State Focus: West Virginia By CLUI Researcher Zelig Kurland
In case one needs more evidence
of the fact that West Virginia is defined by its mountains, consider
that: it is the most mountainous state east of the Rockies; the
state’s nickname is the “Mountain State,” and
of the 13 states defined as having Appalachian territory, West Virginia
is the only state entirely within this boundary.
This
distinctive topography has dominated the state's social and economic
history. West Virginia University historian James Alexander Williams
cites the incompatibility of the state’s cherished terrain
with the needs of the modern industrial economy as the central
theme of its history. Playing upon the state’s motto, Mountaineers
are Always Free, Williams writes that the mountains come with
a price: “Whether or not mountaineers were always free,
they were almost always poor. Consequently…they have tried
in every age to find their way around, over, under, or through
the barriers to economic prosperity that the mountains raised.”
The evolution of mainstream
development in the Mountain State is largely a history of land-moving
technology, a movement from railroad tunnels and deep mining to
the large-scale “cut and fill” of Interstate highways
and mountaintop removal mines—as well as site clearing for
office parks, shopping centers, and industrial areas. As a poor
state, with energy and natural resources, near the nation’s
largest metropolitan centers, West Virginia has also been industrialized
in places, with major chemical complexes, power plants, and steel
mills, most of which are left over earliy 20th century investments
made by companies that now concentrate their efforts elsewhere.
Partially because it is near the federal arc of Washington DC,
and partly through the successful efforts of the state’s
notorious pork-barrelist Senator Byrd, West Virginia is home to
a number of curious and superlative federal facilities as well.
Here are some unusual
and exemplary West Virginia land uses, recently investigated by
CLUI field researcher Zelig Kurland, for the Center’s Land
Use Database.
Mining Sites
Tygart
River Coal Mine
A large and state-of-the-art underground mine that is now closed,
Tygart River is owned by Peabody Energy, the nation's largest
coal producer. It covers an area of more than 20 square miles,
beneath which underground corridors are laid out in a grid pattern.
The mine was closed in 1995, and all of its 368 employees were
laid off. Many underground mines in central West Virginia have
closed recently due largely to changing air quality standards
that favor “low-sulphur” coal from western states
and southern Appalachia, which burns more cleanly. Coal operations
in those regions tend to remove their coal more cheaply using
strip-mining techniques instead of tunnels.
Sample Mine
The Arch Coal Company's Sample Mine may be the largest surface
mine in West Virginia, with an output of 5.5 million tons of coal
annually. This is a “mountaintop removal” mine, the
Appalachian equivalent of the open pit and surface mines of the
West, that is typical in southern West Virginia. The coal industry
increasingly uses dynamite and crane-like earthmoving machines
known as draglines to displace dirt from mountaintops and expose
the coal seams below. The “fill” is then dumped into
adjacent valleys. In the early 1980s, a typical valley fill contained
about 250,000 cubic yards of rock and dirt. With the expanded
use of draglines and larger trucks, fills can now contain 100
million cubic yards or more.In the West Virginia, more than 300,000
acres of forest have been felled and 470 miles of streams have
been buried by mountaintop removal operations.
Industrial Sites
The Institute Plant. CLUI photo
by Zelig Kurland
Institute
Plant
One of two major chemical plants operated by Dow Chemical in West
Virginia, the Institute plant was originally constructed by the
military in 1943 to produce synthetic rubber for the war. In 1947
it was purchased by Union Carbide. The plant site is now owned
by Aventis CropScience (which had acquired the French firm Rhone-Poulenc),
with Dow Chemical, which merged with Union Carbide in 2001, and
the Bayer Corporation as major tenants. Specialty chemicals are
produced here for use in industrial applications (such as leather
tanning, biocides, coatings) and consumer products (shampoos,
carpeting, crayons, garden hose, antifreeze). Just over a decade
ago, the plant attracted attention because it also produced methyl
isocyanate, the chemical that was accidentally released at Union
Carbide's Bhopal, India plant in 1984, killing an estimated 3,800
people.
