West Virginia Grant Resource Center grant writer Devon McDaniel (from left), West Virginia University Land Use and Sustainable Development Clinic director Katherine Garvey, clinic managing attorney Staci Thornsbury and West Virginia Community Development Hub director Katie Loudin sit for a panel during a March 28, 2025 WVU Law Review symposium in Morgantown.
West Virginia Grant Resource Center grant writer Devon McDaniel (from left), West Virginia University Land Use and Sustainable Development Clinic director Katherine Garvey, clinic managing attorney Staci Thornsbury and West Virginia Community Development Hub director Katie Loudin sit for a panel during a March 28, 2025 WVU Law Review symposium in Morgantown.
An attorney at a West Virginia University legal services unit that focuses on quality-of-life improvements through land and water conservation admitted before she began speaking that she might get more emotional than she intended, given the setting.
“[But] we are where we are,†Staci Thornsbury, managing attorney at the West Virginia University College of Law’s Land Use and Sustainable Development Clinic sighed during a West Virginia Law Review symposium in Morgantown on Friday.
Thornsbury said recent federal executive orders have halted progress on a floodplain buyout program aimed at giving a new start to residents of McDowell County, one of the nation’s poorest counties.
The symposium follows executive orders issued by President Donald Trump in January that have blocked states from federal flood protection activities and frozen public health and infrastructure grants, causing disruptions across economic sectors and leaving economically distressed communities like those throughout West Virginia especially vulnerable after flooding devastated the state in February.
Speakers at Friday’s symposium billed as focused on laws and policies that have contributed to an “urban/rural divide†decried shrinkage in federal support for West Virginian communities in the two months since Trump retook office.
“Workers are trained. Architectural plans and brownfields assessments are complete. Projects in McDowell are ready,†said Katie Loudin, strategic development director at the ÂÒÂ×ÄÚÉä-based West Virginia Community Development Hub, which secures funding to serve underinvested communities throughout the region. “But it’s going to be exceptionally difficult to finance these projects and put together the capital stacks necessary to finish these projects without federal support.â€
Hundreds of millions in US dollars ‘yanked away’
Loudin noted the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recent move to terminate a grant that supported an enterprise launched last year to deliver capital and technical assistance to hundreds of community leaders to establish climate and clean energy projects in underserved rural and coal communities.
Leaders supporting that enterprise, the Green Bank for Rural America, said in an emailed statement on March 18 they learned the EPA had moved to terminate a grant supporting it, stalling nearly $300 million in funding requests from community lenders across Appalachia and rural America.
The message was from Green Bank for Rural America president and CEO Daniel Wallace and Donna Gambrell, president and CEO of Appalachian Community Capital, which launched the Green Bank after being selected by the EPA last year for a $500 million award out of $20 billion allotted through a grant competition for greenhouse gas reduction funding enabled by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act signed into law by then-President Joe Biden.
“[T]hat has now been yanked away from us in the last 60 days,†Sam Petsonk, a Beckley-based lawyer for coal miners throughout Appalachia, said during Friday’s symposium. “It’s another example of the disinvestment in our people that could prevent all of this suffering.â€
‘Now our hands are tied’
Thornsbury indicated the voluntary floodplain buyout program the Land Use and Sustainable Development Clinic is working on is via a partnership with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service. Through the program, the federal government buys homes and relocates residents to get them out of harm’s way.
Thornsbury indicated that for $2.8 million, 128 homes could be moved out of a floodway in the Panther area of McDowell County — a better deal than over 20 times that amount to build a dam that would control only 50% of flood damage for one small area watershed.
After required appraisals and title examinations, program officials were ready to make offers to residents, but executive orders put project funding on hold, Thornsbury lamented.
“So these folks have been waiting three to five years for us to make them an offer and they’ve been right there with us along the way,†Thornsbury said. “We update them periodically. We don’t want to be just part of another government project that came in there, hyped them up and then left them. But now our hands are tied. No offers can be made.â€
In the meantime, February’s flood inflicted substantial damage to homes of residents waiting for offers, Thornsbury said.
“And now where are they? So it’s emotional for me,†Thornsbury said, her voice wavering. “I know these people personally in a lot of ways. The ability to help is there.â€
Study IDs barriers to competing for US funds
Loudin recalled that, during the Biden administration, the West Virginia Community Development Hub examining barriers that prevent rural, coal-impacted communities from effectively competing for federal funding.
“I will say that in light of what has happened since January, this report feels a little naïve,†Loudin said.
The report found that:
The shifting nature in application windows for federal awards negatively impacts communities because they are less able to respond to emergent needs that are time-sensitive.
Stringent match requirements bar resource-strained communities from effectively competing for federal awards that require a match at unattainable levels.
