West Virginia’s Fire Commission has failed for 50 years to produce a legally required fire prevention plan, despite the state’s high residential fire death rate. Officials now aim to complete the first comprehensive plan by fall 2026.
Summers County’s failed school levy highlights deep flaws in West Virginia’s funding system. Rural districts with shrinking enrollment and limited tax bases are struggling to preserve staff, transportation and aging schools as federal aid expires.
West Virginians once fought landfill proposals that would have turned old mines into dumping grounds, winning laws that gave counties power to decide. Now opponents of massive out-of-state data centers say the state is stripping local control and they deserve the same say.
Chemours will pay a $22.5 million fine and fund major upgrades to cut PFAS “forever chemical” pollution from its Washington Works plant into the Ohio River under a new Trump-era settlement.
After a 2017 Parkersburg warehouse fire, lawmakers promised to require chemical disclosures so firefighters wouldn’t be left guessing. Nearly a decade later, another blaze on the same street brought the same uncertainty, as inventory lists still lacked detailed safety data.
Finding childcare in West Virginia is often frustrating and expensive, with long waitlists, high costs, and few nearby options — one of the state’s biggest barriers to employment.
West Virginians are facing electric bills that have risen more than 50% in a decade, driven in part by reliance on aging coal plants. Lawmakers may not abandon coal soon, but they could still ease costs by subsidizing low-income bills and ramping up energy-efficiency investments.
West Virginia lawmakers have stripped civil service and grievance protections from more than 9,000 state jobs to “streamline” government.
West Virginia public schools are closing fast, with consolidations forcing students to take long bus rides and families to make tough choices.
West Virginia still intercepts Social Security survivors’ benefits owed to orphaned foster kids and uses the money to pay for their care, even as more states move to stop the practice.
