W.Va. local governments get 24.5% of opioid settlement funds, but the oversight and how the funds are spent varies

Graph by Hannah Heiskell, data from West Virginia First Memorandum of Understanding 

In 2021, West Virginia lost more than one thousand residents due to opioid overdose deaths. Between 2021 and 2024, the state ramped up its prevention and treatment efforts, some of which now benefit from opioid settlement dollars. As investigative student reporters from West Virginia University’s Reed School of Media discovered, how those funds are spent varies widely throughout the state.

"West Virginia will receive about $980 million from the settlement, split into payments over 18 years," reports Hannah Heiskell for Mountain State Spotlight. "The West Virginia First Foundation – a nonprofit created by the state Legislature – will control the spending of 72.5% of the funds, local governments 24.5%, and the West Virginia Attorney General’s Office 3%."

How local governments spend their chunk of settlement funds is limited by state guidance, but includes "increasing access to treatment or prevention-education programs."

With those constraints in mind, WVU student reporters looked at "how local governments oversee that money, including the process through which they take applications, make awards and account for spending," Heiskell explains. Since each local government can make its own decisions, "oversight and accountability built into local spending can be markedly inconsistent from county to county – with some doing very little to collect the advice and opinions of addiction experts or people with lived experience."

Local funding is often decided by county commissioners, who are not subject to the oversight by the West Virginia First Foundation. "While county commissioners are not required to have expertise in substance use disorders or follow a specific application, review, or awarding process, Laura Lander, addiction therapist and associate professor at West Virginia University’s Rockefeller Neuroscience Institute, said this thinking confused her," Heiskell reports.

"Without input from external sources and stakeholders, Lander said funding awards are subject to a commissioner’s individual bias," Heiskell writes. Lander told her, "Clearly, in other counties, based on what I’ve seen, the money used for law enforcement has the county commissioner’s ear, and we see lots of money going towards police vehicles."

Kanawha County Commission has opted to share some details by "posting all applications to their website for the public and other organizations to review," Haskell writes. "In contrast to many counties in the state, the Preston County Commission has taken a more deliberate approach to its spending. . . . It's one settlement and 55 systems."

West Virginia's waterway 'reclamation' yields cleaner water, rare earth metals and a growing outdoor industry

Deckers Creek is flowing with fresh water and 
wildlife again. (Wikipedia photo)

Coal mines left waterways across West Virginia polluted by sulfuric acid and metals, but that’s not the end of their story. "Set on a quiet hillside, a series of cascading ponds are doing their small part to fix a big problem," reports Mira Rojanasakul of The New York Times. The three-pond system slowly "reclaims" the state's waterways for wildlife and people to enjoy once again, and it comes with a side benefit of rare earth elements.

The three-pond system works to reduce water acid and then remove metals. The first pond allows water to "percolate through limestone and organic matter," Rojanasakul explains. The second pond completes more filtration, allowing the aluminum to drop out. By the time the water flows from the third pond, the iron has dropped out. "Fish and sensitive species like salamanders and frogs are returning to Deckers Creek, which for decades flowed rust-orange and lifeless from iron and other pollution."

Deckers Creeks is "one of dozens of cleanup sites being installed across West Virginia, helping the state make progress on a global environmental issue: waterways poisoned from coal mining," Rojanasakul reports. "A few miles downstream, a new, higher-tech version of this cleanup process is yielding an unexpected bonus: 'Rare earth' elements, essential for clean energy technologies and military equipment, are being recovered from the pollution."

Decreasing water acidity and removing metals isn’t just helpful for wildlife and biodiversity -- acid mine drainage "can corrode pipes and threaten drinking water for many residents of rural West Virginia who rely on backyard wells," Rojanasakul writes. 

Federal and state officials help guide West Virginia's waterway reclamation efforts, but the "boots on the ground" are often small nonprofits. Rojanasakul adds, "They monitor sprawling watersheds and build relationships within communities, even talking private landowners into opening up their backyards for cleanup work."

Many locals view their reclaimed waterways as a potential path to a new revenue source for residents and the state. Rojanasakul reports, "Employment in the state’s outdoor recreation economy is starting to rival other industries, with 20,300 jobs in 2023 compared with 17,700 workers in mining and support activities that same year."

Syringe exchange programs meant to slow HIV's alarming spread in West Virginia limited by political resistance

Photo by R. Konkathi, Unsplash

Despite federal recommendations and community efforts to stem HIV infections among opioid or methamphetamine users in central Appalachia, the disease continues to spread. Harm-reduction advocates and medical providers cite resistance to syringe exchange programs as the primary obstacle, reports Taylor Sisk of KFF Health News. "The situation likely hasn’t improved, in part because of politicians who contend that such programs encourage illegal drug use."

In 2021, West Virginia's HIV outbreak was particularly concerning to officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sisk writes, "The CDC’s HIV intervention chief called it 'the most concerning HIV outbreak in the United States and warned that the number of reported diagnoses could be just 'the tip of the iceberg.'" 

