At its March 19^th Board of Directors’ meeting the Lumos Networks was approved for membership into the West Virginia Coal Association.  Ericka Duncan, their Public Affairs & Marketing Coordinator will serve as their representative.  Welcome to Lumos!

West Virginians for Coal (the WVCA PAC) has endorsed Charlotte Lane for the 2^nd Congressional race.  Charlotte is the former International Trade Commissioner, past Chairman of the WV Public Service Commission and has a long and storied history of protecting the coal industry in West Virginia.  A fundraiser for Charlotte is scheduled for March 27 at the WV Coal Association offices beginning at 5:30 p.m.

The PAC will also support Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito for the Senate seat that will be vacated by retiring Senator John D. Rockefeller, IV.

Past WVCA Chairman Andrew Jordon of Pritchard Mining and Tyler-Morgan Coal will be inducted into the West Virginia Coal Hall of Fame on Thursday, May 8^th as part of the 2014 Joint Spring Meeting of the Association and the WV Coal Mining Institute in Charleston at the Embassy Suites Hotel.  Andrew is a Charleston native and Penn State educated mining engineer who has been and continues to be extremely active in the industry as well as myriad organizations and activities across West Virginia.  Congratulations to Andrew for the well-deserved recognition.

Traveling national exhibit on waterways marries the arts and science at the Clay Center

by Lydia Nuzum

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Like many cities, Charleston was built on a river -- one that shaped the course of its history and something the Clay Center hopes will attract visitors to its latest exhibit.

STEAMworks, the Clay Center's new gallery, will open to the public Saturday. Its first exhibit, RiverWorks Discovery: A Journey of Exploration and Imagination on America's Waterways, features displays from the the National Rivers Hall of Fame, at the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium in Dubuque, Iowa.

The coal industry has lost a true innovator, designer, mentor and friend in the passing of John J. “Joe” Childress of Daniels.

In the field of coal processing, construction, design and operations, Childress, 73, was an innovator.

A construction worker at heart, he started his career in the early 1960s employed by Roberts & Schaefer Construction Co. as a field manager/construction services with responsibilities for assisting in the design of, and managing the field construction services and “start up” functions for, many coal-processing plants across the country and around the world.

In the mid-1970s, he started his own coal-processing, construction services contract services company, and was successful in leading the wave of new coal-processing design initiatives that are used in plants around the world today. He was one of the first to design and construct a “Feed to Zero” type circuitry.

In the 1990s, he designed and patented the only known MULE (Moveable Unit Low Elevation) coal-processing plant utilizing heavy media circuitry known to be in existence.