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OSAGE — Growing up in 1960s Osage, Mary Jane Coulter remembers when her town had its own shops, schools and restaurants. Today, Coulter oversees a small museum in her hometown, commemorating the 13-community-long Scotts Run area that starts less than five miles from Morgantown.

It’s not the same community as the one in the black-and-white pictures hanging on the museum’s walls. Many of the homes pictured were demolished and the families pushed out in the late 1960s for the construction of Interstate 79, and the mines that used to employ Osage residents have shuttered. 

Land that had belonged to the community until the 1990s, when the town council voted to dissolve itself, was sold to nearby local governments to pay off community debts, according to what locals told Goldenseal Magazine in 2011. Today, there are only about 80 people living in the unincorporated community, which is mere minutes from newer shopping centers like the University Town Centre in Granville, Westridge in Morgantown, and the Monongalia County Ballpark that opened in Granville in 2015.

Only a handful of Osage businesses, including a shoe repair shop, some music studios and a steel drum studio, continue to operate among a small downtown of mostly abandoned buildings that West Virginia University students painted bright colors a few years ago.

“I never dreamt that it would end up like this,” said Coulter, who contributed to a book on the community. “I think a lot of the change was forced on us, due to the industry no longer being here — the coal industry.”

The underground coal mines displayed in old photos throughout the museum no longer exist in the region like they once did. One of Monongalia County’s last active mines, about 16 miles west of Osage in Blacksville, closed earlier this fall.

Osage’s troubles aren’t that different from other communities in western Monongalia County, or even those throughout the state. Residents have the same needs as most West Virginians — affordable, working utilities, help with abandoned properties, new employers and roadway repairs. Yet despite existing in the shadow of Morgantown, one of the state’s largest metro areas, and having had decades to transition its economy away from coal, the community still struggles.

“A lot of people don’t think of Monongalia County as being a coal community, but really, it was,” said local shop owner Ron Justice. Justice helps run the Mannette steel drum shop and studio across the street from Coulter’s museum. He also works for WVU and was a former mayor of Morgantown.

“In today’s world, if someone mentions Monongalia County and links it to a coal community, there’s a perception that they have other things, they have the university or they have Mylan Pharmaceuticals. … but if the economy in Osage was the same as it was years and years ago, you wouldn’t have any empty storefronts,” he said.

And though Monongalia County has numerous good-paying jobs outside of the coal industry, unlike some areas of the more isolated southern coalfields, one sentiment is the same in both regions: residents are wary that a new influx of money and promises from elected officials will turn things around.

‘Kicking the can’ 

There are still coal mines in both West Virginia’s northern and southern coalfields, but employment is only a fraction of what it once was: the number of jobs in the industry have declined 80% over the past decade.

Places like Osage seem particularly well-situated for an economic transition: there’s easy access to non-coal employment — in industries like health care, higher education and hospitality — thanks to the proximity to Morgantown and WVU.

But Al Anderson, who grew up in Osage  and has lived there most his life minus his 20 years away in the music industry, says even in Monongalia County, other major employers like WVU are thanks to the county’s successful decades of coal mining in the early 20th century. 

“All those things were built up more because of here,” said Anderson, who owns a shoe repair shop next to the Mannette drum studio. “All the money — you got 40 mines, you got a lot of money that comes out of these hills. And all our fathers worked in those mines, back in the day.”

And now communities where coal workers lived, like Osage, are facing decline despite neighboring one of the state’s largest cities. Residents presented a list of requests to address their crumbling infrastructure — road work, sewer system updates, help with redeveloping old buildings and attracting employers — to a bipartisan group of state lawmakers earlier this month. 

The group has been hosting meetings around the state in coal communities. According to House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, they’re charged with “really determin[ing] what our coal communities need to succeed so they can come back to us with solid recommendations and then drive those solutions home to the full Legislature when we come back next session.”

The Monongalia County meeting in the Scotts Run area was the bipartisan group’s fourth so far, following two meetings in the southern coalfields and one in Marshall County. Others are planned later this month.

“This is not just another kicking of the can down the road,” co-chair of the working group, Delegate Mark Dean, R-Mingo, told community members. “Your ideas, your input, will be legislation.”