Rural areas without substance disorder treatment or disease education present a ripe breeding ground where HIV can spread undetected. Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program Director Christine Teague "is concerned for West Virginia’s rural counties, most of which don’t have a syringe service program," Sisk adds. "Tasha Withrow, a harm reduction advocate in rural Putnam County, said her sense is that HIV numbers aren’t alarmingly high there but said that with little testing and heightened stigma in a rural community, it’s difficult to know."

Robin Pollini, a West Virginia University epidemiologist who conducts community-based research on injection drug use, told Sisk, “You would think that in a state that had the worst HIV outbreak in the country, we would have a statewide testing strategy." Sisk reports, "Teague would like every rural county to have a mobile unit. . . offering harm reduction supplies, medication, behavioral health care, counseling, referrals, and more."

While disease prevention through syringe exchange programs is well documented, the CDC's health warnings and recommendations for improved access to syringe exchanges have been largely ignored. Sisk reports, "In April 2021, the state legislature passed a bill limiting the number of syringes people could exchange and made it mandatory to present a West Virginia ID."

Prenatal drug exposure is found in thousands of babies each year; rural babies are more likely to have problems

More research is needed on prenatal drug exposure.
(Photo by Jill Sauve, Unsplash)

Amid rural hospitals and clinics ending prenatal care and closing labor and delivery units, unborn children face a quieter threat -- exposure to drugs that limit their in-utero development, can cause lower birth weights and contribute to post-birth disabilities, writes Amna Umer for The Conversation, a journalistic platform for academics. Umer is an associate professor of pediatric epidemiology at West Virginia University. 

Umer writes: "Nearly 1 in 12 newborns in the United States in 2020 – or about 300,000 infants – were exposed to alcohol, opioids, marijuana or cocaine before they were born. . . . These substances can have direct and indirect consequences on fetal development."

When it comes to drug exposure, rural unborn babies are particularly vulnerable. "This includes West Virginia, where I live, a rural Appalachian state struggling with extraordinary rates of substance use and an opioid crisis," Umer explains. "As an epidemiologist, I study the relationship between substance use during pregnancy and infant health outcomes. Our research work showed that between 2020 and 2022, prenatal substance exposure in West Virginia was nearly 50% higher, at 124 per 1,000 births, than the national rate of 80 per 1,000 births."

Poverty and ongoing regional economic stress are part of West Virginia's drug crisis, which extends to pregnant mothers, but there are other factors at play. Umer writes, "Nearly half the population lives in rural areas with limited hospitals and clinics. The geographic isolation limits access to health care and substance use treatment services. Finally, stigma and judgment within close-knit rural communities may discourage these mothers from seeking help."

The body of research on prenatal drug exposure is still growing, and depending on the substance babies were exposed to in the womb, the outcomes vary from low birth weights to withdrawal to developmental delays. Some exposure has a lasting impact on children. Umer explains, "Limited studies have shown an association between neonatal abstinence syndrome and long-term neurodevelopmental consequences that may develop as early as six months old and persist into adolescence. These include delays in learning and language skills, physical growth and motor skills, and difficulty regulating behavior and emotions."

Opinion: West Virginia University 'faculty are stretched so thin that no one could offer a class on Shakespeare'

(Photo by Chase Barnes, The Atlantic)

As West Virginia University administrators continue to cut classes and degree programs that carve out the humanities, writer Michael Powell asks in his opinion for The Atlantic, "Do West Virginia kids of modest means deserve the humanities?" Below is a condensed version of his thoughts.

"For too long, President E. Gordon Gee of West Virginia University told anyone who would listen that public universities had tried to be everything to everyone and keep up with elite private colleges. When the coronavirus pandemic shut down American universities in 2020, Gee embraced its disruptions as a gift. He began rolling out his own plan. . . . He spoke of investing in medical, nursing, cybersecurity, and business degrees to serve a working-class state with an aging population plagued by disease and drug abuse. . . . Gee terminated more than two dozen majors and cut professors in other programs in areas as varied as foreign languages, public health, jazz studies, and community planning.

"Some cuts were truly baffling, given his insistence on WVU’s obligation to strengthen the state. The university decided to stop granting graduate degrees in environmental health sciences, education administration, and math. Many of WVU’s 27,000 students protested that this wasn’t what they wanted. The faculty cast an overwhelming no-confidence vote in the president, to zero effect. More than 140 professors will soon be without jobs.

"For most students, their state’s main public university remains their best hope of breaching the walls of class difference. As the ax falls, that idealistic mission fades, and inequalities widen. A student at Cornell University, for example, has a buffet of choices, including more than four dozen languages as varied as Sinhala, Old Norse, Farsi, Khmer, and ancient Greek. By contrast, a student at West Virginia University will soon have just four choices—Chinese, Arabic, French, and Spanish—and there will not be enough instructors for students to major in any of them.

"The budget for the school library was cut by $800,000 in recent months, and administrators laid off employees and have suspended ordering new books. Liberal-arts departments cannot afford to fix photocopiers. English faculty are stretched so thin that no one could offer a class on Shakespeare."

