• Antarctic sea ice reached record high levels for late December 2014 and early January 2015, peaking around January 10 at more than 2.5 million square kilometers (965,000 square miles) above the 1981 to 2010 average, and 1.05 million square kilometers (580,000 square miles) above the previous record (2014) for that date.
• Coal and the River: Each year, approximately 120 million tons of coal travels by barge along the Ohio River. That is roughly the same as the recent annual coal production of West Virginia.

The State Wrestling Meet will be held next weekend at the Big Sandy Arena in Huntington.  Awards will begin around 6 p.m. on Saturday (28^th of February).

Last week, U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Water Resources Subcommittee Chairman Bob Gibbs (R-Ohio) reintroduced H.R. 896, the “Regulatory Certainty Act,” which would clarify the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) role under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (CWA).

The bill clarifies that EPA does not have the authority to veto a Section 404 permit after the Army Corps of Engineers has issued the permit as the Agency did in the case of the Spruce Mine in West Virginia. 

Jim Justice announced February 17, that he has repurchased Bluestone, a mining facility in McDowell and Wyoming counties, from the Russian company he initially sold to in 2009, Mechel OAO and has plans to reopen a new company, Bluestone Resources, Inc.

The Justice family sold U.S. coal producer Bluestone Coal Corp. to Mechel in May 2009 for $436 million in cash and 83.3 million Mechel preferred shares. At the time, Mechel was Russia’s largest producer of steelmaking coal.

The Charleston Newspapers’ Metro Section ran their annual special section on coal this past weekend.

The section included information on production, employment and distribution of West Virginia coal as well as severance collections and distributions. In addition, the section included articles on the Summit Bechtel Reserve National Scout Jamboree Center in Mt. Hope as well as pieces by WVCA President Bill Raney and others.

We hope you received a copy. If you didn’t we have a few copies at the WVCA office. Quantities are extremely limited.