Recent editorials from West Virginia newspapers:
Feb. 18
Charleston (West Virginia) Daily Mail on safer energy transportation:
America, and the world for that matter, uses lots of energy. The energy source used more than any other in the United State is oil - at 36 percent of the energy consumed in this country.
In the American energy portfolio, natural gas is next at 27 percent, coal at 19 percent, renewable energy at 10 percent, and nuclear at 8 percent, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
The oil is produced - pulled from underground rock and reservoirs - wherever those reserves are. Before being used, oil must be refined. To get from production area to refinery, obviously, it must be transported.
In the United States, 70 percent of crude oil is shipped by pipeline, the safest and most efficient of all methods of oil transportation.
Twenty-three percent is shipped on tankers and barges over water, while 4 percent is trucked, and only 3 percent, amazingly, is shipped by rail, according to James Conca writing in an April 2014 Forbes column.
Each method of transportation has its own unique problems and benefits. None is without risk.
Amid a North American energy boom and a lack of pipeline capacity, Conca reported, oil shipping by rail has sharply increased.
“The trains are getting bigger and towing more and more tanker cars,” Conca wrote. “From 1975 to 2012, trains were shorter and spills were rare and small, with about half of those years having no spills above a few gallons. Then came 2013, in which more crude oil was spilled in U.S. rail incidents than was spilled in the previous 37 years.”
With Monday’s train derailment, Montgomery, W.Va., now joins the list of places - Lac Megantic, Quebec; Lynchburg Va; Pickens County, Ala.; among others - that have seen dramatic and dangerous oil tanker fires involving the volatile Bakken crude.
Considering the increase in oil transport, the CSX Corp. and other railroads need to do a much better job - obviously - on safety. Shorter trains, upgraded tank cars, lower speeds, and better track maintenance are among improvements railroads can and should make even before greater pressure from regulators and lawmakers begin.
In the bigger picture, however, the nation needs to develop a long-term, cohesive and realistic national energy strategy - something that has been talked about since the 1973 energy crisis but never fully developed. That strategy needs to encourage rapid development of an integrated network of modern, safe and more efficient underground pipelines to carry the energy we rely on.
Online:
https://www.charlestondailymail.com
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Feb. 12
The Register-Herald, Bleckley, West Virginia, on new Proctor & Gamble facility:
The announcement Tuesday that a $500 million Procter & Gamble manufacturing facility would locate in Berkeley County is a welcome bit of economic news, not just for the Eastern Panhandle, but for all of West Virginia.
The Martinsburg site won out over 40 other sites across the country.
On the jobs front, construction of the 1 million-square-foot plant will provide 1,000 jobs between now and its opening in 2017. After that, 700 full-time positions will staff the plant, jobs that officials are characterizing as “careers, not jobs.”
Landing the Procter & Gamble facility is an important milestone for the state. Competing nationally for such a prize asset - and winning - provides invaluable experience when it comes to sealing the deal on locating similar mega-projects here.
For our part, we hope the success in Berkeley County carries over to landing the multi-billion-dollar cracker plant in Wood County.
Still, we can’t help but dream a little about what such a mega-project like the P&G plant would mean to southern West Virginia.
Berkeley County’s jobless rate, as of December 2014, was 4.9 percent. Statewide the unemployment rate was 6 percent. Here in southern West Virginia, all but Raleigh and Summers counties were above that state average. Raleigh was at 5.8 percent, Summers at 5.7 percent, and surrounding counties ranged from 6.2 percent in Greenbrier County to 7.5 percent in Nicholas County.
Landing such a major economic development project in southern West Virginia would no doubt improve those numbers significantly, given the numerous spin-off businesses that are expected to accompany Procter & G
In other words, massive economic development projects like this one don’t just happen.
“For years we have worked hard to make West Virginia an even stronger competitor for economic development investments, and companies around the world are noticing the changes we have made,” Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin said at the announcement at the state Capitol.
Here in southern West Virginia, we are still laying a foundation to lure new businesses to locate in our area of the state.
The New River Gorge Regional Development Authority, local chambers of commerce, and community leaders are putting in the hours to lay the groundwork for similar success here.
To date, our best bet is the Mega-Site to be located near Ghent. Although an operable industrial site there is at least five years away, what development experts are learning now is part of the process that leads to being successful in the future.
We also need to tap into the expertise of Berkeley County and the state economic development officials who successfully sold the Tabler Station Business Park site in Martinsburg to Procter & Gamble. We think success anywhere in the state will only improve our odds of similar results.
The new Procter & Gamble site in the Eastern Panhandle may not mean new jobs directly for us here in southern West Virginia.
But what is almost as important is that it shows West Virginia can compete against any state in the country.
As we all know too well, it isn’t often we’ve been able to say that when it comes to economic development in the Mountain State.
Online:
https://www.register-herald.com
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Feb. 17
Herald-Dispatch, Huntington, West Virginia on drug trafficking:
In the past decade, the Huntington Police Department has stepped up efforts to combat drug trafficking through the addition of more officers and stricter enforcement, often working in conjunction with other local, state and federal agencies.
Much of the work understandably has been aimed at drug dealers to cut into the supply of illicit drugs circulating in the region, and the result has been a multitude of arrests.
But law enforcement officials have said repeatedly that attacking the supply side alone and putting dealers in jail won’t eliminate the drug problems. They are correct. That’s why it’s encouraging to see officials begin to focus more on the demand side by turning their attention toward ways to help people overcome their addictions.
In November, Huntington Mayor Steve Williams established the Mayor’s Office of Drug Control Policy, and he put retired city police officer and former constituent liaison Jim Johnson in charge of it.
The new office has been busy assessing the associated problems and already have identified two possible strategies they hope to implement in coming months.
The extent of the drug epidemic has been evident in this region for years, but a recent rash of drug overdoses has added urgency. In the first 42 days of 2015, 84 drug overdoses had been called in through Cabell County EMS, and 11 overdose deaths had occurred in Huntington. Nine were heroin related, while toxicology results are still pending on the two most recent cases. The spike in heroin-related deaths has only added to the misery caused by the widespread misuse of powerful pain-killing drugs.
What the new department has found is that illegal drug use and activity is occurring in all corners of the city.
One place Johnson hopes to start in the spring is to focus on prostitution, which he said is almost entirely driven by drug addiction. That effort will involve working with law enforcement, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Prestera Treatment Center to try to divert prostitutes from jail toward treatment for their addictions.
Another possible step in coming months is developing a syringe exchange program that would allow heroin addicts to turn in used syringes for clean ones. The program, to be modeled after one now operating in Portsmouth, Ohio, would have a dual purpose.
One would be to reduce the incidence of hepatitis. West Virginia has among the highest rates of both hepatitis B and C cases in the nation, and part of what fueling that is the repeated use of needles by addicts. The hope is that reducing repeated uses of needles will reduce those rates and cut down on the long-term health costs of treating those individuals.
But the other goal is to try to steer addicts participating in the syringe-exchange program toward help for their addictions. Jan Rader, a Huntington firefighter and an emergency room nurse who is working with Johnson’s office, said the Portsmouth program has shown that building up trust with addicts has been able to convince some of them to seek help.
The programs planned by the drug-control office won’t eliminate drug abuse in our region, by any means. But they are steps in the right direction, a recognition that helping to wean people from their dependence on drugs is an important part of any overall drug strategy.
Online:
orhttps://www.herald-dispatch.com
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