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Editorial

‘Forever chemicals’ in W.Va.’s water

As you may have heard, the U.S. Geological Survey recently released a report on the presence of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in West Virginia’s water. The study came at the behest of the state Legislature and was done in conjunction with several West Virginia agencies, including the Department of Environmental Protection. If “PFAS” is ringing a bell, it may be because we’ve addressed it in this space before — or because you watched the movie “Dark Waters,” about the DuPont plant near Parkersburg that poisoned residents for decades. “PFAS” is an ...

No, Gov. Justice, we don’t need new lakes

In typical Jim Justice fashion, the governor threw out a half-baked answer to a serious question about flood prevention during his anything-but-COVID briefing Aug. 23: “West Virginia needs to build lakes,” he said, “lots of them.” Lakes can and do help with flood control and prevention. However, the answer isn’t to create more of them. The biggest reason is that creating a lake from scratch often means flooding entire communities. There’s a website called “The Atlas of Drowned Towns” dedicated to West Coast communities that were flooded and destroyed in pursuit of ...

Important things to know about monkeypox

With almost 17,000 confirmed cases of monkeypox, including four in West Virginia (at the time of this writing), and Morgantown’s Pride events kicking off this weekend, it’s time to address the latest viral sensation and the perceptions around it. According to Johns Hopkins, monkeypox is an orthopox DNA virus related to smallpox, though milder. Contrary to the name, rodents are the primary carriers of this particular disease, not monkeys. Although monkeypox is largely unfamiliar to the Western world, it has regularly spread among the general population in several African countries ...

Beware the perils of ‘sharenting’

When we were kids, it was “don’t talk to strangers.” The gentle admonishment from our parents was a reminder that, although the world seemed wide and bright to us as children, there was darkness out there and we needed to be careful. Now that we’re adults, the world seems even wider and much darker. And so we share these same words of wisdom with our own children and grandchildren. With the advent  of the internet, however, we’ve had to add a few: don’t post your personal information on public platforms or share it with people you don’t know in real life, ...

Secretary Warner is peddling Big Lie Lite

How disappointing  to see West Virginia’s top election official, Secretary of State Mac Warner, peddling sugar-coated election fraud conspiracies. In an op-ed Warner submitted to publications across the state (which we will not run due to its blatant disconnection from reality, but that you can find on his Facebook page), Warner chastises media and elected officials for dismissing the former president’s Big Lie and daring to reiterate that claims of fraud have not once stood up to judicial scrutiny. He claims there were “irregularities and improprieties” throughout ...

Class is in session

Yesterday, students stepped off the bus for the first time this year — some of them for the first time ever. They made the first of hundreds of journeys through their schools’ doors, took the first walk of thousands down the long hallways and sat down in the first of dozens of desks as teachers stood at the fronts of their classrooms. The 2022-23 school year has begun. When we think of “back to school” that is who we picture: the kids and the educators. But while students-to-be compared class schedules with peers and teachers set up their classrooms, hundreds of other school ...