Glynis Board

The region just lost a powerhouse of environmental science and advocacy with the death of professor Benjamin Stout. Stout’s work as an educator, an expert witness in the courtroom, as well as his work empowering citizens with science, made long-term impacts regionally and nationally.

Stout was a Wheeling resident and, for the past 26 years, a biology professor at Wheeling Jesuit University. He was a stream ecologist who dedicated his life to science, nature, and above all, community. Ben died of cancer Aug. 3 at his home in Wheeling, surrounded by his family. He was 60.

Throughout the U.S., thousands of towns are working to revitalize their downtowns. Some 2,200 of these places were considered this year for a prestigious Great American Main Streets Award, based on revitalization efforts. This year Wheeling is among the top 10 contenders for the award. Executive director of Wheeling Heritage Jake Dougherty spoke about the award and the work his organization is doing to see Wheeling reinvented.

This week on Inside Appalachia, we’ll learn about the life of  Kentucky politician and pastor Danny Johnson, and the investigation that exposed a long line of questionable actions that preceded his rise to power. 

A comedian, an actor and dog move from West Virginia across the country chasing big dreams. What could possibly go wrong?

A theater company in Morgantown is producing a play that grapples with trauma, addiction and love as part of its 2018 summer season.

Playing off of the drama and emotion evoked on the stage, and in combination with community experts, West Virginia Public Theater hopes to add to the community conversation about the substance abuse issues ravaging the region.

Kimberly Shatney lives just outside Pine Grove, West Virginia, an incorporated town of about 500 people with a big problem. Behind a small sandwich shop in town, she points to the ground caked with what looks like dry mud.

“This is all raw sewage. All of that, all of this is raw sewage,” Shatney said, shaking her head.

Far from the ocean and Puerto Rico’s famous beaches, narrow roads wind into mountains not unlike the country roads of our home, West Virginia. After hours of driving we reach a rural community in the island’s center called Tetuan Tres. Like so many places in rural Appalachia, you don’t come here accidentally.

Instead of sending used political signs to the landfill, kids in Barbour County are using the signs in an anti-litter campaign.

When Oklahoma teacher Sally Salmons saw momentum building toward teacher protests in her state, she immediately reached out to family ties and educators in West Virginia. She said teacher walkouts in the Mountain State provided her and colleagues across the state with the courage they needed to take a stand.

A national campaign that aims to unite disenfranchised populations across the U.S. held events in Kentucky and West Virginia late last week.  Meetings are part of a two-month tour designed to highlight social inequity, and build on a movement begun 50 years ago by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dozens of chemicals that can affect the fertility of humans and animals are being found in the air near unconventional oil and gas development, according to a new study.

Many students throughout the state are joining teachers in protests for what they assert to be fair compensation. Students at Capital High School issued an open letter clarifying their perspectives.

Some officials have accused teachers throughout the state of setting a bad example for students. The students at Capital High School find that laughable. They say it’s been a rich opportunity for dialogue and learning about history and civic responsibility.

November last year West Virginia's Commerce Department announced a deal with China Energy the biggest Chinese coal company, to invest billions in the state’s natural gas industry. A memorandum of understanding outlines a 20 year commitment to invest 83.7 billion dollars in the states shale gas industry. The deal didn’t happen overnight. Brian Anderson, founder and director of the Energy Institute at West Virginia University offers some insight into the deal and the company behind it.

Brian Joseph from Ohio County, West Virginia, has dedicated his professional life to innovation, reimagining and retooling old materials in the region with new technologies. 

Throughout coal mining country of the Eastern U.S. you will find streams that run a peculiar rusty orange. It’s the result of pollution called acid mine drainage, or AMD. It’s estimated that about 10,000 miles of streams are polluted by AMD in Pennsylvania and West Virginia alone. In fact, researchers have calculated that every second, coal mines throughout the region are pumping out about 3,000 cubic feet of AMD. That’s roughly equal to an average May day’s flow of water in the Monongahela River as it winds through the region.

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey stood in front of the state’s capitol to rally the roughly 120 coal miners and industry boosters gathered there.

“The fight against the unlawful Clean Power Plan started in Charleston, West Virginia,” Morrisey said, noting the state’s role in a legal challenge to the Obama-era rule.

Last month the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt chose an eastern Kentucky mining town as the venue to announce his intent to repeal the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era rule that sought to limit greenhouse gas emissions. On Tuesday the agency returned to coal country to conduct its only public hearing on the matter in Charleston, West Virginia.

A bipartisan group in Congress, including several Ohio Valley lawmakers, is pushing for more federal support for poorly understood technology known as carbon capture and storage. The lawmakers and an uncommon alliance of labor, business, and environmental groups want to pass legislation called the FUTURE Act which would speed commercial deployment of technology that reduces carbon dioxide emissions from industries that burn fossil fuels.

Such technology has been in development for decades. Today, a number of commercial-scale projects exist demonstrating various technologies that  “scrub” CO2 from the waste stream and store it underground are possible. However, scaling those projects up to levels that would affect the atmosphere in significant ways is still prohibitively expensive.