she well-knows what it’s like to live surrounded by horizontal drilling operations.
Gas has moved in to Ervolina’s yard, literally. She has a beautiful garden that’s clearly seen years of work, but it’s fallen into disrepair. And if you linger there, it’s not too hard to guess why.
There’s a heavy odor wafting through the air that makes you worry about the presence of open flames. Ervolina said it comes from across the street.
“I have a condensate tank up there that they blow off right across the road that they put in when they put the pipeline in. I have no idea why they put it right across from us,” she said.
Condensate tanks are used to clean gas as it goes through lines, to remove impurities.
“And they just blow it into the air,” Ervolina said. “So when it gets blown off into the air it comes to my house.”
Lyndia Ervolina doesn’t own any mineral rights on her two-acre lot; she gains nothing by living within arms-reach of such industry. Companies have no legal obligation to explain what they’re doing even if it’s happening right across the street; and there’s no forum to facilitate communication. She and her family are left to wonder and worry.
She says moving away isn’t off the table, as many others have already done. But it’s a painful thought to entertain.
“My house has no value now and I wonder if I should take what money we have left and invest it in the house or just figure that we might have to move out of here. It kind of leaves you just in this limbo. I just turned 67 and my husband is 68 and … it’s kind of hard to start over.”
Mass Litigation
Ervolina’s story is one of many in the northern gas fields. Over the past year about fifty cases and about a hundred claimants have filed suits mostly in Harrison and Doddridge counties, but also Pleasants, Kanawha, Ritchie, Marion, and Monongalia. Citizens are filing suit against several companies including Colorado-based Antero Resources, West Virginia-based Hall Drilling, and Pennsylvania-based EQT. The negligence and nuisance claims are coming from residents and property owners like Ervolina last who live in the vicinity of oil or natural gas drilling activities.
I drove around and spoke with other residents in the community who are worried about air and noise pollution. But few are willing to publicly voice concerns because they don’t want to openly criticize economic development in their rural backyards. Some members of the community get paid to do odd jobs for gas companies like monitor traffic, or help clean up spills. Still others like Ervolina who are filing suits and have been advised by legal counsel not to discuss their issues; and if their cases are settled, they are often legally forbidden from discussing problems as part of the legal settlement.
Attorney and co-founder of the West Virginia Surface Owners Rights Organization, Dave McMahon explained that these nuisance suits aren’t very common.
“That’s because there’s often not enough money in one nuisance case for a lawyer to be able to bring the case on a contingent-fee basis,” McMahon said. “And very few people living out there in the country have the money to pay a good lawyer and hourly-basis to bring one of these cases.”
McMahon is not the lawyer filing THESE cases, but he was present when the fifty-or-so cases filed in the state were compiled into a mass litigation suit–which is when many similar cases are compiled to be heard and judged on simultaneously to avoid conflicting rulings and a clogged court system. McMahon says this kind of legal action is the only recourse people have.
“The Horizontal Well Act that was passed a couple years ago didn’t do what it should have for surface owners–we say.” McMahon said. “There were a number of studies put in instead of surface-owner protections. The studies were conducted by WVU and other places. The studies made recommendations to give better protections to surface owners. But neither the DEP nor the legislature have made those changes. So, what we have to hope is that these actions in the court will protect people and will deter the industry from doing the kinds of nuisance things that they’ve been doing.”
***We reached out to Antero, EQT, Hall Drilling, and the WV Oil and Natural Gas Association for comment on this story but got no replies.
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Bloomery Sweetshine Distillery
Bloomery Sweetshine Distillery located in Jefferson County has attracted around 50,000 tourists since it opened in 2011. While Jefferson County has been called the leader in tourism and economic impact in the state, some say the rural economy is struggling, and this distillery could be helping to revive it.
Allison Manderino is one of the fun-tenders, or bartenders, at the Bloomery Sweetshine Distillery. She drives two-in-a-half hours every weekend from Pennsylvania to the eastern panhandle just to work weekends serving drinks.
“You ask anyone here who works here, we all have the same answer, we all love each other,” said Manderino, “and Tom and Linda, our owners, we want them to succeed so much that we will do whatever we need. And if that means that, you know, I drive and live in a different state every weekend, that’s okay. I’ll do it, because I want to see this through, and I know we’re going places, and I just want to help them get there in whatever way I can.”
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Bloomery Sweetshine’s Greenhouse
Bloomery Sweetshine Distillery began after co-founders, Linda Losey and Tom Keifer went on a trip to Italy in 2010. While there, they tasted Limoncello, a very popular lemon liqueur and wanted to replicate it once back in the US. After scouting out various locations, they found a rural spot in Charles Town, where they began to build their business in an old bloomery, or ironworks mill, from the 1700s that was in disrepair.
“So we thought, why not settle in West Virginia,” remembered Losey, “and I came out here, and I texted Tom, I’m like, I’m going to meet the craigslist killer, and he said where are you and what are you doing, and I said, don’t worry if I like it, you’re in trouble, if I don’t like it, it’s no worries. And I liked it, and so here we are, on 12 acres in Charles Town, West Virginia, growing lemons and Hawaiian ginger and raspberries and black walnuts and pumpkins.”
Losey says she’s amazed at the success of the distillery in such a short time, but attributes that success to the fun-tenders who always try to connect to each patron individually and make each customer feel welcome.
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
/
West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Allison Manderino as the Dancing Lemon, the distillery’s mascot.
“Everybody brings their own sort of quirkiness to the team,” Losey noted, “and if you come and get a tasting on a Friday and have one fun-tender, and you come back in on a Saturday, you’re going to get a completely different experience.”
Tom Keifer, the other co-founder, says he thinks it’s the naturalness of the product that’s attractive and keeps bringing in customers.
“Because we have only whole ingredients, there’s nothing artificial, no coloring, no dyes, no flavors, anything like that,” Keifer said, “And there’s this robustness that comes with that. I mean when you taste the ginger you’ll see, I mean, it tastes like liquid ginger root, and when you taste our pumpkin spice, it tastes like grandma’s pumpkin pie. It’s just awesome.”
Bloomery Sweetshine Distillery grows most of its ingredients on-site, but since its products are in such high demand, it gets some ingredients locally in Charles Town and Martinsburg, but some come from farmers as far away as California.
It’s open only four days a week, but the owners say they average 300 customers every weekend. Their products have won American and International awards, and have seen at least one tourist from every state in the US, as well as a handful of other countries.
Annette Gavin is the CEO of the Jefferson County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. She says the distillery is definitely making an impact on Jefferson County’s economy.
“They didn’t just decide to do this, develop it, and, you know, wait for people to come. They market it; they market the heck out of it. You know, they get out there, and it’s literally stomping the pavement to let people know,” said Gavin.
Gavin also says the Distillery is in a perfect location being so close to Washington, DC and Baltimore.
With an array of flavors to choose from and an ever growing number in tourists, the Bloomery Sweetshine Distillery continues to do well in Jefferson County.
