[email protected] The company West Virginia Methanol, Inc. submitted a permit application in November 2020 to build a facility in Pleasants County on a former carbon black site along the Ohio River. The West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection accepted public comments and held an online public hearing this week on the facility. This facility is yet another bad industrial idea for the Ohio River Valley. If built, the permit application for this facility states that it will use 36 million cubic feet of natural gas per day to create 1,000 tons of methanol per day. All of that gas has to come from hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, of shale deposits. On Dec. 14, 2020, Concerned Health Professionals of New York along with Physicians for Social Responsibility released the 7th Edition of the Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking (Unconventional Gas and Oil Extraction). This fully referenced compilation breaks down the enormous health and environmental harms of fracking. You can download the entire document at concernedhealthny.org.