Waterways Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Senate Starts Week By Passing A Dozen Bills

It was a busy day for the Senate as they passed a dozen bills, ranging from issues of schools to healthcare and substance use.

It was a busy day for the Senate as they passed a dozen bills, ranging from issues of schools to health care and substance use.

First up was Senate Bill 51, which would require an impact statement in certain instances of a school closing or consolidation. School closure and consolidation have been pervasive in the state as the population continues to decline. According to the 2020 Census, West Virginia lost 3.2 percent of its population since 2010.

Senate Bill 258, which would eliminate a $10,000 cap on rent-to-own agreements in the state, was the only bill that did not pass unanimously.

“Currently in the law, it says that there cannot be a rent-to-own contract related to consumer goods which has a cash value, fair market value of more than $10,000. This bill, if it passes, will remove that cap completely,” said Sen. Charles Trump, R-Morgan. “Consumers and rent to own businesses will be free to enter into whatever contract they like regardless of the amount of value consumer goods which is the subject of the contract.”

Sen. Mike Woelfel, D-Cabell, and Sen. Mike Caputo, D-Marion, both voted against the bill but did not provide comment on the floor.

Senate Bill 282 creates the West Virginia Guardian Program. The program would allow county boards of education to contract with honorably discharged law enforcement officers to provide public safety and/or security on public school grounds and buildings.

With all the federal money coming into the state, Senate Bill 439 aims to help one state department complete its projects more easily.

“This is a pretty uncomplicated, easy bill. All it does is streamline the process for the DEP to bid and award contracts.” said Sen. Randy Smith, R-Tucker. “With all the federal money coming in, they’re afraid they’re not gonna get all the bids out for mine reclamation and some other projects. The Department of Highways is already doing this and it’s working well for them.”

The Senate also passed:

Senate Bill 248, clarifying when excess funds accumulated by boards are to be transferred to General Revenue Fund
Senate Bill 270, adding exemption to permit requirement for cremation for research for institution arranging the final disposition of a decedent who donated his or her body to science
Senate Bill 271, modifying approval process requirements for First Responders Honor Board
Senate Bill 283, updating the language of the Military Incentive Program, which provides a tax credit to employers in the state for hiring certain members of a class of veterans, to include all veterans

Sen. Mike Azinger, R-Wood, addresses the Senate on Monday Jan. 30, 2023. *Credit Will Price/WV Legislative Photography*

One Senator, Four Bills

One-third of the bills in front of the Senate on third reading Monday were sponsored by Sen. Mike Azinger, R-Wood. He said the bill’s aim was to address a chronic issue in the state.

“Three of the four bills that were on third reading today, deal with the homeless/drug crisis that is especially affecting two or three counties, that being Wood County, Cabell County, maybe you can say Kanawha County, maybe one or two others,” Azinger said.

“In Wood County we have four percent of the population and 25 percent of the beds, and we could potentially have double that if Ohio Valley College is purchased by these folks that have these drug rehab places. These bills are trying to constrict. The issues that we have in Wood County with homeless camps, with crime, as you can imagine, break ins and burglary, it’s just off the charts.”

Senate Bill 239 would require the Commissioner of the Bureau for Behavioral Health to engage community stakeholders in a study of homeless demographic information throughout West Virginia, due by July 1, 2024. Azinger said better understanding the state’s unhoused population is important to ensure the best use of the state’s resources.

“The study is basically just to know where the homeless folks are in West Virginia, why they are migrating from one part of the state to the other and how many of these homeless people are from out of state,” he said.

“We’re getting tons of out-of-state people that come to West Virginia, to the drug rehab places, because we have a lot of beds in one county, Cabell, but also, because we have benefits. We give away, you know, all kinds of freebies, and the word gets out on the street, cross-country, ‘Hey go to West Virginia.’ And that’s what’s happening. We want to truncate that, staunch the bleeding, put a stop to it, and make it reasonable. We’re not kicking anybody out of beds, we don’t want to do that, we want people that want help to get help.”

Senate Bill 243 would require the institutions giving people that help with substance use issues to also provide transportation after treatment has ended. The mandate for transportation is broad-reaching, as the bill requires, “a means of transportation back to the individual’s state of birth, a state in which they have previously lived, or a state where they have a family support structure” be provided. Azinger said there is no funding for the requirement by design.

“Just send these folks back to where they have family, to a state that they’re from, or someplace where they have connections and relationships and a history there,” he said. “We’re just making the drug rehab places have some skin in the game. Let them pay the price back for the bus ticket. Parkersburg paid $24,000 in bus tickets last year. So that’s $24,000 that, in my opinion, the City of Parkersburg shouldn’t have to pay.”

He also stated that the requirement serves two purposes: getting those individuals fresh out of substance use treatment back to their support system, and out of West Virginia.

Azinger also sponsored Senate Bill 241, which shifts the responsibility of investigating and enforcing of, the Patient Brokering Act, as well as Senate Bill 251, which requires the display of the official U.S. motto, “In God We Trust” in all state schools.