While the committee was set up to “help find solutions to the problems facing coal communities,” lawmakers seem, perhaps understandably, focused on billions of federal dollars available specifically for coal communities, as well as money from the recently-signed $1 trillion infrastructure bill.

“The challenges of coal communities are real, and there are probably going to be more and more challenges in the near future,” said Delegate Evan Hansen, D-Monongalia. “But, we have a huge amount of federal resources that are directed into coal communities, and billions of dollars that will be coming to West Virginia, or at least be available to West Virginia, if we know what we want to do with these funds.”

But Osage community members are unsure when or whether any of their requests will be addressed. 

“We have people come from Charleston every other year,” Anderson said. “They come to speak at our street fair, and then we never see them again.”

And of the roughly 50 people who showed up at the Monongalia County meeting to share their priorities with the lawmakers, few identified themselves as living in the former Scotts Run coal communities. Many lived and worked in Morgantown and suburbs like Star City. Some were associated with WVU, or working as advocates for the environmental and energy sectors. There were also congressional staffers and representatives of groups like the United Mine Workers of America. 

Some of the money lawmakers are talking about, including $38 billion from federal agencies for coal communities and billions more in federal coronavirus aid, already have been identified and allocated. Other pots have recently been approved, including $1 trillion nationally through the new federal infrastructure bill. And some are still up in the air, like the money attached to the Build Back Better Act.

County commissioner Tom Bloom, who serves the western and southern part of Monongalia County, said he can see a large chunk of that new funding going to broadband. 

“People are asking me to bring factories and businesses out there, but the lack of infrastructure doesn’t tend to bring those businesses,” Bloom said.

But in Osage, Coulter says the problems are worse than no internet.

“I know it’ll never look the way it did before,” Coulter said. “But the county could buy those [properties], or the state, and sell them to the entrepreneurs who don’t want to leave Mon County.” 

Coulter says they need street drains cleaned to prevent flooding. They need potholes filled and sidewalks built, so people aren’t walking along the road. They need public officials to help with shuttered businesses that are falling apart, which could easily be redeveloped or demolished and replaced.

These problems — like the decades-long decline of West Virginia’s coal industry — didn’t happen overnight. And time is short for lawmakers to turn ideas from their community meetings into actual legislation that could be considered when lawmakers return to Charleston in early January.

Reach reporter Emily Allen at emilyallen@mountainstatespotlight.org

This historic northern WV town highlights the needs of the state’s coal communities is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

This story was originally published by Southerly.

Nina McCoy has been waiting for an answer to a question for 40 years: What happens to a coal county and the people who live in it when all the coal is gone? She still has the 1981 articles from when both the New York Times and the Louisville Courier-Journal posed the same question. Now McCoy, the fellow residents of Martin County, Kentucky, and much of Appalachia are on the verge of finding out. In the fourth quarter of 2020, her county produced just over 25,000 tons of coal, according to the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet — a 26% drop from the previous quarter and a 73% decline year over year. County officials say they expect mining to cease altogether within the next year. 

“When I started teaching at the high school, there were 1,100 kids there, and now there are closer to 600,” said McCoy, who retired in 2014 after 31 years teaching biology at Martin County High School. “You’ve just seen an exodus of poor people.”

The loss of people — and coal mines — means there’s a fraction of the tax revenue there once was. Dozens of counties in the central Appalachian states of Kentucky, West Virginia, and Tennessee rely on money from coal companies in the form of severance taxes, which are collected based on how much coal is extracted from the ground. The states place loose guardrails around the revenue that is supposed to go toward economic development efforts, with localities often using the proceeds to offset spending on daily operations. In Kentucky, coal-producing counties also use a percentage of it for civic and social services including public safety, environmental protection, public transportation, health, recreation, libraries, and educational facilities. 

Southerly covered this downward trend in 2019, and it’s only worsened in the two years since. Martin County’s economic assistance-based coal severance revenue fell from $1.2 million in FY 2011 to just $79,085 in FY 2021— a drop of 93% in just a decade. 

“Once we’re declared a non-producer, which is right around the corner, we won’t have any coal severance left,” said Martin County Judge Executive Victor Slone. “We’re operating on a bare-bones budget. There’s nowhere really to cut right now. The only other option is to raise taxes on the poorest people in the commonwealth.”

