radioNOVO News WV News Roundup for August 14, 2026

 Good morning.In top state news, the Greenbrier Resort is temporarily shutting down its Casino Club and laying off ninety workers as the Justice family works to finalize a five-hundred-million-dollar refinancing deal with a New York investment firm. Court filings show the temporary closure was triggered while awaiting West Virginia Lottery Commission approval to transfer the casino license to a new operating company. Attorneys for U.S. Senator Jim Justice's family told a federal judge the pause was necessary to avoid daily interest charges exceeding one-hundred-forty-five-thousand dollars as they work to satisfy debt owed to a Texas-based hotel group.In environmental news, state officials report encouraging results following last month’s massive Peoples Cartage warehouse fire in Wood County. The West Virginia Department of Agriculture says after analyzing hundreds of soil, water, and vegetation samples across the region, no fire-related contaminants were detected in local water supplies. While minor trace compounds were detected in some soil, state testing confirms all levels remain well below federal health safety thresholds.Federal safety regulators have released new findings on the April chemical accident at a refining plant in Institute that claimed the lives of two workers. The U.S. Chemical Safety Board reports that employees were not required to wear respirators or personal gas monitors while decommissioning the site when a toxic chemical reaction generated lethal hydrogen sulfide gas. The board noted that both victims were overcome while bravely trying to rescue two coworkers who had collapsed. The federal investigation remains ongoing.In Berkeley County, a Martinsburg man has been sentenced to prison for the murder of his mother, former West Virginia State Senator Sondra Lucht. Sixty-year-old Carl Lucht received forty years for felony murder plus up to ten additional years for assault. Prosecutors say Lucht assaulted his eighty-one-year-old mother in late twenty-twenty-four and left her without calling for emergency assistance.And in Huntington, construction is ramping up on Marshall University’s new Institute for Cyber Security building along Fourth Avenue. The state-of-the-art facility is scheduled to open next August and will feature advanced tech labs alongside space for private industry partners.For more news, download the radioNOVO app. I’m Codi Gaboff, radioNOVO News, a service of Seven Mountains Media.