Mike Tony

Federal protections for wetlands have been placed on a regulatory chopping block by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of the Army in a move cheered by West Virginia’s political leaders and manufacturing industry. The proposed rule would narrow the definition of "waters of the United States," which has long been the subject of legal wrangling between conservationists and polluters.

A proposed agreement has been submitted to the West Virginia Public Service Commission that would extend Mountaineer Gas’ trend of rate increases and put ratepayers on the hook for covering millions of dollars in company expenses incurred from a 2023 gas leak that left over 1,000 Charleston customers without heat. The gas rate case settlement agreement reached by Mountaineer Gas and Public Service Commission staff, if approved by the PSC’s commissioners, would green-light the roughly $23.7 million revenue requirement as initially proposed by the Charleston-based utility in July 2025 along with its planned Infrastructure upgrade program.

The 7:37 a.m. recovery of Steve Lipscomb’s body at the Rolling Thunder Mine in the Swiss area of Nicholas County on Nov. 13, 2025 ended a 113-hour underground search mission for the 42-year-old from Elkview, marking West Virginia’s fifth mine fatality of 2025 and second in a one-week span. But a shadow over workplace safety still hangs below and aboveground in West Virginia, cast by wide-ranging safety rule rollbacks proposed by the Trump administration that have sparked fervent opposition from worker allies. The rollbacks planned by the Mine Safety and Health Administration and Occupational Safety and Health Administration under Trump loom especially large in West Virginia given its history of fatal mine incidents – 47 since 2015 – and high rate of severe work injuries beyond the mines. A severe work-related injury report was filed every 3.6 days in West Virginia in 2023 — significantly higher than neighboring states, according to OSHA data.

The mines where one mine worker was left dead Nov. 6, 2025 and another has been the target of an underground rescue mission after going missing Nov. 8, 2025 each had histories of significant safety and health violations leading up to those incidents. Operators of the Alliance Resource Partners L.P.-controlled Mountain View Mine in Tucker County and the Alpha Metallurgical Resources, Inc.-controlled Rolling Thunder Mine in Nicholas County had a combined 926 violations assessed by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration since the start of 2019, including 120 deemed “Significant and Substantial” by the agency, according to a Gazette-Mail review of MSHA records.

FirstEnergy plans to spend roughly $2.5 billion to add 1.2 gigawatts of gas-fired power generation in West Virginia, positioning itself to follow through on a plan it filed with state regulators this month reaffirming the company’s commitment to fossil fuel-fired electricity at a time of increasingly steep costs for new gas plants. FirstEnergy chair, president and CEO Brian Tierney announced the planned investment during a quarterly earnings call with investors on Oct. 23, 2025, following up on a required long-term resource plan the company’s West Virginia subsidiaries, Mon Power and Potomac Edison, filed with the state Public Service Commission on Oct. 1, 2025.

A federal court has issued an order against three coal companies in the struggling business empire of U.S. Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., aimed at seizing property to satisfy a $150,000-plus judgment against them in favor of trustees of a mine workers’ benefits plan. The court has issued the order against the Justice family-controlled firms after finding in 2023 they were liable for nearly six years of unpaid premiums under a union retiree health benefit plan. The order filed Oct. 14, 2025 is a writ of execution listing debt totaling $154,484 against Bluestone Coal Corp., Bluestone Industries, Inc. and Keystone Service Industries, Inc., in the case against them filed by trustees of a United Mine Workers of America benefit plan.

What do the federal government, the Big Sandy crayfish and a Wisconsin toymaking company have in common? They’ve all been wronged by U.S. Sen. Jim Justice, R-W.Va., and his firms not taking care of their business, according to new legal and regulatory penalty proceedings that threaten to further sink the already floundering finances of Justice and his family. Justice and his wife, Cathy Justice, were issued tax lien notices by the IRS filed with the Greenbrier County clerk on Oct. 2, 2025 indicating they owe just over $8 million in unpaid taxes for assessments that span more than a decade. The two notices – one to Jim and Cathy Justice claiming an unpaid assessment balance of roughly $8.02 million and another to the senator alone claiming an unpaid balance of $24,044, both indicate the sums are owed even after the IRS made demands for payment. The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has issued new demands for delinquent penalty assessments to the Justice family-controlled Second Sterling

Jim Justice’s family business empire ownership of hundreds of parcels in a residential community in Raleigh County is imperiled on two fronts due to longstanding family holding company debts. Nearly 400 parcels owned by Justice Holdings LLC within the Senate Republican’s family business empire were slated for a public auction scheduled for Oct. 29, 2025, to be overseen by a court-appointed special commissioner to satisfy liens of the Glade Springs Village Property Owners Association, Inc. On a separate but related front, property taxes for over 300 Justice Holdings LLC parcels, mostly in the Queensglade area of Glade Springs Village, a community that consists of some 750 residences, were listed as delinquent by the Raleigh County Sheriff’s Office in September 2025. Justice Holdings LLC’s listed 2024 property tax delinquencies totaled over $37,000.

West Virginia lawmakers have fresh evidence that historically deep Medicaid cuts approved by Congress, including West Virginia’s four-member congressional delegation, via the One Big Beautiful Bill Act enacted in July 2025 will be costly in West Virginia. That evidence is in line with a history of similar Medicaid cuts leading to less health insurance coverage for disadvantaged people in other states, without the workforce additions that some proponents of the cuts have predicted will result from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act cuts. Cynthia Beane, commissioner of the West Virginia Bureau for Medical Services, previewed a path toward lower Medicaid enrollment and higher state administrative costs before the Joint Standing Finance Committee during the Legislature’s latest interim legislative session meeting on Oct. 6, 2025.

Appalachian Power, Wheeling Power and FirstEnergy each filed long-term plans required by state statute on Oct. 1, 2025 outlining how they plan to meet their captive ratepayers’ needs over the next decade and beyond. Although the companies’ plans together add up to 828 pages, their preferred path forward for their combined is simple: Keep clinging to coal. The companies contend that relying principally on coal-fired electricity is the optimal scenario through the lifespans of their coal-fired plants in West Virginia, which depends on coal-fired power more than any other state and has experienced among the most sharply rising electricity prices in the U.S. this century amid coal’s decline elsewhere. The Integrated Resource Plans, known as IRPs, feature economic scenarios in which the companies account for potential future market circumstances and regulatory mandates to determine their optimal long-term energy portfolios.