It’s a story playing out all over central Appalachia: Kentucky coal production declined by two-thirds from 2011 to 2019; West Virginia coal production fell 31%; Virginia fell 48%. And as coal mines have disappeared, so has the population. There are 2,000 fewer people in Martin County than in 2010, and the poverty rate has hovered between 34% and 45% for the last decade. 

For 50 years, economists and researchers have warned the coal industry would permanently wane, and yet political leaders continue to offer hollow promises about its prospects for a comeback. External support for a broad economic transition looks closer than ever before: President Joe Biden’s administration says it will prioritize coal communities, and the largest union for coal miners recently endorsed a plan to move towards clean energy if miners are offered well-paying jobs in the industry. During the COVID-19 pandemic, money has flowed in through the two congressional stimulus packages, offering a buffer against layoffs and related revenue plunges. 

Martin County received federal pandemic relief last year, and is slated for another $2.1 million through the American Rescue Plan, according to Slone. That money is largely set aside for broadband, sewer and water infrastructure, and COVID-19 relief. Nearby Harlan County has reduced its employees through attrition, cutting parks programs, and reducing the hours and seasonality of a boat dock. 

Harlan County Judge Executive Dan Mosley said he and his peers are preparing for the infusion by lining up needed water, sewer, and broadband internet projects. At the same time, infrastructure money can’t be applied to daily operations. “We don’t have the luxury to use it to balance the budget,” Mosley said. 

Without more substantial federal support or a clear plan, the long-term outlook is hazy. Residents and local officials are struggling, helping each other survive through a patchwork system of mutual aid networks, fundraisers, and small grant programs.  

“We’ve hit our new baseline [for coal revenue],”said Sean O’Leary, senior policy analyst at the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. “We’ve kind of bottomed out, and this is the new reality going forward.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has made the problem of lost revenue and civic services even more urgent. Rural mountain counties were among the last to see documented cases of COVID-19, but became fertile areas for its spread based on high rates of co-morbidities and a withered system of hospitals and clinics. The coalfields’ long-running decline in population has also resulted in lower school enrollment and a resulting drop in state funding, and during the pandemic, unreliable broadband service made virtual school harder for many families. 

In late March, President Biden announced his $2.25 trillion infrastructure package, the American Jobs Plan, in Pittsburgh — Appalachia’s most prominent city. Parts of the package are clearly aimed to relieve distressed coal communities by reclaiming abandoned coal mines and gas wells, creating thousands of union jobs, and laying the groundwork for new economic growth in sectors like clean energy.

Even if the Biden administration is able to pass the bill through Congress, McCoy, from Martin County, remains skeptical that it will be put to good use. She’s seen a lot of federal and grant money pass through Martin County in the past, starting in 1964 when President Lyndon Johnson traveled here to pitch his “War on Poverty” programs.

Martin County’s median household and per capita incomes lag the state’s by about 10 percentage points, for example. It trails the state average of people that have graduated high school or have a college degree by about 12 percentage points. Only 37% of Martin County residents over 16 are counted in the workforce, versus 59% statewide. 

Other coal counties across the region struggle with similar problems. They serve populations with higher poverty rates, older residents, and poorer health outcomes, while also dealing with challenges such as aging infrastructure and vulnerability to flooding. In recent months, residents have taken to Facebook and other social media to set up mutual-aid networks to ensure that every family that needs help can ask for it within an emotionally supportive environment. “We know that things are extra tough in the hills and hollers right now,” reads the group description for EKY Mutual Aid. Members post when they need clothes, food, help with rent, or are running free yard sales. 

Central Appalachian states need a more coordinated and supportive approach to helping residents, but each is dealing with these issues slightly differently due to varying partisan control. Democrats control the governorship and state legislature in Virginia. Republicans control them in West Virginia. And Kentucky is split between a Democratic governor and Republican state legislature.

Virginia lawmakers recently repealed the state’s two coal tax credits, which were intended to spur production of metallurgical (steel-making) coal and encourage the use of coal in power plants. The credits subsidized the coal industry; a study by Virginia’s audit commission found that they lost money and sustained only a handful of jobs. Their most concrete effects were propping up the industry and effectively replacing lost severance tax revenue to fund the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority, which tries to attract new businesses and grow existing ones through marketing and providing low-interest loans. Now that the tax credit is gone and only four coal-producing counties have severance tax revenue, the authority will likely shrink its operations and perhaps eliminate the loans, said its director, Jonathan Belcher. 

