Coal communities throughout southern West Virginia are struggling. They have been for years. No matter which small town a person steps foot in, the narrative for decline is the same.
“Once upon a time, this town was prosperous,” the old-timers say. “We had a high school in town and every Friday night, it seems we were all down there watching the game. Oh, and, I know you are too young to remember this, but we had a hardware store on Main Street. I used to go there and buy penny stick candy. You know, back when there were jobs here.”
Today, these once bustling communities aren’t the same as “they used to be.” Main Street buildings sit empty. The high schools have been consolidated. Homes are falling into disrepair. The drug epidemic is destroying families and the lack of well-paying jobs is causing an increase in those experiencing homelessness. For many, hope has been lost.
However bleak this may seem, there is help on the horizon.
On January 27, 2021, President Joe Biden signed an executive order “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad” which established the Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization. The main goal of this group, which has an admittedly long name, is to “promote job-creating investments in communities already impacted by coal mine and power plant closures.”
To promote these job-creating investments, the group had to first discover which areas of the nation have been hardest hit by coal-related decline. Eleven counties in southern West Virginia were ranked number one on that list (Greenbrier, Logan, Mingo, Monroe, Pocahontas, Nicholas, Mercer, McDowell, Summers, Webster and Wyoming). The city of Beckley was ranked number 23 on this list.
Although it isn’t a great feeling to be number one, or 23, on a list like that, it allows this area to receive a large portion of federal money that has now been allocated to help rebuild these communities—to the tune of $37.9 billion.
With this amount of money up for grabs, members of the West Virginia House of Delegates have formed the Coal Communities Workgroup to gather input from residents on how this money can be used to bring jobs back, promote economic revitalization, support energy workers and prioritize pollution mitigation and remediation.
The committee is currently hosting a series of roundtable discussions throughout West Virginia to gather this information before they develop policy recommendations and put together resources to help community leaders write and receive the grant funding. On Wednesday, Oct. 27, they met with residents at Woodrow Wilson High School in Beckley.
Ideas from those in attendance were wide-ranging and included suggestions to build affordable housing or solar panel farms on mountaintop removal sites, to clean streams and rivers, promote tourism and bring back Main Street.
The overall theme of the discussions was that there is not a one size fits all solution to bringing back our coal communities. For this reason, everyone needs to have a say in the future of the state and individuals, organizations, business leaders and government officials need to be aware of how to ask for this money.
Once citizen input is received, delegates will put together recommendations during the next full legislative session and provide information on how this money may be distributed. Through hard work, great ideas and community involvement, this might be a great step forward in making towns economically viable again. While they may never be what “they used to be,” the new version maybe even better.
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