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WVSU Lawsuit Against Union Carbide A Mistrial

A mistrial was declared Monday in a lawsuit filed by West Virginia State University (WVSU) against Dow Chemical after a hung jury.

WVSU filed the suit in 2017, alleging that Union Carbide, a subsidiary of Dow Chemical, polluted groundwater in and around the campus. The trial had closing arguments on Friday, but by Monday the jury was already at an impasse.

In notes provided to the judge by jurors, one of the jurors became hostile, causing a breakdown in the jury’s ability to come to a consensus. According to the notes the juror was being “confrontational” and “offensive” to some of the other jurors.

The Location

Institute is an unincorporated area that lies between the city of Dunbar, home to WVSU and the Union Carbide Chemical Plant.

A map provided by a independent contractor to the EPA on ground water contamination by Union Carbide.
*CH2M Hill East Property Boundary Investigation page 2.*

This unincorporated area is home to a Resource Conservation and Recovery Act cleanup site, overseen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. RCRA is a 1976 law that requires the cleanup of hazardous materials.

A timeline of events.
*Briana Heaney/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

The Argument

WVSU says that toxic pollution created by Dow Chemical subsidiary, Union Carbide, is polluting properties owned by WVSU. WVSU claims this pollution makes it more costly for the university to expand because it will have to spend millions to make areas affected by pollutants safe for residential and nonresidential use.

Dow says the company is not responsible, and the Institute Plant site poses no health risks to the community, including its neighbor WVSU.

“Dow Chemical’s Institute Plant has contaminated the groundwater under West Virginia State University with three likely carcinogens, yet Dow refuses to clean up the pollution and pay for the harm,” the plaintiff, WVSU’s Board of Governors, said in the lawsuit.

The EPA found benzene, chlorobenzene, chloroform, carbon tetrachloride, and tetrachloroethene in the ground water at the site. EPA’s remedy requires land and groundwater use restrictions for activities that may result in exposure to those contaminants. Ground water systems are interconnected and do not stop at property boundary lines.

In the court filing, WVSU said Dow is aware of the damage its subsidiary, Union Carbide, has done to the air and ground water.

“Dow admits that the pollution under the university’s property is so serious that no one can live in the polluted area, or even work or study there without special protective measures,” WVSU said in a response to Dow’s motion to dismiss.

The filing states that Dow — not the university — says the WVSU’s property has been so severely damaged that no one can live where the contamination has spread to, and any building on the property requires barriers to block toxic fumes.

Dow refutes this.

“The Institute site poses no health risk to the community, including WVSU, and the data supports this conclusion,” Union Carbide Media Relations said in an emailed statement. “WVSU has repeatedly made the same assertion. UCC (Union Carbide Corporation) has met, and will continue to meet and exceed, all of its remediation commitments with oversight from the U.S. EPA and the WVDEP.”

Dow has been Union Carbide’s parent company since 2001. Dow says it is not responsible for Union Carbide’s every liability. In particular, it’s not necessarily responsible for these instances of Union Carbide’s alleged pollution at the company’s Institute Plant.

“Dow never owned or operated the Institute Plant, foreclosing any argument that Dow may be held directly liable,” Dow said in a court filing.

West Virginia State University can move forward with the litigation by going back to square one, starting a new trial with new jurors in Kanawha Circuit Court. A new date will be established by the circuit court.

Dow Chemical declined an interview request. However, it said in an emailed statement that there are no health risks to the community, including West Virginia State University.

The university and its law firm, Bailey and Glasser, declined to comment on the ongoing litigation.

PEIA Hearings Continue And A Look At The Legacy Of Marshall Memorials, This West Virginia Morning

On this West Virginia Morning, every Nov. 14, Marshall University and the Huntington community have remembered and honored the 1970 football team, and all of the 75 who perished that year in a plane crash. For more than half a century, these annual memorial events have honored revered memories, but they have also inspired a legacy of positive personal and physical growth.

Also, in this show, PEIA continues to hold hearings across the state over proposed price increases that would take effect next summer, the state Supreme Court rules on football playoffs and an Elkins residential facility for children in foster care is slated to close by the end of the year.

We also have stories on a continued fall in West Virginia’s drug overdose death rate, a pollution lawsuit ends in a hung jury and a land grant university gets an agricultural laboratory.

