Mike Tony

The Kanawha County underground coal mine where a fatal incident left a miner dead Thursday had a long history of safety and health violations. Travis Price, 44, died at the Speed Mine in the Cabin Creek area on Oct. 8, 2026, according to Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s office, in what the United States Mine Safety and Health Administration has classified as a powered haulage accident. Morrisey’s office said Friday the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety, and Training was investigating the incident, West Virginia’s third recorded mining fatality of 2026 and 29th since the start of 2020, according to MSHA data.

West Virginians looking for more power over their power bills have a new opportunity to find it – four years in the making and as the state considers a rule framework for electric utilities that community advocates fear will make those bills more burdensome. The West Virginia Office of Energy has launched home energy rebate programming funded by the Inflation Reduction Act, landmark sustainable energy legislation signed into law in August 2022 by President Joe Biden without any congressional Republican support.

Over 30 residents across West Virginia had their well water sampled independently via the Gazette-Mail to gauge the quality of private well water throughout the state – for which there has been a dearth of official data or documentation to accompany the state’s public water system quality data. The testing provided by the Gazette-Mail in partnership with the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, a nonpartisan water restoration nonprofit, was funded by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting that funds investigative reporting projects. The Gazette-Mail paid SimpleLab, a national environmental testing company, and Cyclopure, a national water-testing and purification company, to analyze the samples for bacteria, metals and industrial chemicals known as PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), all of which pose human health risks.

The potential for environmental contamination is vast from a massive industrial fire just outside Parkersburg that caused Gov. Patrick Morrisey to declare a State of Emergency on July 5, 2026, according to a new site assessment plan obtained by the Gazette-Mail via a Freedom of Information Act request. The plan, a preliminary site characterization strategy document, was prepared on behalf of Peoples Cartage, Inc. for its 4301 Camden Ave. facility near Parkersburg and the Little Kanawha River, and approved by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection in a Sept. 17, 2026 letter to the company. Peoples Cartage submitted the plan to comply with a DEP order issued four days after the State of Emergency declaration mandating that Canton, Ohio-based Peoples Cartage affiliate Publix, Inc. provide a site characterization plan including methods and a schedule for conducting a site assessment that would allow for “delineating the extent of soil contamination that originated from the aforementioned fire.

Responding to a Gazette-Mail story that examined his administration’s effort to land a campus in West Virginia to support activities throughout the nuclear fuel life cycle via a federal advanced nuclear energy program, Gov. Patrick Morrisey claimed on social media Sunday that “West Virginia will not be a dumping ground for nuclear waste. Period.” But Morrisey’s Office of Energy repeatedly welcomed exploring final disposition of used nuclear fuel in a document it submitted to the United States Department of Energy declaring the state’s interest in the latter agency’s Nuclear Lifecycle Innovation Campus program — a federal effort to grow U.S. advanced nuclear energy via campuses that support activities throughout the nuclear fuel life cycle, including enriching uranium, converting it into fuel, reprocessing used fuel and disposing of nuclear waste. And although Morrisey claimed in his social media post Sunday that the state was only interested in nuclear generation and manufacturing, his Office of

West Virginia's interim state legislative session from Sept. 13 to Sept. 15, 2026 offered evidence of concealment liabilities and a lack of transparency throughout state government – on hotly contested data centers and beyond. Coinciding with the session was a protest of controversial House Bill 2014, and the session featured audit reports highlighting transparency and operational failures throughout state government.

West Virginia’s nation-highest reliance on coal-fired energy for electricity has coincided with great environmental and economic costs in the state, whose residents live with some of the country’s most burdensome power bills and worst respiratory health outcomes. The state’s leaders cheered moves the Trump administration made Monday aimed at propping up the long-declining coal industry and extending that status quo, contradicting federal energy data to claim the moves will make energy more affordable and downplaying expected adverse public health impacts. Trump’s United States Environmental Protection Agency announced it has repealed the majority of carbon pollution standards for U.S. power plants adopted in 2024 under former President Joe Biden and proposed rescinding all remaining greenhouse gas standards for the power sector.

Although West Virginia officials laid out goals for easing access to funding for the state’s many struggling public water system upgrades at a meeting of state lawmakers on Sept. 13, 2026, they gave a dim outlook when it comes to outside funding being available for systems that need it, despite Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s “Clean, Clear Water Strategy.” “We do have concerns with ongoing funding,” West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Harold Ward told the state Joint Technology and Infrastructure Committee during its interim legislative session meeting in Charleston. Ward reported that the state is in its final year of support from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, landmark legislation signed into law in 2021 by then-President Joe Biden that provided $1.2 trillion for water, road, broadband, electric grid and other infrastructure.

New reports suggest West Virginia’s fossil fuel-favoring push to usher in data centers into the state as part of what Gov. Patrick Morrisey has argued is an opportunity to help the U.S. win an artificial intelligence race against China may be a threat to West Virginian lives in more ways than one. The reports are from Environmental Protection Network and Anthropic, calling attention to pollution concerns and AI security risks with ties to West Virginia.

West Virginia Public Service Commission staff in formal case testimony has urged rejection of a $1.16 billion interstate power line project also heavily opposed by consumer advocates and landowners that would be affected along the project route slated to cross parts of Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, in addition to the Mountain State. The project is NextEra Transmission MidAtlantic Inc.’s MidAtlantic Resiliency Link project, a planned 107.5-mile, 500-kilovolt transmission line known as MARL planned to consist of roughly 59 miles of transmission line and related facilities in Monongalia, Preston, Mineral and Hampshire counties. The PSC staff’s newly submitted formal opposition to the project is notable given the staff is a wing of the PSC itself and that the testimony cited what staff indicated was project-damning field work that its technical analyst Daniel Egnatoff conducted consisting of visits to roughly 80 landowners at their properties all located within the MARL study area.