Climate Eye – Week 6

As always, please follow and consider becoming a member of the West Virginia Environmental Council, which CAG is proud to support, for updates from their spectacular team of staff and lobbyists. Please also join us for E-Day at the Capitol to learn more about the issues, talk to your legislators, and more on February 28th!

• The next IRA Roadshow stop is this Saturday in Montgomery City Hall from 1-3pm. Join us for information about available tax credits and specific ways individuals, municipalities, and organizations can take advantage of funding on the table to fight climate change. We’ll be announcing a slew of new dates soon, but please drop us a line if you’d like us to come to your town!

• There’s a lot of noise in the legislature about Pleasants Power Station this last week, with resolutions passed in both the House (HR 12) and Senate (SR 29) urging Mon Power to purchase the plant, which employs 154 people and generates 9% of the state’s power. It was slated to be shut down previously, but state lawmakers voted in 2019 to give a $12 million a year tax cut to the struggling power plant to keep it up and running.
  • On Friday, the Senate suspended rules to pass SB 609, which would require a power plant’s owner to seek permission from the state Public Energy Authority to close or tear it down. The bill will now go before the House of Delegates.
  • The House passed HB 3308 Tuesday that would require West Virginia Public Service Commission approval for a public electric utility to close any power generating plant or unit. For more context, check out this tweet thread from EEWV’s Emmett Pepper.

• SB 627, the bill allowing community solar, was introduced in the Senate last week. Here are some quick actions you can take to help us get the word to legislators:
  • Sign this petition to show your support for community solar.
  • Click here to send an email urging your representatives to support community solar.
  • Share a post and change your profile picture on Facebook using this action toolkit.
  • And if you have time, please consider calling the committee members of the Senate Government Organization Committee (at least the chair and vice chair) and telling them that you support community solar. Calls are more effective than emails but any communication is better than nothing.

• The PFAS Protection Act, HB 3189, passed out of the House Judiciary Committee on Monday the 20th! Continue pressure on your lawmakers to support reducing PFAS in our drinking water at the source so that water utilities and ratepayers are not burdened with treatment costs by completing this action from WV Rivers.

• Additional funding for the DEP’s Office of Oil and Gas to hire more inspectors continues to move on FOUR fronts. As of writing, SB 448 passed Senate energy and is headed to Senate Finance, HB 3110 will be on third reading in the House tomorrow, SB 13 passed Senate energy and is headed to Senate Finance, and HB 2021 has been referred to House energy. A reminder, the Office of Oil and Gas only has 10 inspectors overseeing approximately 75,000 wells and over 20,000 tanks across the state. That’s 1 inspector for every 7,500 wells. Please contact members of the House and Senate Finance Committees and ask them to fully fund DEP’s Office of Oil and Gas.