West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, which is solely responsible for its content.

Support for our news bureaus comes from Shepherd University and Marshall University School of Journalism and Mass Communications.

Maria Young produced this episode.

Listen to West Virginia Morning weekdays at 7:43 a.m. on WVPB Radio or subscribe to the podcast and never miss an episode. #WVMorning

‘I Think It Spoke To Him’: Why James Earl Jones Sought Role In ‘Matewan’

Curtis Tate spoke to David Wohl, who at the time was an acting teacher at West Virginia State and asked Jones to come speak to his students.

Renowned actor James Earl Jones died earlier this month at age 93. Jones was part of the cast of the 1987 John Sayles film “Matewan,” which was shot in Thurmond, West Virginia.

Curtis Tate spoke to David Wohl, who at the time was an acting teacher at West Virginia State and asked Jones to come speak to his students.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tate: Why did James Earl Jones come to West Virginia to be in Matewan?

Wohl: I think he chose the film because it was just an interesting acting choice for him. And I mean, Sayles was really lucky to get him at that point. But when you think about it, he had done the voice of (Darth) Vader in ‘Star Wars.’ He worked steadily, but he wasn’t a movie star.

His main work was in theater, in ensemble work especially. And he still continued to act on Broadway and in smaller plays. The first time I saw him was in a tiny play off Broadway. And then I saw him in ‘The Great White Hope,’ which was the show that won him the Tony Award for Best Actor when he was fairly young. This would have been the ’60s, I think, and so he’s not the star, like a Brad Pitt. He was in a lot of independent films, and he wasn’t a leading man at that point. He was an ensemble player, a character actor, and he knew that. So he chose projects that he thought were meaningful to him, and that’s one of the things I really respected about him, about his acting, and about the projects that he chose. So I think it spoke to him.

Tate: How did you get Jones to come speak to your students?

Wohl: So we had some faculty, we had students appear in the film. We’d been trying to get James Earl Jones as a speaker at State for years, and had no luck. Just on a whim, I knew the casting director [who] told me where they were staying, which is one of the motels in Beckley, the cast while they were down there, Econo Lodge, or one of the cheap motels that was out there.

Yeah, and I called a couple of times and just asked to speak to him, and sort of luckily, he actually answered the phone. Before he hung up, I said, ‘Hey, I’m a theater instructor at West Virginia State. It’s a historically black college. We’d love to have you come up for a day. I can give, I can give you probably, you know, 500 bucks or 1,000 bucks, and pick you up and bring you to campus.’ And he said, ‘I don’t know what the shooting schedule is going to be, but I’d love to do it.’ And I said, ‘Great.’ And so we traded phone calls back and forth, and when we scheduled one day and they had a shoot, he was called for that day. We couldn’t do it.

At the last minute, he said, ‘I’m free. Can someone come get me?’ I said, ‘I will send a student out and bring you to campus.’ Which I did. And I don’t even remember what month it was. I think it was winter, January, February. And I happened to be teaching my acting class that day at the fine arts building. He came in around 9 o’clock – I think my class was 9:30 – I introduced myself, and he sat down with the class for an hour and a half and talked about his experience and his career and acting tips. And he was just marvelous, just wonderful.

Tate: The film got many critical accolades, but few awards. Why?

Wohl: Because it’s not a studio film. They couldn’t publicize it. They couldn’t release it widely. It’s one of the difficulties that independent filmmakers have. Unless it’s a Marvel film, it’s tough, unless you’ve got backing. A lot of these films have gotten critically acclaimed, but they don’t make money, in terms of how much money you’re going to put up. They’ve got to do it on the cheap. Critically acclaimed doesn’t mean you’re going to be successful at the box office, you know? It’s not a feel-good film. It’s got a story. It’s slow in developing. The characters are really interesting, but it’s not an action film. It’s not a comedy, it’s not monsters, and so it’s always going to have a small audience, and that’s one of the difficulties in independent filmmaking.

Tate: One of the themes of the film that resonates today is that the union movement in the coalfields was a multiracial coalition. Whereas the coal companies tried to use racial differences as a wedge between workers to discourage them from forming the union.

