Edition: January 3rd, 2015

Unitarians try to create

lasting change after water
crisis
In the wake of the Freedom Industries leak that fouled the
water of roughly 300,000 West Virginians nearly a year
ago, the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Charleston
called out to several hundred other UU chapters for help.
The Rev. Tricia Hart, who joined the congregation Feb. 1,
said the request was one of the final acts of former copastors Mel Hoover and Rose Edington before they retired
at the end of January after about a dozen years of service.
I think that Mel and Rose understood, maybe better than
anybody else, that, you know, every crisis has opportunities
attached to it, Hart said.
The opportunities were more than the roughly 110-member
Charleston chapter had anticipated more than 120
individuals and congregations donated to a fund to provide
residents with clean water during the temporary emergency.

Keeper of the Mountains Foundation, which, through its

West Virginia Water Hub, helped distribute water to rural
areas during the do-not-use order,
WV Free, which hosted Women and Water community
sessions where women and families could share how the
crisis affected them, pose their still-unanswered questions
and propose action
Also, through donations to the West Virginia Rivers
Coalition, the clean water fund has helped congregant and
longtime television journalist Mike Youngren produce a
documentary, with narration by Hart, on the water crisis
and the systemic failure he said it represents.
Nothing that should have been in place to protect us
worked, he said.
Those interested in donating to the clean water fund can do
so make checks out to the Unitarian Universalist
Congregation of Charleston, West Virginia, 520 Kanawha
Blvd. W. 25302. Make sure to write clean water fund in the
memo line.

Havoc for the Holidays

The clean water fund eventually grew to more than

$24,000, Hart said. Almost all of the money came from out
of state, she said.
The unexpected amount of donations led the congregation
to expand the initial use of the funding from merely
providing clean water during the emergency to ensuring
that hundreds of thousands of locals wouldnt have to rely
on bottled water again.
When they first sat down around March or April, the
members realized they all have deep ties to the Elk the
river into which the Crude MCHM and PPH mixture leaked
before entering West Virginia American Waters intake.
So every day for four years through high school, I walked
right across the Elk River, he said.
Hart said all but about $3,200 of the money has been
distributed. It has gone to several organizations including:

A man dressed up as Santa and his female partner caused

much havoc on Christmas night and made off with several
thousand in gifts. (a grainy security camera photo of Kenji
is provided behind him is a female in a ski mask dressed all
in black.

The duo allegedly stole holiday expensive gifts from

multiple North Side Parkersburg homes along several city
streets, according to a release from the Wood County
Sheriff's Office.
Wood County Sheriff's deputies responded to multiple calls
Friday morning of stolen gifts and damaged property. The
couple hit over a dozen homes in their alleged spree of
Grinching.
It is also suspected that they were even targeting the
childrens ward of the hospital though they turned away
before looting anything.
Police lack any leads except the photographs below taken
with a nanny cam from one of the victimized:

Questions surround
insurance subsidies in
W.Va.
West Virginians are in danger of losing as much as $235
million in federal health insurance subsidies in 2016
pending a U.S. Supreme Court decision, according to a
minority staff report from the U.S. House of
Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce.
The report, based on data culled from The Kaiser
Foundation and the Congressional Budget Office, is a stateby-state analysis that estimates the amount citizens will
lose in federal tax credits if the U.S. Supreme Court rules in
March that only states with their own state-run insurance
exchanges are eligible for subsidies.
The case, King v. Burwell, is a set of lawsuits challenging
the subsidies allowed through the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act by arguing that the language of the
ACA allows for subsidies only in state-run exchanges,
excluding the 37 states that have federally facilitated
exchanges, federally sponsored state-based exchanges or a
state partnership marketplace.

*this looks a lot like Kenji*

Perry Bryant, executive director of West Virginians for

Affordable Health Care, said he estimates that with current
enrollment numbers and the average subsidies for this year,
the state would have lost $58.6 million in 2014 had the
ruling been in effect. The committee report bases its
estimate on a prediction that nearly 50,000 West Virginians
will be enrolled in insurance through the ACA by 2016, as
well as an increase in subsidies for 2016.
A lot of the eligibility for these subsidies is based on
income, and West Virginians may suffer more than some
other Americans, Bryant said.
The governors office said in July that it was watching for
the outcome of the case. Insurance Commissioner Mike
Riley declined to say whether the state would move to
create its own state-run exchange, or if he believed a staterun exchange could be operational in time for 2016.

W.VA Missing Increases at

an Alarming Rate
Reports of missing persons have increased sixfold in the
past 25 years. The increase may be driven in part by the
states growing population. But the numbers also indicate
that law enforcement treats the cases more seriously now,
including those of marginalized citizens.

An astounding 10 individuals have been reported missing

within the last 3 months.
Among the most recent missing is a female college student,
a male that disappeared while hiking, a mechanic, and a
young female that was abducted from a psychiatric ward.