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On December 13, the State Senate confirmed, without a dissenting vote, the appointment of Dr. Charles Somerville from Huntington to the Environmental Quality Board for a term ending June 30, 2014 and Bascombe Blake, Jr. from Morgantown for a term ending June 30, 2013.
David M. Flannery, a member of the Jackson Kelly PLLC Environmental Practice Group, was recently nominated and appointed as a member of the National Coal Council (NCC). He will serve a 2-year term from 2011-2013.
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CLEVELAND -- Cleveland Clinic Innovations, the group charged with commercializing medical inventions by the Clinic’s doctors, has received its largest-ever gift, $11 million.
The vast majority of the donation, $10 million, comes from West Virginia billionaire James Justice II, a coal and farming company executive who ranked No. 375 on Forbes’ list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, The Plain Dealer reported.
The remaining $1 million was from Dr. Thomas Graham, chairman of the Innovations group and a premier hand surgeon who often operates on professional athletes. Graham and Justice struck a friendship at the historic Greenbrier resort in West Virginia, which Justice bought in 2009.
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The Associated Press
CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A coalition that includes Fortune 500 companies, labor unions and nonprofit foundations plans to spend the next five years focused on rescuing a West Virginia school district, one of the country's most downtrodden, state education officials learned Thursday.
McDowell County is the target of a public-private sector campaign that its organizers consider the first of its kind. They aim to turn around the county's underperforming schools by also tackling such related problems as poverty, substance abuse and outdated infrastructure.
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The Associated Press
For more than 90 years, the coal-fired power plant in Glen Lyn, Va., has been churning out electricity and contributing to local prosperity. Of late, it has generated nearly a quarter of the revenue for the $1 million budget of the town.
Yet when the plant ultimately shuts down to comply with new federal air pollution regulations by the end of 2014, says Town Manager Howard Spencer, so too might the community of 200.
"If the town lost all of that revenue," he says, "we would struggle to even continue to be incorporated."
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by Ry Rivard
Daily Mail Capitol Reporter
CHARLESTON, W.Va. - The $230,000 deal the West Virginia Coal Association has to brand the Civic Center basketball court for 10 years is only the newest tie between the industry and the state's sporting world.
The industry-sponsored "Friends of Coal" floor at the Civic Center has drawn criticism from an environmentalist and raised questions about why the deal with the association wasn't bid out. The Civic Center is a public building owned by the City of Charleston. A Civic Center official said last week the city wasn't required to bid the deal out.





