Traveling national exhibit on waterways marries the arts and science at the Clay Center

by Lydia Nuzum

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Like many cities, Charleston was built on a river -- one that shaped the course of its history and something the Clay Center hopes will attract visitors to its latest exhibit.

STEAMworks, the Clay Center's new gallery, will open to the public Saturday. Its first exhibit, RiverWorks Discovery: A Journey of Exploration and Imagination on America's Waterways, features displays from the the National Rivers Hall of Fame, at the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium in Dubuque, Iowa.

The coal industry has lost a true innovator, designer, mentor and friend in the passing of John J. “Joe” Childress of Daniels.

In the field of coal processing, construction, design and operations, Childress, 73, was an innovator.

A construction worker at heart, he started his career in the early 1960s employed by Roberts & Schaefer Construction Co. as a field manager/construction services with responsibilities for assisting in the design of, and managing the field construction services and “start up” functions for, many coal-processing plants across the country and around the world.

In the mid-1970s, he started his own coal-processing, construction services contract services company, and was successful in leading the wave of new coal-processing design initiatives that are used in plants around the world today. He was one of the first to design and construct a “Feed to Zero” type circuitry.

In the 1990s, he designed and patented the only known MULE (Moveable Unit Low Elevation) coal-processing plant utilizing heavy media circuitry known to be in existence.

Murray Energy Corp. has announced it will file suit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to combat what the company terms the EPA's "illegal promulgation of senseless and destructive regulations, with absolutely no regard for their job and family destruction."

In a press release, the company said that the federal Clean Air Act "clearly requires the Obama EPA to consider job losses in its issuance of regulations, and it has never complied with the law."

 

As we near the mid-point of the Regular 60-day Legislative Session, the House of Delegates will likely be consumed this week with SB 373 -- legislation designed to prevent recurrence of the chemical leak that has polluted Charleston's water supplies.

Engrossed Senate Bill 373 was previously passed by the Senate and has been assigned to and will be worked by three separate Committees in the House of Delegates, i.e. Health, Judiciary, & Finance.

 

The 41^st Annual West Virginia Coal Association Mining Symposium will be featured on this month’s episode of The Coal Seam television show. The Coal Seam is hosted by WVCA Senior Vice President Chris Hamilton and is shown on local public access channels across the state including Channel 17 on Suddenlink, as well as statewide on the Library Television Network.

This month’s show features interviews with Murray Energy’s CEO and Founder Bob Murray as well as X-Coal’s CEO Ernie Thrasher, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor Joe Main and West Virginia Attorney General Pat Morrisey, as well as an inside look at the Symposium itself, which attracted hundreds of people across the three-day event – an event which has become one of the major events on the annual trade show circuit.