Mike Tony

Dismissing concerns about West Virginia’s ability to protect against environmental health risks from wells essential for storing captured carbon dioxide emissions underground, the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, has approved the state’s request for primary enforcement authority over them. The EPA approved the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection's (DEP's) request for primacy over Class VI wells.

Federal regulators have threatened to take over enforcement authority from West Virginia for another coal mine permit in United States Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va.’s business empire. The U.S. Office of Mining Surface Reclamation and Enforcement issued the threat via a notice to the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection last week regarding the DEP’s oversight of a Justice family-controlled mine in McDowell County. The OSMRE notice came four weeks after it made the same threat to the DEP in response to what the OSMRE indicated were DEP failures to revoke another Justice coal company permit in McDowell County as required by a state regulation and to identify a pattern of wide-ranging environmental violations on that permit.

Proposed changes to rules governing how the West Virginia House of Delegates does business would vest new powers in the House speaker, impose new restrictions on the public and media, and replace public hearings with what proponents say would be a better process to collect meaningful citizen input. But the proposal introduced by House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, R-Clay, House Resolution 1 (HR1), has sparked heavy criticism from advocates who fear it would reduce public feedback and legislative process transparency for a Republican-supermajority Legislature that has cut procedural corners in recent sessions.

A coal mine where an underground fire on Jan. 13, 2025 prompted reported mine worker evacuations had a long history of safety and health violations leading up to the blaze. Over 1,100 federal safety and health violations have been assessed at the Leer South Mine in Barbour County, West Virginia since the start of 2022, according to Mine Safety and Health Administration records. In the same span, the mine was assessed 172 violations deemed “Significant and Substantial,” a designation the MSHA uses for hazards reasonably likely to result in serious injury.

President Donald Trump's executive order pausing disbursements through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act and other climate and energy-related moves have created confusion and sparked intense criticism. But Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and Gov. Patrick Morrisey expressed little concern about the moves.

A regional energy hub the federal government selected to award up to $925 million is trudging forward amid heavy criticism over the environmental

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After the stock markets closed Monday, Nucor — which is building a $3.5 million sheet steel mill in Apple Grove, Mason County — reported fourth-quarter earnings of $287 million, down from $785 million in the same period in 2023. For the full year, earnings were $2.03 billion vs. $4.52 billion in 2023.

Coal companies in U.S. Sen. Jim Justice's business portfolio that owe the federal government $434,000 in delinquent mine safety fine penalties want