Rates of depression in Appalachia are startling; persistent stigma keeps residents from asking for help

Logan, West Virginia, is the largest town in Logan County.
(Photo by Phil Galewitz, KFF Health News)

Depression is a painful mental health disease that can prevent people from participating in daily life. However, admitting to mental depression is still stigmatized even in places like West Virginia and its surrounding Appalachian states where the disease is most concentrated; asking for help is one of the biggest problems, Phil Galewitz of KFF Health News reports. “An estimated 32% of adults in Logan County, W.Va., have been diagnosed with depression — the highest rate in the United States and nearly double the national rate, according to a report released in June by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”

Logan County, W.Va. (Wikipedia)

The study, which provided estimates by county based on a national survey of nearly 400,000 people conducted in 2020, “showed depression rates varied widely by region and even within states,” Galewitz writes. Almost all the counties with the highest rates were Appalachia. . . . “West Virginia, which also has some of the nation’s highest rates of poverty and poor health, is home to eight of the 10 counties with the highest estimated rates of adult depression, the CDC survey found.”

Depression is an insidious disease. “It’s a mood disorder that causes a persistent feeling of sadness and a loss of interest in things once enjoyed. It affects eating, sleeping, concentrating, and activities such as working or going to school.” Mark Miller, a psychiatry professor at West Virginia University, told Galewitz, “Depression is often a chronic illness, and if you stop treatment, it eventually comes back.” Galewitz adds, “He said his state’s combination of poor overall health, low education levels, and poverty — as well as the opioid epidemic, which has hit West Virginia particularly hard — takes a punishing toll on residents’ mental health.”

“In Logan County, nearly a quarter of whose 31,000 residents live in poverty, few expressed surprise when told their home tops the list of most depressed counties,” Galewitz adds. And yet, medical professionals in Logan County are not busy giving mental health referrals or treatment. “Robert Perez, an internist in Logan, estimates more than half of his patients have depression. But he said few want to talk about it or accept a referral to a psychiatrist, and he is limited in what he can do for them.” Perez told Galewitz, “It’s hard to convince people who don’t want to be helped. I don’t have that much time to treat their depression.”

People can also harbor beliefs that asking for help means they’re lacking faith in God or that persistent unhappiness can result from cloudy weather. Galewitz writes, “Indeed, Chris Palmer, an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, said the notion that cloudy weather explains high depression rates does not help the problem. That viewpoint ‘strikes me as a hopeless and nihilistic attitude, that we are drowning and there is nothing we can do about it,’ he said.”

“In June, the same month the CDC released its findings, Coalfield Health Center, a federally funded clinic in the county, announced it had hired its first psychiatrist, David Lewis,” Galewitz reports. “Lewis, who grew up in Logan County and taught high school math here, said he has seen about 50 patients so far and knows he has room to see more. . . . Coalfield is struggling to overcome the stigma and other treatment obstacles around depression.”

Bill Withers, a son of W.Va. who understood everyday lives and stuck to his songwriting muse, dies; his songs live on

Bill Withers (2006 photo)

For a guy who hadn't made a record in 35 years, Bill Withers got a great (and deserved) sendoff from writers after he died March 30 at the age of 81. The Rural Blog shares some of them here, because for the first 17 years of his life, Withers was a rural American -- born July 4, 1938, in Slab Fork, W.Va., where his father was a coal miner and his mother was a maid. When they divorced, he "was raised by his mother's family in nearby Beckley," Mark Kennedy reports for The Associated Press.

Withers joined the Navy, became an aircraft mechanic and factory worker and was inspired to become a musician when he saw Lou Rawls sing and attract women. He taught himself to play guitar, wrote dozens of songs and got a recording contract. Hits came quickly; he won a Grammy award in 1971 for “Ain’t No Sunshine,” and another in 1981 for “Just the Two of Us.” But he couldn't get along with Columbia Records, so when his contract ended he quit the business and lived off royalties from his often-covered songs; he won his third Grammy in 1987 for “Lean on Me,” re-done by Club Nouveau. The song was performed at inaugurations of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and is the theme of a Walmart TV commercial responding to the covid-19 pandemic.

Withers "wrote some of the most memorable and often-covered songs of the 1970s," and "had an evocative, gritty R&B voice that could embody loss or hope," Neil Genzlinger writes for The New York Times. But the deeper story in the Times is from the paper's longtime chief pop-music critic, Jon Pareles, who notes Withers' background and writes, "He hadn’t been sheltered from the everyday lives that he would write about," such as a Vietnam amputee in “I Can’t Write Left-Handed.” He wrote about his West Virginia childhood in "Railroad Man" and "Grandma's Hands."

