MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WV News) — While designed as a tour of infrastructure hubs in Morgantown, conversation quickly turned to Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and his recent endorsement of Rep. David McKinley, R-W.Va.
McKinley was present for Monday’s tour, which began at the Morgantown Utility Board wastewater treatment plant and ended at an abandoned mine site, with Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va.
When asked by a national reporter if her appearance with McKinley could be considered an endorsement, Capito spoke positively of the 11-year congressman but stopped short of an official statement of support.
“David knows that, as I’ve told him, that I’m not going to make a formal endorsement, but I endorsed his [infrastructure] vote, and I’m happy to be here with him today,” she said.
The senator and congressman were in Morgantown to examine the need for infrastructure improvements in the area.
“I think the take-home is there’s a lot of need,” Capito said. “There’s still some tweaking that needs to be done to make sure that we’re maximizing the availability of funds for West Virginia. And I’m just really proud of the efforts because we may actually clean up every abandoned mine site pre-1976.”
Capito said she and McKinley were doing the tour because they are both passionate about infrastructure.
“We couldn’t do this without David’s great advocacy and realization through his professional skill, how absolutely important this is to our smaller communities,” Capito said.
“We talk all the time to our cities and counties about how they’re going to have a chance now to clean up their water systems and deliver modernized transportation.”
McKinley and Rep. Matt Cartwright, R-Pa., introduced a bill in the U.S. House to ensure that Abandoned Mine Lands funding included in the bipartisan infrastructure bill can be used for acid mine drainage cleanup projects.
The STREAM Act: Safeguarding Treatment for the Restoration of Ecosystems from Abandoned Mines works within the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which allots $11.3 billion in funding to reclaim abandoned mine lands for 15 years. Approximately $700 million has been allotted for AML projects in West Virginia that will be disbursed over the next five years.
McKinley compared the work being done now to the creation of the Roads to Prosperity program in West Virginia to improve the state’s roadways.
“We were falling further and further behind on our roads and bridges, but that Roads to Prosperity helped out,” he said. “Now we’re going to help even further with mines.”
McKinley added that the legislation will be beneficial to West Virginia, receiving the the seventh-highest amount of funding per capita in the country.
“What I liked about this in particular, that means it don’t just depend on West Virginia money — we’re going to get money from California and Illinois and Florida and Michigan to come into West Virginia, to help us out on infrastructure. We’ve powered the world and especially this country with energy. Now they’re gonna step back in and help us pay to clean it up.”
Infrastructure upgrades, McKinley said, “is not sexy work — it’s work.”
“Every elected official — county, city, whatever — they want jobs,” he said. “You can’t have jobs if you don’t have sewer, water lines, available sites. It’s something dependable. This is the backbone to how you have economic development.”
The public generally only sees the finished product, McKinley said, noting there is a lot that has to happen to get there.
“When people see a ribbon cutting, something happened behind the scenes; someone had to put a sewer water line in there,” he said. “We want the American public to realize that there’s a lot of work happens behind the scenes to get it to that level.”
Looking at the former mine site he and the senator were standing on, McKinley said there was a world of possibility for the future.
“This could be a trout stream — we could go back miles now on this and people can be fishing; it’s great for economic development,” McKinley said. “It’s also for the culture, for the people to be able to have something — that they know that they go mountain biking, they go trout fishing, they going boating — that’s the goal.”