Wohl: That’s one of the basic tenets of it. You got the Italians who settled in southern West Virginia who came over to work in the mines. You had the blacks, and then you had the poor whites. I think it was pretty accurate in terms of those sort of disparate communities and the union sort of bringing it together. I think that was one of the big messages that Sayles wanted to get across in the film by having these separate, identifiable communities, and then the whole idea of the union, then bringing it together in terms of commonalities.

It’s interesting. It’s pretty topical now in terms of the political environment, where we’ve got people trying to divide us because of our differences. I think what Sayles was trying to do was saying, we got more in common than you think. We all have to buy from the company store. We’re all living in these horrible conditions. We’re not better than anyone else. And I think that that’s part of the arc, message, of that movie.

A W.Va. ‘Hidden Figure’ Receives Congressional Gold Medal

Katherine Johnson and her NASA colleagues were the subject of a book and a film. President Barack Obama awarded her a Medal of Freedom in 2015.

Katherine Johnson, born in White Sulphur Springs in 1918, became one of NASA’s Hidden Figures – the Black women who performed the mathematical calculations that launched America into space.

Johnson and her NASA colleagues were the subject of a book and a film. President Barack Obama awarded her a Medal of Freedom in 2015.

Johnson died in 2020 at age 101. Now Congress has honored the space pioneers by awarding them its Gold Medal. Johnson’s daughters, Joylette Hylick and Katherine Moore accepted on her behalf.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the Hidden Figures made the Gemini and Apollo missions successful, including the moon landing in 1969.

“The women we honor today made it possible for earthlings to lift beyond the bounds of Earth. And for generations of trailblazers to follow.”

U.S. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, who helped get the legislation honoring Johnson through Congress, noted the difficulties Johnson faced as a Black woman at a time when few jobs in the space program went to either.

“And as a West Virginian, Katherine used her toughness and grit to surpass societal barriers and turn her dreams into a reality. Her legacy will be remembered every time we look at the moon and remember how her work and their work took us there for the first time.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York reminded the audience that the Hidden Figures attended HBCUs – historically black colleges and universities. In Johnson’s case, that was West Virginia State College, now West Virginia State University.

“They went on to build legendary careers. And helped to shape the exceptionalism of American aeronautics.”

A professor Johnson had at WVSU encouraged her to pursue a career in research mathematics. And with his help, she eventually landed at a predecessor to NASA.

Johnson worked at NASA for 33 years, retiring in 1986, during the height of the shuttle program.

WVSU Football Player Killed In Charleston Shooting

Football player Jyilek Harrington was pronounced dead in Charleston Wednesday night.

Updated on Thursday, Sept. 12, 2024 at 3 p.m

West Virginia State University is reeling from the death of a student athlete.

Football player Jyilek Harrington was pronounced dead with multiple gunshot wounds at a Charleston apartment Wednesday night, according to a press release from the Charleston Police Department.

“Charleston Fire Department attempted life saving measures, however the victim was pronounced deceased,” the release states.

“Upon further investigation, it was learned a disturbance happened outside in the hallway and inside the apartment. During the disturbance multiple gunshots were fired.”

The Charleston Police do not have any information on a suspect, and ask members of the public with any information to contact the Criminal Investigation Division, 304-348-6480 or Metro Communications, 304-348-8111.

In a written statement, WVSU President Ericke S. Cage said the death is being investigated as a home invasion and homicide.

“Jyilek was a senior member of the Yellow Jacket football team. He was an outstanding student-athlete and was a leader not only on our campus, but in our community,” Cage said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with Jyilek’s family as they mourn the loss of this incredible young man.”

The Athletic Department has established a GoFundMe in Harrington’s honor. A native of Charlotte, North Carolina, Harrington was known to conduct fundraising efforts to support less fortunate families around Christmas.

“The athletic department is creating a fund in memory of Jyilek and all donations will be distributed to an organization in his hometown of Charlotte to continue his work,” said Nate Burton, WVSU Vice President of Intercollegiate Athletics

According to the WVSU Foundation website, the Jyilek Harrington Memorial Fund had already raised more than $2,000 by 1 p.m. Thursday.

Harrington played for Carson-Newman University of Jefferson City, Tennessee last season before transferring to WVSU.