Pareles puts Withers on a par with early 1970s "community-minded" soul artists like Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield and Earth, Wind & Fire: "His voice was at the center of every song, reedy and gritty, strong enough for preacherly declamations and smooth enough to carry a lover’s endearments. Yet he chose to treat that utterly distinctive voice modestly — as a vehicle, not a centerpiece. He sang his stories with down-home fervor, but he was also more than willing to let the sense of the words dissolve into rhythm and incantation, into impulses and feelings. Withers made it seem — with deep-rooted knowledge and virtuoso skill — that each song was creating its own borderless style and groove on the spot, steeped in but never beholden to blues, gospel, country, jazz, folk, rock or any other defined idiom."

Slab Fork is about 11 miles from Beckley. (Google map)

"Withers went with his heart and his desire to write and record great songs, whether they would be pop hits or not," Mark Anthony Neal, a professor at Duke University, writes for NPR.

Ashley B. Craig reports for the Charleston Gazette-Mail: "Michael Lipton, the director of the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame, said Withers was, in many ways, the inspiration for the state’s music hall. Withers was among the first class of inductees and came to the inaugural induction ceremony in 2007. He also attended three other induction ceremonies, Lipton said, and . . .when Withers was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the morning after the induction ceremony, Withers hosted a brunch that was only attended by West Virginians."

Blackjewel bankruptcy halts mine work in 4 states; unpaid Ky. miners block train; auction could reopen some mines

The bankruptcy of coal company Blackjewel LLC put more than 1,000 miners out of work in Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and Wyoming, and sparked a peaceful protest among miners in Eastern Kentucky whose paychecks bounced. But there was hope of some miners getting their jobs back with an auction scheduled today in federal bankruptcy court.

The Associated Press reported: “Bristol, Tennessee-based Contura Energy last week offered $20.6 million as the stalking horse bidder for two mines in Wyoming and one in West Virginia . . . The purchase could put hundreds back to work at the Eagle Butte and Belle Ayr mines in Wyoming and Pax Surface Mine in Scarbro, W.Va. They've been closed since Blackjewel filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection July 1. According to the bidding process, other qualifying bids made by Wednesday's deadline triggered the auction. The notice didn't disclose the other bids. . . . Blackjewel also operates mines in Kentucky and Virginia, and the fate of those depends on the outcome of the bidding process.”

In Kentucky, where miners blocked railroad tracks to prevent Blackjewel from transporting coal, the Lexington Herald-Leader reported that the coal company failed to comply with state regulations that would have protected miners from losing pay for work they did.

Chris Kenning of the Courier Journal drove the 225 miles from Louisville to Harlan, which has seen coal booms and busts for a century, and reported that the Blackjewel debacle "roiled Harlan with unusual intensity . . . Difficult talks are playing out over dinner tables across Harlan County: whether to ride out such bankruptcies, sticking with coal as long as possible; leave home for steadier coal jobs in places like Alabama; or bet on a new career as local leaders try to attract new employers. The question on everyone’s mind: whether to quit coal, or wait until coal quits you."

U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Kentucky, issued a statement Thursday, criticizing Blackjewel and calling for federal assistance for miners affected by the coal company’s bankruptcy.

“I fully understand the number of coal companies that continue to struggle in the aftermath of the War on Coal, but undercutting employees who invested their time and talents to mine one of our greatest natural resources, is a shameful way to conduct business. Our coal miners deserve better and I will continue fighting for them," he said.

Rogers said he’s working to expedite assistance. The U.S. Department of Labor sent staff to Kentucky to interview the employees, he said.

He commended SOAR – Shaping Our Appalachian Region – for providing a tour bus to transport local coal miners to the hearing in Charleston on Monday.

The general manager of WYMT-TV, a CBS affiliate in nearby Hazard, weighed in with an editorial. Neil Middleton, who grew up in the region, called Blackjewel’s actions “shameful.” He wrote, “The peaceful protest is gaining support from across the state and country. More than 1,100 miners in Kentucky, Wyoming, West Virginia and Virginia lost their jobs when the bankrupt company shut down. The miners' paychecks bounced, leaving hundreds overdrawn and needing help. And in my opinion, a full investigation is warranted. Blackjewel has filed bankruptcy, but the court has not ordered the company to pay the miners back. State Representative Adam Bowling is crafting legislation to compel the company to pay the miners' back wages. Let's hope he is successful. The miners did the work. They earned their wages. They should be paid.”

West Virginia bets big on gas and plastics, seeks Trump administration backing for huge underground storage facility

West Virginia officials, including Democratic U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, are seeking a $1.9 billion federal loan guarantee to construct a massive underground facility to store ethane and other natural-gas liquids that are byproducts of plastics manufacturing.

If their plan is successful, a facility capable of storing 10 million barrels of liquid gas would be developed in the region along the Ohio River that has the world’s largest natural gas field.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice at a rally with President Trump on Aug. 3,
2017, in Huntington, West Virginia. (Photo by Getty Images)

Proponents argue the Appalachian Storage and Trading Hub could transform the economy of the region, where the gas field stretches along the Ohio River in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

A report by ProPublica and the Charleston Gazette-Mail found several problems with the viability of such a hub: Their “examination has found that the proposed storage facility would be far larger than the region could support and that questions about its cost, its viability and its environmental risks have been overshadowed by a public relations strategy heavy on the politics of jobs and light on the economics of energy policy.”

