CRMW In The News 2025
Dec 25, 2025
In 2025, Coal River Mountain Watch's work again made news. Here are links to some of the news articles and broadcast stories: 
DEP tells feds to back off enforcement oversight of troubled Lexington, Justice mines, Charleson Gazette-Mail, Dec. 17, 2025. "The OSMRE had issued a notice in October to the DEP threatening to take over enforcement of the mine permit after the federal agency found the DEP may have failed to enforce its own regulations in its oersight of the permit. That OSMRE notice followed a July complaint from Raleigh County-based environmentalist group Coal River Mountain Watch." Lexington Coal's delinquent DEP fines rise past $4M as feds eye inspection takeover, Charleston Gazette-Mail, Nov. 5, 2025.
Army Corps eyes expedited permits for fossil fuel projects, E&E News, Oct. 20, 2025. "This could allow the company to bury streams with impunity, rather than going through the usual required means of getting a valley fill permit," said Vernon Haltom, executive director of Coal River Mountain Watch, in Naoma, West Virginia. "The result would be faster destruction and less regulated destruction."
WV advocates fear ruinous energy environmental costs from Trump aims to prop up coal, Charleston Gazette-Mail, Oct. 3, 2025. "It's dirty and it's wrong," Junior Walk of Coal River Mountain Watch, a Raleigh County-based environmental group that has decried surface coal mining's long-term erosion of southern West Virginia's landscape and biodiversity. Walk was talking about DEP officials indicating they are poised to issue the permit renewal to the applicant, Lexington Coal Co., for its 1,902-acre Twilight South Surface Mine in Boone County's Lower Kanawha River watershed.
WVDEP hosting virtual hearing Tuesday on Boone County surface mine permit, WOWK TV, Sept. 30, 2025. "According to the organization Coal River Mountain Watch, under this permit, the company is expected to cover 1,900 acres, or three square miles, and would extract over 56 million tons of coal... three miles of headwater streams could be buried."
Trump Administration invests $625 million, 13 million acres of land for coal industry, WOWK TV, Sept. 29, 2025. "One of the things the industry likes to say is they have to abide by these egregious regulations, but they don't. We have elevated levels of cancer, heart disease, birth defects, and other illnesses directly related to people breathing this ultra-fine silica dust that has been a know carcinogen for over 100 years," Coal River Mountain Watch Executive Director Vernon Haltom says.
Lexington Coal to "Show Cause" after chronic violations; Citizen watchdogs press for accountability, WOAY TV, Sept. 20, 2025. "The record shows CRMW's actions repeatedly forced movement."
Trump admin plans rollback of rule letting citizens report coal mining concerns, Charleston Gazette-Mail, July 11, 2025. "Responding to the OSMRE's pending proposal, Haltom said that without the federal oversight responsiveness aimed for in the 2024 rule, the DEP will 'return to dragging their feet for months and years to not only enforce the law but comply with the law. Violations will again go unabated well beyond the statutory limits...and the people and mountain habitats will suffer.'"
Mining the lungs of children--Delayed regulatory enforcement in the mountain state, WOAY TV, June 18, 2025. "These companies are effectively mining the lungs of children, and that is not okay in any sort of a moral sense."
