United States Supreme Court Hears Atlantic Coast Pipeline Case

By John McFerrin             On February 24, 2020, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments on a case concerning the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.  Now we are left to wait, with nothing to [...]

Thoughts from our president

By John McFerrin             On February 24, 2020, the United States Supreme Court heard arguments on a case concerning the Atlantic Coast Pipeline.  Now we are left to wait, with nothing to [...]

A Little Legislative News

As The Highlands Voice goes to press the West Virginia Legislature is going into its final week.  Committees are committeeing, deals are being cut, politics is being played, etc. etc.  Nobody knows how things [...]

Crackers and Missing Mountains. Tales within tales.

By Marion Harless, West Virginian More taxpayer dollars are going to subsidize construction of huge air-polluting gas cracker plants. Gas and oil are cracked to make stock for plastic. Plastics [...]

Weeks Act Helped Create Monongahela National Forest

By Robert Beanblossom  One of the most important pieces of environmental legislation ever enacted by Congress was the passage of the Weeks Act on March 1, 1911. Named for its [...]

ClimateWise

Sequestering carbon dioxide is essential if the world is going to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Many scientists estimate that in order to stay at a “safe” level [...]

Checking in with the Northern Flying Squirrel

By John McFerrin The United States Fish and Wildlife Service has done a review of how the Northern Flying Squirrel (Glaucomys sabrinus fuscus) is faring.  It found that the Squirrel is [...]

New Designation for the New River?

There has been some activity on the proposal by United States Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), to change the New River Gorge’s designation from the “New [...]

Changes to the Clean Water Rule Have Big Impacts on the Ground

By Kurt Fesenmyer High in the headwaters of Back Creek in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia are several small streams that only run after it rains.  Those “ephemeral” tributaries to [...]

A Little Action at the Pump Storage Project

By John McFerrin Although the details about the project are not yet available, there have been some developments in the proposed pump storage project near Bismark in Grant County.  The developers [...]