New appointments to the West Virginia Special Reclamation Fund Advisory Council included a member recommended by environmental groups to represent them after concern about removal of the previous member statutorily required to represent them on the board. Gov. Jim Justice appointed West Virginia Chapter of the Sierra Club chairman Jim Kotcon to serve on the board.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency hasn t made final decisions on key documents in its review that could address longstanding water quality concerns. Those include West Virginia s list of impaired waters and a Chemours plan to address PFAS discharges at its Washington Works facility in Wood County.
Perennial environmental priorities like boosting funding for gas and oil well remediation and establishing community solar in West Virginia failed in the state s 2024 regular legislative session. West Virginia environmentalists did celebrate blocking legislation they opposed that would have barred use of community air monitoring data in third-party lawsuits.
A cooperative effort has seeded more than 26,000 acres in eastern Nevada. It s all in an effort to increase desirable grasses, forbs and shrubs while decreasing the prevalence of invasive annual grasses and weeds that can take root in fire-burned areas. Neil Frakes, emergency stabilization and rehabilitation program manager with the Bureau of Land Management, said the initiative was a joint effort among the BLM, the Nevada Department of Wildlife and the Eastern Nevada Landscape Coalition, and added seeding can help stabilize ecological conditions after a fire, starting with soil. .