Top officials in West Virginia, with Manchin’s backing, are seeking a $1.9 million federal loan guarantee need to attract several billion more in private investment. The region’s support of President Donald Trump is seen as key to the administration’s backing.

An environmental expert described the plan as risky. “This whole project is a gamble,” said Dustin White, project coordinator with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, based in Huntington, W.Va.. “Billions of dollars could go up in smoke. We just need to stop it now.”

An energy-industry leader also raised questions. “If that project gets a federal loan guarantee, banks will be lining up 10 deep,” said James Cutler, an energy industry investor and veteran chemical plant builder from Houston. “Anybody who gets involved gets 1.5 to 2 percent in fees just for getting the deals together. If you have a $4 billion, $5 billion project, that’s $80 million, $100 million.”

But Energy Secretary Rick Perry argues a West Virginia facility would have geographic advantages. “To develop that in another region of this country, the Appalachian basin, makes sense because you’re sitting on top of Marcellus and Utica, which are prolific gas fields,” Perry told the committee during the March 2018 hearing.

The ProPublica report notes two companies — Energy Storage Ventures and Marathon Pipeline — “are cautiously examining the potential to establish much smaller, privately financed gas liquids storage facilities across the river in Ohio.”

David Hooker, president of Energy Storage Ventures, said, “We’d like to believe there is local demand for 2 million to 3 million barrels of storage in the Appalachian region. We question the need for 10-plus million barrels based on what exists today or the foreseeable future.”

How 2 ex-miners fell in love, moved to a farm, got into woodworking, and lived on making kitchen utensils

https://www.inc.com/leigh-buchanan/allegheny-treenware-west-virginia-main-street.html

Feds offer millions to replace Appalachian coal jobs, shun most of blame for industry's decline

By Al Cross
Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues

Federal officials trying to help Central Appalachian counties reeling from losses of coal jobs say they will use a pot of new money "to demonstrate that Appalachia really is the next great investment opportunity in America."

That's how Earl Gohl, federal co-chair of the Appalachian Regional Commission, described it Thursday in a conference call with reporters from the region. Jay Williams, assistant secretary of commerce for economic development, endorsed the description.

They were joined by Jason Walsh, a senior economic policy adviser at the White House, who in response to a question challenged the widespread belief in Central Appalachia that President Obama's environmental policies are largely responsible for the sharp decline of coal in the region.

The officials announced that the administration would have $65.8 million available for economic-development efforts in communities that have historically relied on coal and have been hurt by changes in the coal economy. The money comes from a recent congressional appropriation from the Abandoned Mine Land Reclamation Fund, funded by a federal tax on coal. Walsh said the administration wants to prioritize projects where reclamation can be linked to job development.

The money can be used for "projects that diversify local and regional economies, create jobs in new and/or existing industries, attract new sources of job-creating investment and provide a range of workforce services and skills training; building partnerships to attract and invest in the economic future of coal-impacted communities; and increasing capacity and other technical assistance fostering long term economic growth and opportunity in coal-impacted communities," the ARC and the Economic Development Administration said in a press release.

"This program is really an investment in the next generation of leadership of Appalachians," Gohl said, citing the youthful energy he sees in places like Whitesburg and Harlan County, Kentucky, and Princeton, W.Va.

The effort is part of the administration's Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization, or POWER initiative. Obama proposed a $1 billion aid package, but Republicans in Congress largely rejected it. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said through an aide in August that he was for helping laid-off coal miners "but that no amount of federal relief can paper over the devastating damage this president and his policies have had on coal country."

It is an article of faith among many if not most residents of the Central Appalachian coalfield that Obama's environmental policies are largely responsible for the losses of coal jobs. The evidence does not support that, Walsh said, when asked if administration officials could get people in the coalfield to put that belief aside to work with them.

"It has been our premise all along that we can find some common ground here," Walsh said, citing "bipartisan legislation moving in Congress" to provide even more money as an example.

"The fact is that the decline in coal jobs began well before President Obama took office, largely because of market forces," most recently competition form cheap natural gas, Walsh said. "Any independent analyst who tracks the industry closely will tell you that the economic drivers are paramount."

Ken Ward Jr. of the Charleston Gazette-Mail cited such experts in making the same point almost two years ago. For Ward's story on the conference call, click here.

Noting that most of the region's good coal has been mined, Walsh said, "You gotta dig deeper or you gotta blow the tops off of mountains, and that's really expensive. . . . The economic data is just there for anyone who cares to look at it." He said people in coal communities are "less interested in data and debate than solutions."

Obama said in his major climate-change speech at Georgetown University in 2013, "We’re going to need to give special care to people and communities that are unsettled by this transition."

Gohl noted that Obama asked Congress to give ARC an extra $50 million this year, and said the agency has "not had a position in any administration's domestic policy like in the Obama administration since the early days of ARC."

