The first time I heard the phrase “thousand-year flood,” I was in Nashville, Tennessee. It was May 2010, and large swaths of the downtown were suddenly under water, along with highways and neighborhoods that appeared far from the river’s reach. Nashville isn’t anywhere near the coast. The floods didn’t begin […]
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A federal appeals court has revoked a key approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Now, state regulators are working to change the rules — again — so it can proceed. This article was produced in partnership with the Charleston Gazette-Mail, which is a member of the ProPublica Local Reporting Network. […]
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Federal regulators gave the Atlantic Coast Pipeline the green light to restart construction Monday. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission halted construction of the 600-mile pipeline last month after a federal court threw out two of the project’s federal permits. In early August, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the Fish […]
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William Suan is no stranger to the problems abandoned oil and gas wells can cause. “It’s just an eyesore,” he said, standing inside a barn on his cattle ranch near Lost Creek, West Virginia. “I had to fence one off because it’s leaking now.” There are five inactive wells on […]
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This is the first of a two-part series on water infrastructure in Appalachia, and possible solutions to problems at the federal and local level. The Problem What West Virginia faces when it comes to its streams and rivers is a historically entangled knot of cultural pride, politics and industrial interests, […]
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