— Here’s hoping the West Virginia congressional delegation can work its magic one more time.
Word came down last week that President Barack Obama’s 2011 fiscal budget cut out all funding for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Appalachian Farming Systems Research Center in Beaver.
The loss of the facility’s $3.2 million in salaries and another half million dollars in operating costs would be a huge blow, not only to the employees at the center, but to the local economy, as well.
USDA spokeswoman Sandy Miller told The Register-Herald that the Beaver facility is the only one for which the president is calling for the entire location to be shut down.
And in that statement lies the rub.
At a time when the government is constantly calling for ways to make water supplies cleaner and more environmentally safe, it makes little sense to us to close an entire facility whose mission is to do just that.
The research center’s programs include improving rural community water quality linked to livestock production and land-use practices to reduce agricultural and industrial by-products for a cleaner environment.
It also offers assistance to smaller, family-oriented farms in West Virginia and surrounding states.
Such farms often struggle to survive and the demise of the Beaver USDA facility could hasten the death knell for some of them.
U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall and Sens. Jay Rockefeller and Robert C. Byrd have all pledged to fight for full funding for the Beaver center.
While Miller says the fate of the center lies with Congress — “If Congress wants the Beaver location there, it will still be there” — we still have to wonder why it was put on the chopping block in the first place.
It occurs to us that some folks in the Obama administration could have it in for West Virginia. As we know, this isn’t the first strike — think cap-and-trade and the holdup on mountaintop mine permits — that would seriously affect the livelihood of our residents.
Whatever the reasons, it would appear that our congressional representatives have their work cut out for them.
It is our fervent hope that they will prevail.