Asked if the region can attract private capital to crate jobs, Gohl said, "The challenge of this work is that it's local work," dependent on local entrepreneurs like BitSource in Pikeville, Ky., which is training laid-off miners to be computer coders. He said the two owners have "big ideas, big plans and real serious challenges to meet, but they also have a sense that this is their future. This is an example of the creativity that we have in the region and allows us to have a great future."

Appeals court nixes secrecy order in criminal case against Appalachian coal operator Don Blankenship

Blankenship in 2010 (Associated Press)

A federal appeals court has overturned a gag order in the case of controversial Appalachian coal operator Don Blankenship of now-defunct Massey Energy. District Judge Irene Berger's order "had sealed from public view most of the filings in the criminal case," Ken Ward Jr. notes for The Charleston Gazette, which was among several news-media organizations that appealed it.

The order of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals was unsigned, indicating that Judges Roger Gregory, James Wynn, and Andre Davis concurred. "Berger had entered the gag order -- without any request for such an order from either Blankenship or U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin -- the day after an indictment was issued charging Blankenship with mine safety and securities crimes related to Massey’s Upper Big Branch Mine, where 29 miners died in an April 2010 explosion," Ward writes. "It was not immediately clear when court filings in the case would be unsealed."

Rockefeller won't run for re-election to U.S. Senate

U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat who has represented the state for 27 years, announced today that he will not seek reelection. He said the decision was motivated by his family, not because of a 2014 election challenge from Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito.

Rockefeller came under fire in his home state last election season for remarks in opposition to some coal industry strategies. "This is obviously a huge blow for any efforts to have more reasoned and forward-thinking discussion of coal-mining issues in West Virginia," writes Ken Ward Jr. of The Charleston Gazette.

During his announcement, Rockefeller, 75, thanked "all West Virginians, who took me in, transformed me and supported me." He continued: "There's a tremendous amount of greatness here, but also of hurt, and I have sought to ease life and the burdens of people who are forgotten." West Virginia has voted increasingly Republican at the presidential level, notes the Gazette's Paul Nyden, and political analysts predicted a close race between Rockefeller and Capito.

Rockefeller first came to West Virginia as a member of the old Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) in 1964. He was elected to the state legislature two years later, and secretary of state two years after that. He lost a bid for governor in 1972, then served four years as president of West Virginia Wesleyan College before successfully running for governor. He served in that post for eight years, went to the Senate, and was never seriously challenged in any of his campaigns. (Read more)

UPDATE, Jan. 12: Manuel Roig-Franza of The Washington Post writes about Rockefeller as the last member of a political dynasty, critic of coal and "the author of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, better known as CHIP, which provided coverage to 8 million children."

Arch Coal to lay off 650 Appalachian miners, mostly in E.Ky.; blame game begins

Blaming market conditions and regulatory obstacles, Arch Coal announced its intent to lay off about 650 miners -- 500 of those in Eastern Kentucky, 125 in West Virginia and 25 in Virgina. “You’ve got people that are going to lose their homes, lose their livelihood,” Perry County Judge-Executive Denny Ray Noble of Hazard, Ky., said of the decision, terming it "a disaster" for the region.

"Some Kentucky officials directly blamed the layoffs on recent actions by the Obama administration and the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which have taken a more aggressive stance in recent years to reduce emissions from coal-fired power plants and to crack down on water pollution from surface mining," Mike Wynn of The Courier-Journal reports. But Matt Wasson of the environmental group Appalachian Voices challenged those assertions, saying while Kentucky mining operations have laid off more than 900 workers in recent months, coal companies have attributed nearly all of those cuts to market conditions. “It’s really unfortunate that is how some of the local officials are going to play this,” he said. “That is all about politics. . . . The reality is that four years ago coal supplied half of our electricity. Today it supplies a third. That has enormous consequences."

Rural schools struggle to bridge the digital divide

Rural schools have long been leaders in distance-learning and online education. "To offer a full slate of courses to their students, they’ve had to be. Some states, fearing a divide between rural and urban communities, have developed statewide initiatives to provide technology to rural schools," Sarah Butrymowicz writes in The Hechinger Report. Maine, she points out, gives every student a laptop, and Alabama requires all school districts "to offer advanced placement courses through distance-learning technology, where students video-conference with teachers. (Edison School in Yoder, Colo.; Butrymowicz photo)

In 2010, only 57 percent of rural households had broadband Internet access, compared to 72 percent in urban areas, according to a November 2011 report by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Teachers in rural settings don't require students to go online to complete assignments and have to be flexible about staying after school so students can work on the computers. “The Internet can give them library resources that they might otherwise not have,” said Aimee Howley, senior associate dean in the College of Education at Ohio University, who studies technology integration in rural schools. Technology can also be used for simulations of things, she said, that “you just can’t do on site."

For schools facing shrinking budgets and consolidation, technology could be rural schools’ saving grace, said Bob Wise, a former governor of West Virginia who now serves as president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a national advocacy organization in Washington, D.C., that has studied the challenges facing rural schools. “We’re encouraging every district to develop a systematic strategy for employing technology,” he said. “My guess is you will see a number of rural schools actually saved and renewed as learning centers.”
  