West Virginia’s coal industry fared better the last several years than in Kentucky or Virginia. But it has shrunk. “Looking at the past 12 months, we’ve done basically OK,” said analyst O’Leary. “A lot of that can be attributed to the stimulus. But revenue projections for the out-years are down significantly.”

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice aggressively pursued a proposal this year to cut the state income tax and raise other taxes — including changes to oil, natural gas, and coal severance taxes — but the supermajority Republican state legislature failed to pass it. Instead, they approved a bill that would affect how oil and natural gas infrastructure is taxed in ways that will likely reduce local revenue. In Boone County, which used to be West Virginia’s top coal county, commissioners recently ordered staff cuts that included losing five sheriff’s deputies. 

A similar situation happened in Martin County two years ago. Sheriff John Kirk went viral with his Facebook warning to residents about budget problems. Today, he says he’s still in the same position and without enough funds to operate. On Saturdays, he gets help from two deputies still training in the police academy, but other times he often responds to calls across the county by himself. He’s not confident those two deputies will stay in Martin County once they graduate — they typically leave. “Why would you work at a sheriff’s office with no healthcare insurance for $12 an hour, when you can go to another sheriff’s office with better pay?” he said.

McCoy is at the forefront of a push in Martin County to get the state and federal governments to address problems like these — especially failing and polluted drinking water infrastructure. She’s also grown weary of failed promises; when money has flowed in, its effectiveness is often disrupted by financial mismanagement and sometimes local corruption. Perhaps most of all, McCoy said she often wonders why nobody saw all of these problems coming sooner. 

“Since 1981, we’ve been waiting for this to happen,” McCoy said. “What is wrong with leaders that haven’t tried to answer that question that was asked 40 years ago? It’s a lack of vision.”

Biden vows to support struggling Appalachian counties, but residents are weary of failed promises is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy expected scrutiny for accepting a $19.5 million gift from the pipeline’s developer but believes time will show it was the right decision. 

Maury Johnson has been tangling with a long, skinny, unwelcome intruder — the Mountain Valley Pipeline — on his West Virginia homestead for close to six years.

He and his rural neighbors figured the Appalachian Trail Conservancy would continue to back them as they strategized to prevent the long-delayed, contentious natural gas pipeline from being buried along 303 miles of sensitive West Virginia and Virginia habitat.

So, Johnson was crestfallen when he learned in mid-August that the nonprofit Conservancy had signed a $19.5 million “voluntary stewardship agreement” with the handful of companies building the pipeline. A Conservancy staffer delivered the news via telephone minutes before a press release landed in his inbox.

“It shocked me so much that I almost fell to the floor,” said the 60-year-old retired farmer and former teacher from Monroe County. “At first, I wanted to drop my membership in the Conservancy. But then I thought, wait a minute, membership gives me power because they have to be responsive to members.” 

The Conservancy, founded in 1925, is the guardian of the storied footpath that stretches 2,193 miles from Georgia to Maine. Its charge, the Appalachian National Scenic Trail, is a unit of the National Park Service.

Johnson convinced his anti-pipeline colleagues to hold off on a protest at the Conservancy headquarters in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, until he composed a letter to Sandi Marra, the president and CEO of the nonprofit, and checked in with other allies.

“I didn’t want to be confrontational with Sandi,” he said, adding that other Conservancy staffers had reassured him that anti-pipeline efforts would not be ignored just because of the pact. “I wanted to give ATC the benefit of the doubt, to trust but verify.”

Johnson is upset enough that the Mountain Valley Pipeline is slated to be buried under a lengthy section of his 150-acre farm. But he’s also heartsick because his once-pristine view of Peters Mountain is now of chain-sawed trees.

That’s about 11 miles from his home and where the pipeline will likely cross under the Appalachian Trail in the Jefferson National Forest on the Monroe County, West Virginia-Giles County, Virginia border.

Johnson first bonded with the iconic treasure as a teen when he helped with trail maintenance.

He’s resentful that pipeline construction is leaving what he calls a 30-mile scar from Peters Mountain to Keeney Knob. Continued destruction nearby, he said, spoils the view of Sinking Creek Mountain from Kelly Knob, an Appalachian Trail landmark.   