West Virginia State University’s home opener against the Carson-Newman Eagles has been postponed to Friday at noon. The kickoff was originally scheduled for Thursday night at 6 p.m. Both teams will be holding a private vigil tonight.

All online tickets sold for tonight’s game will be accepted for entry tomorrow. Any ticket holders that are unable to attend the game can contact the sports information office at West Virginia State to receive equal online credits to the number of purchased tickets that will be good for tickets to any home football game this season, with the exception of the homecoming game against Concord on Oct. 12. Unfortunately, WVSU cannot offer cash or credit card refunds.

“This was tragic and awful news to receive this morning,” said Carson-Newman head football coach Ashley Ingram in a statement on the team’s website. “We join with West Virginia State in mourning the passing of Jyliek Harrington. We will encourage and lift them up in their time of tragedy.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated to reflect that the football game has been postponed until Friday.

Education Funding Boosted, Promised Programs Cut In State Budget

Much of the debate in the House of Delegates Tuesday morning focused on satisfying a potential $465 million federal clawback regarding the state’s spending on education. When it came to the budget debate, some promised program funding that was not education related, fell by the wayside.

Much of the debate in the House of Delegates Tuesday morning focused on satisfying a potential $465 million federal “clawback” regarding the state’s spending on education. When it came to the budget debate, some promised program funding that was not education related fell by the wayside.

House Finance Committee Chairman Vernon Criss, R-Wood, wanted to make the reason behind passing Senate Bill 701 perfectly clear. The bill Supplements and amends appropriations to the Department of Education, School Construction Fund.

The bill appropriates $150 million to the School Building Authority, satisfying all the reconstruction requests made by state school districts.

Criss said the allocation intentionally goes toward satisfying the executive branch goal of showing in-kind state education funding to waive a potential $465 million-dollar federal clawback. The issue came up last week over concerns that the state did not spend enough money on education to match federal covid money.

“There are HVAC projects,” Criss said. “There were actually maybe two or three actual new schools involved in the projects, some roof projects, but cumulative, it was $150 million. And that these dollars will help, from what the governor’s office explained, would help towards the negotiations with the federal Department of Education”

The bill passed 94-2 and now goes to the governor.

Debate on the House Budget Bill 4025 began with a series of amendments proposed by Democrats.

Del. Larry Rowe, D-Kanawha, asked that the governor’s request for a $50 million agriculture lab at West Virginia State University be funded from budget back-end surplus money.

“This is needed. This will benefit us,” Rowe said. “I just can’t tell you how much it will lift West Virginia State into a new level of research and delivery of agricultural services throughout southern West Virginia.”

Del. Kayla Young, D-Kanawha, proposed an amendment to allocate $44 million from surplus budget funds for child care programs. The same programs were championed early on by Republican leadership and promised by Gov. Jim Justice.

“Last week, the federal government mandated that we do enrollment versus attendance to pay for child care,” Young said. “There is funding proposed with the federal government, but we all know they’re not so fast to do anything. And our child care centers are in desperate need of this money to keep maintaining, having all their services and keeping all the slots open.”

Concerned over balancing monies being poured into education, House Finance Committee Co-Chair Del. John Hardy, R-Berkeley, urged and got a voice vote rejection for every Democrat proposed amendment.

“I think that we’re very, very early in this process of the federal government coming out in front of this,” Hardy said. “Not being a priority of this legislature right now to be putting money being spent in the back of the budget as surplus revenue.”

With program funding concerns mounting and talk of a May Special Legislative Session to finalize a budget, Del. Daniel Linville, R-Cabell, questioned a possibly wasted effort.

“So all these amendments are fashioned to House Bill 4025. Is that right?” Linville asked Hardy. “Yes,” Hardy said. “And yet the vehicle that’s going to be the budget is Senate Bill 200, is that right?” Linville said. “So everything that we’re doing here does not matter in the least does it?”

The House postponed any more debate on HB 4025 for one day, but they were far from done.

After a fire drill, the House returned to session and took up the Senate’s budget bill that Linville referred to. Criss walked through every major department in the budget and indicated where the Senate budget was different from the governor’s proposed budget. After a 45-minute discussion on Senate Bill 200, it passed by a 74 to 16 vote.

The two chambers will have to come together in a budget conference committee to work out differences between the two bills.