South Charleston Plant
The other major Dow plant is the South Charleston Plant. Opened
in 1925 by the Union Carbide Corporation, this plant was a successor
to Carbide's Clendenin, WV plant, which opened in 1920 and was
the company's first commercial ethylene plant. In 1927, Carbide
purchased Blaine Island, then 80 acres of melon patches and beach
recreation, to accommodate an expansion of the plant. Most of
the plant is now owned by Dow Chemical, which merged with Union
Carbide in 2001. More than 500 different chemicals and plastics
are made here, including polyvinyl acetate (used for automotive
moldings and chewing gum) and fluids.
John Amos Power Plant
According to the plant's owner, American Electric Power, this
2,900 megawatt plant burns five million tons of coal per year,
which “equates to roughly 500 coal mining jobs,” and
can power two million homes. Unit 3, completed in 1973, was the
first 1,300 megawatt power plant in the United States. As of 1998,
the plant was ranked among electrical utility facilities by the
EPA as the second-highest producer of emissions in the nation
(second to the Bowan Steam Electric Generating Plant in Bartow,
GA).
Moorefield Poultry Processing
Plant
The more than 1,800 workers in this plant slaughter, process,
and pack one million pounds of meat per day (1.7 million chickens
per week). The plants capacity was doubled in 1993 by WLR Foods
Inc., which later merged with Pilgrims Pride to become the second-largest
U.S. poultry producer. Chicken from this 265,000 square foot facility
is used domestically by fast-food chains and shipped overseas
to 64 countries, including China and Jamaica. During the 1990s,
the size of the poultry industry in West Virginia tripled, making
it the biggest agricultural crop in the state. Chickens are raised
on contract by hundreds of farmers throughout the Potomac Valley;
typical chicken houses contain 20,000-30,000 birds. The industry
generates about 155,000 tons of chicken droppings per year, and
2,000 tons of carcasses from chickens that die before butchering.
Federal Sites
The largest steerable antenna, at
Green Bank. CLUI photo by Zelig Kurland
Green Bank National
Radio Astronomy Observatory
Green Bank is an extensive and historic radio astronomy site, with
numerous large dish antennas. One of the three major facilities
for the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, along with the Very
Large Array near Socorro, New Mexico, and a group of ten dishes
distributed from the Virgin Islands to Hawaii known as the Very
Long Baseline Array. The Green Bank Telescope, the largest fully-steerable
radio telescope in the world, was dedicated in 2000 and replaces
a 300-foot telescope that collapsed in 1988. Facilities also include
the Tatel Telescope, used in 1960 for the first-ever Search for
Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). Headquarters for the NRAO
is in nearby Charlottesville, Virginia.
Sugar
Grove Naval Communications Center
Sugar Grove is a secretive military communications center, with
a two-story underground facility, operated primarily by the Navy.
One function may be to monitor microwave communications for the
National Security Agency. It is located within the National Radio
Quiet Zone, a 13,000 square mile zone established by the FCC in
1958 so that this facility--and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory
in Green Bank --could operate in an area with little radio disturbance.
Relocated Congressional briefing
room at the Greenbrier. CLUI photo by Zelig Kurland
Greenbrier
Government Relocation Facility
Planned by the Eisenhower Administration and completed in 1961,
this formerly secret underground bunker was designed to house
members of Congress and their staffs during (and after) nuclear
attack and is located below the Greenbrier Resort Hotel. Construction
of a new hotel wing and expansion of its golf course served as
cover for the bunker's construction. Portions of the bunker, including
an exhibit hall and two lecture halls (intended for use by the
houses of Congress) were used by the hotel. The blast door leading
to these areas, which can withstand a modest nuclear blast 15-30
miles away, was concealed by what hotel guests were told was an
“expansion joint.” In 1992, the bunker's cover was
blown by a Washington Post reporter tipped by sources who saw
the bunker as outdated and unrealistic. The Greenbrier Resort
Hotel now gives tours of the 112,544-square-foot facility to hotel
guests and the public.
Morgantown Engineering Technical Center
A fossil fuel R&D lab, set up in coal country, operated by
the Department of Energy. One of two government owned fossil energy
labs in the country (the other is the Pittsburgh Energy Technology
Center in Pennsylvania), which are now merged into one entity,
the National Energy Technology Laboratory. The Morgantown center
employs around 300 people on a 131 acre site.