Coal supporters confront EPA in Central Appalachia

Industry supporters, left, confront mining
foes and state official between hearings.
(Photo by Chris Anderson)

This week marked the first time that members of the Environmental Protection Agency under the Obama administration visited Eastern Kentucky for an open, public forum, reports Chris Anderson of the Appalachian News Express in his story about two EPA hearings on surface-mining permits.

Yesterday was a chance for hundreds of people in the Central Appalachian coalfield "to be heard by a government agency that many feel is attacking their way of life," Anderson writes. EPA had announced its plan to veto 36 surface mining permits in the region, on grounds that they would cause too much water pollution. The meetings to discuss the government's controversial stance drew members of both sides of the mountaintop-removal coal mining debate, with Anderson reporting that those in support of mining far outnumbered those against it.

Miners spoke passionately about jobs and said President Obama was trying to ruin their livelihoods. Mine operators, like Don Gibson of Arch Coal, urged the meeting's participants to make their voices heard in November. Ama Bentley, an employee of Appalachian States Analytical Laboratory, argued that regional water quality is actually improved by coal mining in some places, and she and others said more harm is done by lack of proper sewerage.

Anderson notes that "a handful of environmental activists . . . spoke in favor of the EPA’s blocking of the issuance of the permits." They included Matt Wasson of the Appalachian Voices group, who countered pro-industry arguments about jobs by noting Appalachian coal jobs have actually increased since 2009. He said the coal industry's troubles are not the doing of EPA, but factors such the industry’s inability to compete with cheap natural-gas prices. "He also blasted Eastern Kentucky leaders for failing to expand the region’s economy."

The later the evening got, the less civil was the discourse. Anderson reports that "Roger Warton, who claimed to represent several pro-coal groups from West Virginia, told the EPA officials that those in attendance at the meeting were just as adamant about 'whipping somebody’s butt' as the soldiers who stormed beaches on D-Day in World War II. He also alluded to the possibility that the EPA officials would not be allowed to leave Charleston, W.Va., if they traveled there to fly out of the region." (Anderson's story is behind a paywall.)

McCoy-Hatfield update: New DVD movie, real history books and a possible makeover for TV

UPDATE: On the strength of the TV ratings and the crashing of the festival website from heavy traffic, the Tug Fork region is hoping to realize a long-hoped-for tourism boom for its annual Hatfields and McCoys Festival this weekend, reports Bruce Justice of the Appalachian News-Express in Pikeville, Ky.

On heels of the news that the History Channel broke advertising-supported cable TV viewership records with its three-part "Hatfields & McCoys" miniseries, comes word from the Kentucky New Era of Hopkinsville that a new movie is coming out tomorrow on DVD about the same family fracas. "Hatfields & McCoys: Bad Blood" was shot in Christian County, in southwestern Kentucky, where there are some low hills but no mountains -- but in the movie things are still not copacetic along the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy River. This version stars Christian Slater, Jeff Fahey and Perry King instead of the History Channel's bigger names of Kevin Costner and Bill Paxton as the chief protagonists.

America loves its hillbilly throw-downs, but the History Channel has peddled something less than. Which might explain why it's refreshing to report that there is a book that Appalachian historians seem to agree is the best for factual reportage on the fracas. It's called Feud: Hatfields, McCoys, and Social Change in Appalachia 1860-1900, by Altina Waller. Among other things, it says that most members of the families were not involved in the feud, and at the beginning the ties among the Hatfield feudists were more economic than familial. Also, the second phase of the feud was driven mainly by "elites who were in a scramble to buy up land in advance of outside timber and railroad corporations moving into the area," the heart of the Central Appalachian coalfield, Betsy Taylor of the University of Vermont reports on Appalnet, a list-serve for Appalachian academics. UPDATE, June 13: Waller lays out the basic history of the feud, and her analysis of its causes, on the University of North Carolina Press blog.

A less academic treatment of the feud is a 30-year-old book that is having a big revival online. The electronic version of The Hatfields & The McCoys, by Otis K. Rice, was first printed in 1984 and did only casual business before Memorial Day 2012. (Sadly, Rice did not live to see his success.) Today, his book is topping Amazon's and Barnes & Noble's bestseller lists. (Read more)

In other feud news, actress Charlize Theron is reported to be shopping (that's Hollywood lingo) a series that centers on a modern-day telling of the feuding families. So far, no takers. But she was shopping it before the History Channel numbers came rolling in: 14 million per episode.

'Hatfields & McCoys' drew record ratings, but was rife with inaccuracies; feud hurt region's image

McCoy brothers await execution by Hatfields. (Chris Large photo)

The History Channel's miniseries about the most famous of Appalachian family feuds garnered millions of viewers in showings of the first two of three episodes. "Hatfields & McCoys" premiered as the most viewed show ever on advertising-supported cable TV, with 13.9 million viewers, excluding sports, reports TV Week. The second episode drew 13.1 million viewers and the third 14.3 million.