“Our country was built on God,” Azinger said. “Our America was birthed by the Great Awakening, religious revivals in the early 1700s was the impetus, was a birthright of the American Revolution. That’s always how we have operated. So why did we take it out? What’s happened since we’ve taken it out? Well, a lot of bad things have happened since we’ve taken it out, so let’s start bringing God back into the schools.”

Completed Legislative Action

Two more bills passed through the legislative process and are now on their way to Gov. Jim Justice for his signature.

Senate Bill 143 is titled Relating to Adopt-A-Stream Program. The bill would establish an Adopt-a-Stream program to promote the cleaning of the state’s waterways, similar to the Adopt-a-Highway program.

Senate Bill 231 transfers administration of West Virginia Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer Matching Funds Program to Department of Economic Development.

Both bills originated in the Senate but were amended by the House and returned to the Senate for final approval.

Mussel Woman: Biologist Passes Along Pearls Of Wisdom About Threatened Mussels

Janet Clayton is standing thigh-deep in a back channel of the Elk River. Clad in a wetsuit and knee pads, the silver-haired biologist with the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources reaches into a bright orange mesh bag submerged in water.

Inside are a half dozen mussels she plucked from the rocky river bottom.

“This is called a long solid,” Clayton says. An earthy colored shell about the size of a computer mouse sits in the palm of her hand. “As it gets older it gets really long.”

Her bag also includes a pocketbook mussel, wavy-rayed lampmussel, and kidneyshell.

The biologically diverse waterways of the Ohio Valley are home to more than 100 species of freshwater mussels. Each can filter five to 10 gallons of water daily. But pollution, land use change, and a changing climate threaten their very existence. They’re among the most endangered animals in the United States.

Biologists measure and monitor the mussels at the Elk River site.

Clayton, a West Virginia native, began her career researching aquatic invertebrates, but quickly switched gears to studying the state’s mussels and never looked back. She has worked with them for three decades and leads West Virginia’s mussel program, which she helped develop.

As Clayton approaches retirement next June, she is reflecting on how the field has grown and changed. Today, scientists know a lot more about freshwater mussels and how to protect them, partly due to her work.

Some other biologists call her a “hero” for the often overlooked species. But just as Clayton prepares to pass on her pearls of wisdom, she is also sounding an alarm about the population decline she has documented, and what that says about river quality.

“Mussels live for decades in our streams,” Clayton said. “So, they’re like the canary in the coal mine.”

Mussel and Flow

In addition to filtering water, mussel excrement provides food for macroinvertebrates and benthic critters. Mussels themselves are a food source for many mammals, and the bivalves also help keep river bottoms in place.

To protect and preserve freshwater mussels, Clayton and her team use a three-pronged approach.

“Surveys, monitoring, and restoration are kind of the three components,” she said.

Working with partners across state and federal agencies in the Ohio Valley, Clayton developed mussel surveying methods that have been widely adopted. Her team has also set up 26 long term monitoring sites, which helps the team assess the health of the state’s mussel population. The researchers also help restore mussels to waterways, sometimes by relocating parts of healthy stock. Other times, lab-grown mussels are used.

“One of the important things that scientists have learned in the last couple of years is how to grow them in captivity without their specific host fish,” said Tierra Curry, a Kentucky-based scientist with the Center for Biological Diversity, which advocates for federal protections for mussels and other threatened species.

“So now, the knowledge to be able to breed them and save them is available, but they don’t have the funding that they need to keep them from going extinct,” she said.

Curry said Clayton’s work on mussels has been very important to the field.

“Janet Clayton is a total hero for freshwater mussels,” she said. “She’s been such an asset to West Virginia and to the whole study of freshwater mussels.”

On the Elk

One aspect of that study is tracking mussels found at long-term monitoring sites. On a recent weekday, Clayton and a handful of researchers clad in wetsuits and goggles bobbed in the gurgling Elk River.

Bright yellow string shimmers beneath the surface dividing the river bottom into five-by-five meter squares, resembling a giant underwater game of tic-tac-toe.

The scientists are plucking every mussel they can find out of the water and placing neon flags in their wake.

“When we go back, we can put the mussel in a hole,” Clayton said. “So it’s easier, less energy consuming for that mussel to rebury into the substrate.”

Each mussel will be tagged with small silver plastic tag and measured.

“So we’ve actually had mussels in here who’ve been tracked for the 15-year period we’ve been monitoring here,” she said.

Five years ago, Clayton and her team pulled hundreds of dead and dying three-ridge mussels from this river. The cause remains a mystery.

“We have no idea,” she said. “We’ve gone through investigations trying to figure out what’s the problem.”

Good quality water is vital to the health of mussels. And humans have not always treated waterways with care. Chemical discharges, excess sediment and dams pose challenges to mussels.

Mussel shells along Kentucky’s Green River.

The team has successfully restored mussels after mortality events and have even seen once mussel-free streams come back. But there are also examples, like at this site in the Elk River, where the mussels aren’t flourishing, and it’s unclear why.

As she nears retirement, Clayton said she fears legacy impacts from coal mining, such as acid mine drainage, mean some waterways will never again be healthy enough to support mussels.

And new threats have emerged. Climate change could alter water flow and temperatures, and the growing natural gas industry brings water-intensive processes and pipelines that are being constructed through waterways.

