Latest West Virginia Headlines

All the headlines from our West Virginia Topic Page, ordered by recency.

Massey Shuts Kentucky Mine; Cites Danger in West Virginia

Dec 3 2010 // Massey Energy Co. has shut down a Kentucky coal mine that federal regulators had cited for safety violations and said another of its mines in West Virginia was in danger of collapse following heavy rains. The mining...

Massey CEO to Testify About Deadly West Virginia Mine Blast

Dec 2 2010 // Massey Energy chief Don Blankenship is expected to testify Dec. 14 in the probe of an April explosion that killed 29 men in West Virginia’s Upper Big Branch mine. The state Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and...

DuPont Offers $70 Million to Settle West Virginia Pollution Case

Nov 29 2010 // Chemical company DuPont last week offered to pay $70 million and spend millions more on medical monitoring for the next 30 years to end a legal battle over a toxic exposure case it lost in West Virginia. The proposal drew...

Judge Upholds West Virginia Mine Accident Reporting Rule

Nov 29 2010 // A Kanawha County Circuit Court judge has upheld a state law giving coal mine operators 15 minutes to tell regulators about fires and other serious accidents. Judge Tod Kaufman’s ruling came in a case involving...

Reports on 2 West Virginia Chemical Plant Incidents Delayed

Nov 29 2010 // Reports on a federal board’s investigations of fatal incidents at two West Virginia chemical plants won’t be released until next year. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board is investigating a 2008 explosion at Bayer...

Is Gas Drilling Causing West Virginia Earthquakes?

Nov 24 2010 // Officials say there’s no clear explanation for what may have prompted several earthquakes near Frametown earlier this year. Some have speculated that the cluster of small earthquakes was linked to local gas...

DuPont Worried About Publicity in West Virginia Zinc-Smelting Case

Nov 23 2010 // DuPont will likely seek to sequester jurors in a 2011 trial that could determine whether it must pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to some 8,500 West Virginians who won a toxic-exposure case three years...

Work-Related Deaths Decline in West Virginia

Nov 19 2010 // Work-related deaths in West Virginia have fallen to their lowest level since 2002. Preliminary figures released this week by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show 41 workers suffered fatal on-the-job injuries in 2009,...

Judges’ Mediation of Massey Pollution Case Fails in West Virginia

Nov 18 2010 // A lawyer for the plaintiffs says attempts to settle a long-running water pollution lawsuit against Massey Energy Co. have failed. Two judges on West Virginia’s mass litigation panel have been trying to mediate a...

Slurry Pollution Case Plaintiffs Called to West Virginia Meeting

Nov 15 2010 // Eighteen months ago, Christina Doyle packed up her two kids for an eight-hour journey to a West Virginia courthouse, hoping for some resolution to a lawsuit over water pollution she believes caused her daughter’s...

Growth, Stability and Changes in Store for Long Term Care Market

Nov 14 2010 // With the first of 77 million baby boomers nearing retirement age in 2011, assisted living facilities and nursing home facilities will play a more important role than ever before. About three million Americans will require...

West Virginia Court Upholds Mine Safety Office Authority

Nov 3 2010 // The authority of West Virginia’s mine safety office to suspend coal miners has been upheld by the state Supreme Court. The decision stems from the death of locomotive driver Victor Goudy at Consol Energy’s...

West Virginia Fire Department Insurance Falls Short

Oct 18 2010 // Sissonville, West Virginia Volunteer Fire Department officials say they still need to raise about $450,000 to replace a fire station and three fire trucks destroyed in a blaze. Fire department secretary Tom Miller says a...

Massey Cited for Serious Violations at West Virginia Mine

Oct 13 2010 // A surprise inspection has turned up serious safety violations that could have caused an explosion at another Massey Energy Co. coal mine in West Virginia, the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration announced last...

West Virginia Mom’s Suit Over Son’s Death Blames Bayer

Oct 7 2010 // The mother of a West Virginia State University student is suing Bayer CropScience and the school over her son’s death in 2008. Portia Gray’s lawsuit claims her 19-year-old son, Ra’Sean Gray, died as a...

West Virginia Fire Station Blaze Ruled an Accident

Oct 6 2010 // Investigators have ruled the blaze that destroyed the Sissonville (West Virginia) Volunteer Fire Department’s main station an accident. Paul Gill, from the state Fire Marshall’s Office, said the blaze started...

Federal Regulators Taking New Steps to Identify Most Dangerous Mines

Sep 30 2010 // Federal regulators have implemented new measures for identifying the nation’s most dangerous mines, replacing what U.S. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis had called a “badly broken” process. The Mine Health and...

Federal Court to Hear West Virginia Families’ Claims Against DuPont

Sep 29 2010 // A federal court will hear the complaints of 14 West Virginia families who blame illnesses ranging from cancer to rashes on long-term exposure to toxic waste piled up at a former DuPont zinc-smelting plant. Lead plaintiffs...

Massey CEO Accuses Feds of Lying in West Virginia Mine Probe

Sep 23 2010 // The embattled chief executive of Massey Energy has accused federal regulators of not making a genuine effort to investigate the explosion that killed 29 miners and injured two at the company’s Upper Big Branch mine...

Declarations

Sep 20 2010 // Kentucky Test Drives “This is primarily set up for kids. There are 300 different driving scenarios we can put somebody through on this. When you put all of that together, it becomes more than a video game. It makes...