Spending restrictions throughout federal programs often classify certain expenses as unallowable despite their use in enhancing the success of a project, forcing awardees to undergo a lengthy compliance process.
The report noted the federal government had made “unparalleled investments†in state and locally-driven economic development, including over $1.5 trillion in new federal funding through the Inflation Reduction Act and 2021’s Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, another Biden-era law approved by a Democratic-controlled Congress, to support local economies and improve energy security and fight climate change.
‘All of this is at great risk now’
Loudin alluded to a recent study that found 76% of nonprofits in West Virginia would be at risk of not covering their expenses if they lost their government grants.
West Virginia’s percentage of nonprofits with government grants at risk was second-highest among all states behind only Alaska, according to the , a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
Loudin noted the Appalachian region had been selected for a wide range of federal awards, including the ACT Now (Appalachian Climate Technologies) Coalition, a collective led by Huntington-based workforce development nonprofit Coalfield Development Corp.
Focused on expanding emerging climate-resilient sectors of the local economy throughout a 21-county area in West Virginia, the coalition won a $62.8 million grant award from the U.S. Economic Development Administration during the Biden administration to spur job growth by setting up a hub of green economy jobs.
The coalition has developed curriculum and training programs for West Virginia workers to develop skills for solar project development, with the EDA reporting it had trained over 300 workers as of September 2024. Within the coalition, WVU developed software to understand what factors support successful redevelopment of former and abandoned mine lands into industrial parks, solar projects and other community assets.
“[M]y fear is we’re building all of this capacity and all of this momentum, and the projects are ready and we’re finally competitive, we’re seeing huge gains, and all of this is at great risk now,†Loudin said.
‘Trying to make it work’ in W.Va. as violations pile up
Katherine Garvey, the Land Use and Sustainable Development Clinic’s director, said the organization represents low-income local governments since many lack planning capacity in land use and real estate law.
“A lot of the places where we work, the local government may have just a prosecuting attorney and a judge,†Garvey said.
Garvey noted that small community utilities have staffs of one to three people tasked with managing not only a utility plant but answering phone calls, compliance work and dealing with equipment that has exceeded its functional life — sometimes decades ago.
“The guys that work at these plants are just wizards at welding and trying to make it work,†Garvey said.
So some utilities aren’t going to prioritize filling out paperwork, Garvey said.
West Virginia’s percentage of public water systems with monitoring and reporting violations under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act in 2023 was 53.8%, well above the national average of 20% and West Virginia’s own 2015 average of 22%, according to a Gazette-Mail analysis of EPA data.
West Virginia had the country’s second-highest percentage of public health systems with health-based violations in 2023 — 26.1% — well above the national average of 4.8%. Only Louisiana’s 27.5% clip was higher. West Virginia had more than twice as many public water systems with health-based violations, 217, as neighbor Ohio’s 104 despite having 3,537 fewer systems.
Garvey noted that some rural area residents drive to a spring in McDowell County to get their water. Many southern coalfield residents don’t trust their tap or well water. Drinking water in southern West Virginia has been chronically discolored and foul-smelling, with common exceedances of iron and manganese that leave water rusty or black, with a metallic taste, even when those contaminants aren’t considered a public health risk.
“It’s certainly not very convenient to have to drive to get water,†Garvey observed.
‘Focus on the real issues’
With federal support vanishing and flooding setting back West Virginia communities, state lawmakers have made moves that risk worsening the state’s water quality while a state fund set up to strengthen flood resiliency has languished without funding.
The House of Delegates on March 12 voted 82-14 to pass House Bill 2233, an environmental rules package that includes a proposed, industry-backed rule change that would allow removal of a drinking water use designation with more stringent pollution limits for surface waters in certain circumstances and risk a less precise indication of Ohio River fecal contamination.
In a 32-0 vote in February, the Senate passed legislation in that would prohibit the state Department of Health from requiring certain backflow prevention assemblies from being inspected more frequently than once in three years.
Backflow prevention assemblies are added to pipes to ensure water flows only in one direction and keep water and wastewater from intermingling. Plumbing experts say backflow preventers should be inspected and tested annually.
Despite garnering support from community and environmental advocates, legislation that would allow a one-time allocation of $250 million into the West Virginia Flood Resiliency Trust Fund created in 2023 has stalled in the House of Delegates.
, stalled in the House Government Organization Committee, would build on of 2023, which created the Flood Resiliency Trust Fund with a potential — but not required — $40 million allocation. Since then, the fund has gone unfunded.
Thornsbury frowned on the state Water Development Authority awarding up to $5 million to the College of St. Joseph the Worker, a Steubenville, Ohio-based Catholic school whose inaugural class began lessons this fall, through a fund typically used for water and wastewater system upgrades.
