At Environmental Day, advocates urge legislative support while students consider their future in WV

Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2024 was Environmental Day at the West Virginia Capitol in Charleston, W.Va. (Perry Bennett | West Virginia Legislative Photography)

Tuesday marked Environmental Day at the West Virginia Legislature, and with the second half of the 2024 regular session in full swing, environmental advocates are hoping to see progress made on bills they say will promote sustainability, economic development and community health across West Virginia.

With 35 groups in attendance lobbying for and against a slate of bills, advocates with the state’s Environmental Council said this year’s event was the largest to date. Those present included advocacy groups as well as a number of college and high school students, who took the opportunity to learn more about how the Legislature functions as well as the state of environmental affairs in West Virginia.

“Days like today are a good reminder of the community that exists in the state that really supports and wants to see a sustainable future for West Virginia,” said Jillian Blair, a senior studying environmental and energy resources management at West Virginia University. “This work is important for everyone, but especially for the future of young people; we’re getting ready to start a career, choosing what that will look like. We need to make clear what we need to do to make that possible here, in West Virginia.”

Blair, a Wheeling native who is preparing to attend graduate school in England next school year, said that she wants to return to her home state after graduation, but hopes that lawmakers are taking the concerns of young people seriously.

“West Virginia will always be home and I will always have a sense of loyalty to this place and the people here,” Blair said. “As far as what will keep me here, well, I want to see a government that is really focused on helping the people that already live here. The polarization I’ve seen — one party doing or undoing something just because it was the work of another party, as nothing more than a statement — that really concerns me. It concerns a lot of people who are younger and hope to make a difference in this state.”

Blair said she’d like to see leaders in West Virginia embrace a more diverse energy portfolio. Instead of continuing to define themselves by “coal,” she said, she wants to see opportunities arise in other fields, like solar, hydrogen and more.

Legislation to do so — namely for solar energy — has stalled under the dome, said Environmental Council lobbyist Isabel Stellato.

Senate Bill 638 , which would create a pilot program allowing communities to develop solar facilities under rules from the Public Service Commission, was introduced by Republican lawmakers on Feb. 5 but has yet to be brought to the Economic Development Committee’s agenda. Under that bill — which would enact policies that already exist in 22 other states — consumers could receive credits to offset the costs of their utilities.

Linda Frame, the past president of the Environmental Council, said it’s been frustrating to see relatively noncontentious but helpful bills slow during the legislative session while so much time is spent debating and litigating proposed social and “culture war” bills.

“It’s sad to see in an election year that the priorities being taken up, for the most part, aren’t pieces that help people or improve our state,” Frame said.

Instead, on the environmental side, legislators have pushed mostly industry-authored bills that Frame and other advocates say limit the ability for individuals to protect themselves and sustain the environment around them.

Among them is House Bill 5018 , a bill to limit the uses of community air quality monitoring data. That bill passed the House on Feb. 6 and is now pending in the Senate Committee on Energy, Industry and Mining.

Lawmakers, both in committee and on the floor, expressed concerns about the bill overstepping the rights of the judiciary, as it prohibits using data from community air monitoring programs as evidence in independent, third party lawsuits in addition to noncompliance proceedings.

The bill was written with heavy influence from the West Virginia Manufacturers Association, with executive director Bill Bissett saying last week that it arose in direct response to President Joe Biden’s increasing funding for community air programs.

In West Virginia, official air quality monitoring is only performed at 13 sites in the central and northern parts of the state. Per the Department of Environmental Protection’s 2024 monitoring network , none of those sites are in Southern West Virginia.

Frame said it’s a concern that as federal money becomes available for environmental use, the state Legislature is quick to respond by attempting to limit that progress on behalf of industry.

“A lot of the protections that West Virginia gets now are federal protections and afforded to us by federal dollars,” Frame said. “Especially now, as we’re in a time where we’re working [at the state level] with a flat budget, we’re getting federal dollars. That makes a difference, and it’s a reminder that federal policy supports what we’re trying to do here.”

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