“I’m concerned. I’m very concerned,” she said. “If mussels are dying – which in this case, they are – if mussels are dying, what’s in this water that’s causing them to die? We need to wake up and pay attention to what’s out there.”

House Approves Water Standards Bill

The House voted on a bill Wednesday that aligns West Virginia’s standards for some discharges into the state’s waters with federal limits. Opponents say the bill could put West Virginia’s drinking water supply at risk, but supporters maintain it has the potential to attract new industry to the state.

House Bill 2506 is a complicated and technical bill. But in a nutshell, it relates to how much of a substance can be released into West Virginia’s waterways under state permits and the places where those permits overlap. Essentially, it allows an increased discharge limit of cancer-causing and non-cancer causing chemicals into West Virginia’s streams and rivers, but only after certain calculations and observations have been made by the state Department of Environmental Protection. The DEP would decide if a new facility that planned to apply for a discharge permit could be built in an area close to other, already-permitted facilities.

Those against the bill say it would lower the quality of the state’s drinking water and be harmful to citizens. Supporters of the bill argue it would bring more jobs to the state, because organizations could build more facilities on vacant industrial properties.

Delegate Roger Hanshaw of Clay County, is the vice chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. He explained the bill to members of the chamber.

“The bill does not permit facilities to do anything that is out of compliance with the law,” Hanshaw said, “The bill does not allow facilities to discharge materials that aren’t authorized today. The bill doesn’t allow individuals, or entities, or permit holders to discharge anything above and beyond the existing West Virginia Water Quality Standards. The bill has no relation whatsoever to catastrophic incidents.”

One of those catastrophic incidents Hanshaw was referring to was the January 9, 2014, Freedom Industry chemical leak in the Kanawha Valley. Hanshaw pointed out that the event was an accident at a facility that was not permitted to discharge into the Elk River outside of Charleston and the bill would not change that.

Democratic Del. Barbara Evans Fleischauer disagreed with Hanshaw’s assessment.

“Those of us who were in the legislature and the 300,000 other people who lost their water for up to a month, what? It has nothing to do with that? It has everything to do with that, because we know how precious our drinking water is. We know it, it’s been proven. I do not want us to be guinea pigs on lowering the water measuring measurements, so that we have the potential for more contamination,” Fleischauer said.

Delegate Mark Zatezelo is a Republican from Hancock County and the lead sponsor of the bill. He noted in his floor speech that he wasn’t sure how many jobs it would attract, but the potential was there.

“We’re in competition. We need tax base. We need to do things that we haven’t done for a while. It’s gonna be a very difficult job. It’s gonna be a lot of hard work, and we all need to be engaged,” Zatezelo explained, “This is just a small thing, but it’s an important thing, and I do not, if I believed that it was gonna harm the water quality of West Virginia, I would be against it. I think this is a good bill, and I think it is the way for us to go.”

Democratic Delegate Mike Pushkin of Kanawha County, suggested there were other opportunities for the state to attract businesses.

“I, for one, think it’s time that we just stop believing this tired old lie that the only thing we’re good enough for here in West Virginia; the only kind of jobs we can attract in West Virginia, the only kind of economic development that we can have in West Virginia, the only kind of growth that we deserve here will be at the expense of our citizen’s health, will be at the expense of our citizen’s safety, at the expense of something as essential as the water that’s flowing from their tap,” Pushkin

Pushkin encouraged his fellow lawmakers to look for ways to use the state’s waterways as an economic driver by way of tourism.

Another Democrat, Delegate Shawn Fluharty, from Ohio County, opposed the bill.

“Here’s what we’ve been sold for decades, decades after decades;” Fluharty said, “it doesn’t matter who’s in power, Republican, Democratic whatsoever; we’ve been told just trust us. Just trust us. We don’t need coal mine safety, then a tragedy happens. Just trust us. We don’t need workers’ rights, then a tragedy happens. And then on this bill today, we’ve been told just trust us, the water’ll remain clean and the jobs will come raining down.”

In his closing remarks, Delegate Hanshaw encouraged lawmakers to separate fact from fiction.

“The most important thing in the practice of science is to divorce it from emotion,” Hanshaw said, “because when we let emotion creep in to any decision, we cloud our judgement, and we ignore facts. Beware the shoehorn. Mr. Speaker, this bill doesn’t change water quality standards. This bill gives DEP the ability to do what it’s doing now in conformity with the law, and it makes West Virginia compatible with neighboring states.”

House Bill 2506 passed, 63 to 37, and now goes to the Senate for consideration.

West Virginia and Ohio Oppose New Waterway Rules

The attorneys general of Ohio and West Virginia are leading an effort to oppose new federal rules that clarify which small streams, wetlands and other waterways the government can shield from pollution and development.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine and West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey — along with their counterparts from a dozen other states — signed a letter to the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement this week saying that the rules will hurt coal mining operations.

The letter says the rules immensely broaden the federal government’s authority at the expense of mining and fail to respect state control over the industry.

The rules are on hold pending federal legal challenges that are continuing the years-long debate over federal water protection authority.