The Elkwater Fork Dam with fall foliage. A paved accessible fishing area below the dam provides an area for those with physical impairments to fish in the stilling basin.

In 1993, several towns in Upper Tygart Valley Watershed in Randolph County, W.Va., experienced a dangerous shortage of water. At a critical point, the water plant was within 72 hours of completely running out of water. Soon after that, local community groups, interested citizens and government agencies began working toward a solution to avoid future water shortages.

The solution they ultimately settled on was to build a dam on the Elkwater Fork of the Tygart River. The dam would create a new reservoir that would provide a dependable water source for the 27,000 people in the watershed. Read more »

Trees on historic survey maps were used to determine property lines (photo credit: Melissa Thomas-Van Gundy, U.S. Forest Service)

Forest restoration would be a lot easier if people who lived a couple of centuries ago could just tell us about the forest as they knew it.

For Melissa Thomas-Van Gundy, a U.S. Forest Service scientist, using original land deeds from colonial America is as close as you can get to actually being there. Based in Parsons, W.Va., Thomas-Van Gundy is using a unique digitized dataset built with original land deeds to determine what a West Virginia forest looked like before European settlement. Read more »

A young student at Piedmont Year-round Elementary School in Charleston, West Virginia gets ready to enjoy a nutritious breakfast.

Recently, I joined students and staff there for breakfast and was delighted to see the youngsters start their day with a delicious parfait along with cereal, juice, milk, fresh-baked muffins and sliced oranges. While balancing the tall plastic containers of fruit and granola parfait proved just a bit challenging for a few of the younger kids carrying breakfast trays to their tables at Piedmont Year-round Elementary School in Charleston, West Virginia, the meal itself was exactly the type of healthy, well-balanced meal envisioned with the recent improvements to school meal standards issued by USDA. Read more »

This is the latest in a series of blogs from West Virginia Student Reporter Abbey Hart on behalf of Bobby Lewis, State Director

On November 16, 2010, a Construction Progress Meeting was held at the Newburg Town Hall. Although progress has been slower this past month, 76 percent of the project is finished. With the exception of 3200 feet of waterline, all of Route 26 is complete. Also, approximately 50 percent of the new waterline has been pressure tested. Read more »

The Town of Newburg, West Virginia was awarded a total of $2,875,000 for the Fellowsville, York Run, and State Route 26 Water Extension Project. USDA Rural Development provided a $400,000 loan, $941,000 grant, and a $185,000 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) grant to the project.  The Town serves approximately 250 households and small businesses with public water service, and this project will add roughly 150 new customers in Fellowsville, York Run, and State Route 26 of Preston County, West Virginia.  The loans and grants were officially closed on July 19, 2010.  Construction started on the project at the beginning of August 2010. Read more »

Dishing it out in the cafeteria.

I recently had the pleasure accompanying Deputy Administrator for Special Nutrition Audrey Rowe and Yvette Jackson, Mid-Atlantic Regional Administrator on a visit to Duval Elementary-Middle School in Lincoln County, West Virginia.  Known for wide open spaces and a laid back lifestyle, Lincoln County is also becoming known as a healthy place. We were there because Duval was recognized with a HealthierUS School Challenge gold award, the first of its kind in West Virginia. Read more »