Though the numbers are impressive, the inaccuracies in the six-hour miniseries cannot be overlooked, writes Gloria Goodale of The Christian Science Monitor. "This is the History Channel debuting its first scripted series, coming out of the gate with the somewhat lofty goal of illuminating some of history’s lesser-known corners," she writes. "While most Americans may know the reference to the 19th-century Appalachian blood feud, few know more than the gun-toting, cartoon cowboy characters who shoot at each other and miss."

Historian Thomas Flagel told Goodale that it's hard to separate fact from fiction because people were not keeping accurate track of their own stories during the feud. Goodale writes that the show's producers "were at pains to point out in press materials that while not actually filmed in Appalachia," but in Romania, they tried "to capture accurately details of the family fight that eventually involved the U.S. Supreme Court, made international headlines, and nearly pushed Kentucky and West Virginia to the brink of war.'"

Cheryl Truman of the Lexington Herald-Leader compared the miniseries to the facts in the Lisa Alther book Blood Feud: The Hatfields and the McCoys: The Epic Story of Murder and Vengeance and found some glaring inaccuracies. There is no evidence that the patriarchs, Anderson "Devil Anse" Hatfield and Randolph "Randall" McCoy, were Confederate war buddies, as the series depicts. The series also skews the facts of who survived one of the largest fights in the feud, the New Year's massacre, and omits the Kentucky state government's involvement in ending the feud.

Alther cited several inaccuracies in an email interview with Christopher John Farley of The Wall Street Journal, but said, "This is how historical fiction works, and the miniseries is a fiction, not a documentary." This was her key point: "During my research I was most surprised to discover the devastating long-term impact this feud has had on Appalachian people. Almost single-handedly it shaped the unfortunate stereotype of the ignorant, drunken, violent, lazy hillbilly, which was used by industrialists after the feud ended to justify their invasion of the southern Appalachians to extract the timber and coal, keeping most of the profits for themselves and leaving behind poverty, diseased and maimed workers, and environmental destruction, including 500 mountains that have been destroyed so far." Alther was referring to mountaintop-removal mining, which began about 40 years ago. The Journal's headline writer missed the mark, saying the feud "ruined the image of rural America," not just Appalachia. But the short interview is worth your time; it is here.

W.Va. jail overcrowding leads to increase in violence against local corrections staff

Following a trend in overcrowding of jails across the country, West Virginia's rate of inmate assaults on regional jail staff and inmate-on-inmate assaults has increased exponentially over the past year. Inmate-on-inmate assaults in the state's 10 regional jails rose 40 percent, from 496 to 695, while inmate on worker assaults increased 87 percent, leaving 58 correctional officers injured.

West Virginia's Regional Jail Authority executive director, Larry Parsons, told Phil Kabler of the Charleston Gazette that jails are now housing almost 2,000 more inmates than they were designed to hold, and that understaffing has become a problem; 92 correctional officer positions are open.

Corrections Commissioner Jim Rubenstein told Kabler that a backlog of Division of Corrections inmates are housed in local jails. Rubenstein noted that prisons have not seen a rise in inmate violence. He also said the high rate of inmate-on-staff violence could be attributed to the incidents of verbal abuse and inmates throwing objects at workers that they are required to report. (Read more)

Resistance to hydraulic fracturing in gas drilling continues in Marcellus Shale states

As Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania introduced legislation for federal regulation of hydraulic fracturing in natural-gas drilling last week, there was action in other states underlain by the deep, dense, gas-rich Marcellus Shale (map), a prime target of the frackers.

Maryland’s House of Delegates "advanced a plan calling for a two-year study of Marcellus Shale drilling, overriding the objections of Western Maryland lawmakers who want to see the potentially lucrative activity sooner, " writes Julie Bykowicz of the Baltimore Sun. Delegate Maggie McIntosh said "the state needs time to study hydraulic fracturing and that proceeding quickly could prove harmful to Maryland's waterways," Bykowicz reports.

In West Virginia, after the legislature declined to establish new regulations for Marcellus drilling, “Lawmakers and surface-owner groups met to announce the signing of a letter urging Randy Huffman, secretary of the Department of Environmental Protection, to use his emergency authority to halt the issuance of new horizontal drilling permits in the Marcellus Shale,” reports Taylor Kuykendall of the Register-Herald in Beckley.

Supporters of the moratorium in West Virginia include the Lewisburg City Council, which Peggy Mackenzie of the Mountain Messenger reports “may well be the first municipality in the state to declare the prohibition of locating, drilling, equipping, operating or producing any oil and gas wells within the city limits.” The council approved a resolution expressing “concerns about the lack of protection afforded the state’s water resources, particularly the Greenbrier River watershed, which is the source of water for Lewisburg’s regional system, serving 4,732 customers,” writes Tina Alvey of the Register-Herald.

New York state is enforcing a moratorium on Marcellus drilling until at least July 2011, reports the Associated Press.