IRS Martinsburg Computing Center
The Internal Revenue Service's National Computer Center was dedicated
in 1961. Data from taxes filed at the IRS's ten regional service
centers is transmitted over secure phone lines to the center,
which maintains IRS “master” files and electronically
examines returns for tax fraud.
FBI Fingerprint Data Center
The FBI's Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System
Data Center is the world's largest storehouse of fingerprints;
its database includes the fingerprints of more than 43 million
Americans. On an average day, 40,000 sets of prints--including
those of suspects in custody and of applicants for casino, day-care,
and federal jobs--are searched against the database. Matches are
made by computer, and then verified by examiners, who are required
to evaluate at least 30 sets of prints an hour. Each month, about
8,000 fugitives are identified by the center.
Alderson Federal Prison Camp
Opened in 1927, Alderson was the first Federal women's prison
in the United States. Famous inmates at Alderson have included
Billie Holiday, Tokyo Rose, Axis Sally and would-be Gerald Ford
assassins Sara Jane Moore and Squeakie Fromme. The original design
was a horseshoe-shaped configuration of 14 cottages.
Transportation Sites
New River Gorge Bridge. CLUI photo
by Zelig Kurland
New River Gorge
Bridge
The last link in Appalachian Corridor L, completed in 1977, this
876 foot tall bridge, which weighs 88 million pounds, is the world's
largest single arch steel span and the second-highest bridge in
the United States. (The Royal Gorge Bridge over the Arkansas River
in Colorado is higher.) It eliminated the 40-minute drive through
mountain roads formerly required to cross the New River. On the
third Saturday each October ("Bridge Day"), the bridge
is open to pedestrians and it is legal to parachute from the bridge
deck to the river below.
Personal Rapid Transit System
Designed to demonstrate the Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) concept:
an extensive network of guideways and small vehicles that would
carry passengers, on-demand, directly to their chosen destination.
First opened for service in 1975, the PRT's five stations connect
the West Virginia University main campus with two suburban campuses
and Morgantown's central business district. The distance between
the two end stations is about 3.6 miles, and each car seats eight
passengers. Riders press a button to specify their destination
when they enter a station, and then wait for the next car to their
destination. Each station is “off-line,” meaning that
it can be bypassed by cars travelling to other stations.
The former highway tunnel entrance,
now used for access to a long, narrow disaster training facility.
CLUI photo by Zelig Kurland
Inside the tunnel, a Boston “T”
railway car and other tools and props. CLUI photo by Zelig Kurland
Memorial Tunnel/Center
for National Response
The tunnel opened in 1954 as part of the West Virginia turnpike,
a two-lane road that required the movement of 30 million cubic
yards of earth. In 1987, the tunnel was bypassed by an "open
cut" that displaced earth from a 371 foot cut in the mountain
to a 311 foot deep fill in the adjacent valley (which replaced
the bridge that had projected from the south entrance to the tunnel).
This cut moved 10 million cubic yards of earth, and yielded about
300,000 tons of coal from the mountain. Since being bypassed,
the tunnel has become an unusual testing and training facility.
From 1993-95, fires were set in the tunnel to test ventilation
designs for Boston's Central Artery/Tunnel project. Starting in
2000, it has been used by the Center for National Response to
train local, state, federal, and military response units. Sets
have been constructed within the tunnel, including a post-blast
rubble area, a subway station, illicit drug laboratories, and
a highway incident scene.
And Finally one last Curious Cultural
Site
The Hare Krishna’s Palace
of Gold. CLUI photo by Zelig Kurland
New Vrindaban
and Prabhupada's Palace of Gold
The New Vrindaban community was founded in 1968 as part of the International
Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) founded by Srila Prabhupada.
It is a spiritual center and pilgrimage site for Hare Krishnas and
other Hindus and, along with the nearby Palace of Gold, a tourist
attraction for everyone else. The mughal-style palace was built
from 1973-79 by unskilled Krishna devotees, who used “do-it-yourself”
books to guide the construction of the palace's marble inlaid walls
and ceilings, crystal chandeliers, teakwood furniture, and stained
glass windows. The community center grounds include a man-made pond,
statues, guest cottages, a health food store, a snack bar, and an
organic garden; a schedule of festivals is maintained on the community's
web site.
