Feb 21, 2026
Eric Engle
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
Extreme and more frequent flooding and related calamities (e.g. landslides and mudslides) are some of the most dire immediate impacts of the anthropogenic (human-caused) global climate crisis in Central Appalachia. The West Virginia Legislature and gubernatorial administration are not taking these impacts or the threat of worse to come very seriously.
While a House of Delegates committee substitute to Senate Bill 390 — “relating to altering conditions for disbursing funds from the West Virginia Flood Resiliency Trust Fund to better enhance flood prevention, safety, and protection”– does make mention of nature-based solutions and prioritization of benefits being directed to low-income geographic areas or areas with a history of frequent or significant flooding events, it eliminates specific funding percentages for these priority solutions and geographic areas, using language that is too vague.
Investments must also be made in the Flood Recovery Trust Fund in order for West Virginians to be able to recover as quickly, efficiently and comprehensively as possible when disaster inevitably strikes in our warming world. Early warning systems and attempts at prevention and mitigation are not enough in and of themselves for West Virginians to be fully prepared for the kinds of deluges of precipitation we have seen strike our hollers, hills and valleys in recent years.
A recent report released by the organization Rebuild by Design titled “Atlas of Disaster: West Virginia” offers an analysis of the escalating disasters threatening our state and opportunities for investments in resiliency. The analysis found that West Virginia experienced 23 federally declared disasters between 2011 and 2024, costing taxpayers more than $950 million in FEMA and HUD assistance. All 55 counties have been impacted. Of the 23 declared disasters, 19 involved flooding and 17 involved landslides or mudslides.
West Virginia’s steep topography and centuries of scarring by extractive industries, coupled with the effects of global warming, make the state uniquely vulnerable to devastation from extreme precipitation events. As the Trump administration Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has now rescinded the EPA’s own 2009 endangerment finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere threaten human health and safety–with probable court challenges to this recension effort potentially leading the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn its Massachusetts v. EPA (2007) precedent, which allowed the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act–states and localities must be as prepared as possible for more and worsening impacts.
The authors of a study from the WV GIS Technical Center at West Virginia University conducted in December 2024, while the study focused primarily on six Southern West Virginia communities, found that “West Virginia has some of the highest flood vulnerability in the United States and 94% of all 286 communities in the state are at significant flood risk.” We cannot afford to be dismissive of this reality in an effort to please and appease certain industries or to be distracted by culture wars nonsense when so much is at stake. Flood disasters are not defined just by dollars lost and economies stricken; they are defined by loss of life and extensive trauma for those who pull through.
Water is life and many of our coal or former coal communities are desperately pleading for clean, potable water (and being ignored by state leadership). But our reliance on fossil fuels and unsustainable agricultural and development practices have disrupted our carbon cycle and therefore our water cycle, causing it to go awry. In West Virginia, this has led to more and increasingly severe precipitation problems that range from too much precipitation in the early part of most years, to too little by the time we get to August and September. We need government–local, state and federal–to understand and accept applicable science and to act in accordance with scientific warnings to protect the people and places we love.
***
Eric Engle is board president of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
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Feb 21, 2026
Eric Engle
editorial@newsandsentinel.com
Extreme and more frequent flooding and related calamities (e.g. landslides and mudslides) are some of the most dire immediate impacts of the anthropogenic (human-caused) global climate crisis in Central Appalachia. The West Virginia Legislature and gubernatorial administration are not taking these impacts or the threat of worse to come very seriously.
While a House of Delegates committee substitute to Senate Bill 390 — “relating to altering conditions for disbursing funds from the West Virginia Flood Resiliency Trust Fund to better enhance flood prevention, safety, and protection”– does make mention of nature-based solutions and prioritization of benefits being directed to low-income geographic areas or areas with a history of frequent or significant flooding events, it eliminates specific funding percentages for these priority solutions and geographic areas, using language that is too vague.
Investments must also be made in the Flood Recovery Trust Fund in order for West Virginians to be able to recover as quickly, efficiently and comprehensively as possible when disaster inevitably strikes in our warming world. Early warning systems and attempts at prevention and mitigation are not enough in and of themselves for West Virginians to be fully prepared for the kinds of deluges of precipitation we have seen strike our hollers, hills and valleys in recent years.
A recent report released by the organization Rebuild by Design titled “Atlas of Disaster: West Virginia” offers an analysis of the escalating disasters threatening our state and opportunities for investments in resiliency. The analysis found that West Virginia experienced 23 federally declared disasters between 2011 and 2024, costing taxpayers more than $950 million in FEMA and HUD assistance. All 55 counties have been impacted. Of the 23 declared disasters, 19 involved flooding and 17 involved landslides or mudslides.
West Virginia’s steep topography and centuries of scarring by extractive industries, coupled with the effects of global warming, make the state uniquely vulnerable to devastation from extreme precipitation events. As the Trump administration Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has now rescinded the EPA’s own 2009 endangerment finding that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere threaten human health and safety–with probable court challenges to this recension effort potentially leading the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn its Massachusetts v. EPA (2007) precedent, which allowed the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act–states and localities must be as prepared as possible for more and worsening impacts.
The authors of a study from the WV GIS Technical Center at West Virginia University conducted in December 2024, while the study focused primarily on six Southern West Virginia communities, found that “West Virginia has some of the highest flood vulnerability in the United States and 94% of all 286 communities in the state are at significant flood risk.” We cannot afford to be dismissive of this reality in an effort to please and appease certain industries or to be distracted by culture wars nonsense when so much is at stake. Flood disasters are not defined just by dollars lost and economies stricken; they are defined by loss of life and extensive trauma for those who pull through.
Water is life and many of our coal or former coal communities are desperately pleading for clean, potable water (and being ignored by state leadership). But our reliance on fossil fuels and unsustainable agricultural and development practices have disrupted our carbon cycle and therefore our water cycle, causing it to go awry. In West Virginia, this has led to more and increasingly severe precipitation problems that range from too much precipitation in the early part of most years, to too little by the time we get to August and September. We need government–local, state and federal–to understand and accept applicable science and to act in accordance with scientific warnings to protect the people and places we love.
***
Eric Engle is board president of Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action.
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Category: 2026, 2026 February, Climate Corner, Eric Engle
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