“Every time you crest a ridge, you see it coming at you like a big snake,” he said. “It’s right in your face.”

Johnson serves on the executive committee of the Preserve Our Water, Heritage and Rights (POWHR), a coalition of Virginia- and West Virginia-based local grassroots groups that have combined forces with the Appalachian Blue Ridge Alliance to halt fossil fuel pipelines. 

They might not have felt as deflated by the Conservancy’s agreement had it not come on the heels of the July cancellation of Dominion Energy’s Atlantic Coast Pipeline.

Ostensibly, both pipelines were designed to carry a glut of hydraulically fractured natural gas in West Virginia to a market in North Carolina that close observers say is non-existent. At 600 miles, the Atlantic Coast Pipeline  was twice as long as Mountain Valley — and also received more than double the amount of attention.

For one, Atlantic Coast traversed a wealthier stretch of Virginia, and two, activists could go after a local bogeyman because the joint venture was led by Richmond-based Dominion. 

The ownership of Mountain Valley is more distant. The limited liability company is a joint venture of EQM Midstream Partners, NextEra Capital Holdings, Con Edison Transmission, WGL Midstream and RGC Midstream. 

“Mountain Valley is the ugly stepsister pipeline that nobody wants to talk about,” Johnson said. “All along I’ve said that the powers that be will let Mountain Valley be built to keep the Atlantic Coast from being built.”

Charges of greenwashing

The nebulous subject line of the initial news release circulated August 17 by the Conservancy states, “Voluntary Stewardship Agreement to Advance A.T. Conservation.”

Subsequent paragraphs in the body of the email spell out that the Mountain Valley Pipeline LLC initiated contact with the Conservancy more than a year ago.

Marra emphasized in an interview that the Conservancy will not use the money to mitigate damage caused by pipeline construction. 

Instead, the organization will dedicate at least 80% of what is by far the largest donation in its 95-year history to managing and protecting land to enhance the trail corridor in West Virginia and Virginia. An expansive inventory of high-priority, climate-resilient lands and fabled vistas in the region includes some 5,000 acres.

The remainder of the money will support recreation-based economies in tiny, remote communities that haven’t capitalized on their proximity to the Appalachian Trail. 

While some activists with environmental organizations said Mountain Valley’s payout had a bad odor, few want to go on the record criticizing an entity active in land protection.

However, Lee Williams didn’t hesitate to label it greenwashing. She co-directs Green New Deal Virginia.

“It’s an example of a group accepting money from a bad actor and allowing them to greenwash their image,” Williams said. “This is infuriating for people who know what’s going on with pipelines. For those who don’t, they’re the ones who will think that pipeline companies are wonderful for doing this.”

The Richmond resident, active as a volunteer with the Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club, has organized numerous anti-pipeline events.

“I always felt the Mountain Valley Pipeline route would be a sacrifice zone,” Williams said.

Initially, paid staffers at the Sierra Club’s Virginia chapter were willing to grant interviews about the voluntary stewardship agreement.

Later, chapter spokesperson Tim Cywinski, responded to a reporter’s query via email: “Actually, I just realized that the Sierra Club will not be weighing in on this story. We are not connected with this particularly (sic) aspect of MVP.” 

Chapter staffers were more than willing to discuss the multiple reasons they had joined other organizations to stop the pipeline.

Conservancy: ‘We’re not the Sierra Club’

Marra emphasized that the Conservancy is not a broad-reaching environmental organization. Its chief reason for existence is protecting the Appalachian Trail, a unique resource that requires unique management considerations.

“We’re not the Sierra Club. We never say the trail is a green wall to stop all energy projects,” she said. “That’s not our role.”

For instance, she said, the Conservancy’s wind power policy wouldn’t support projects that scar viewsheds. The nonprofit also has a five-year-old pipeline policy.

At the same time, she’s not unsympathetic to the hurt Johnson and his colleagues have expressed.

While the Conservancy has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with local groups trying to halt the Mountain Valley or keep its design from harming the trail, causing landslides in fragile karst landscapes and sullying water sources, leaders’ belief that the pipeline would eventually be completed nudged them to the bargaining table.

“We went in very skeptical and with our eyes wide open,” Marra said. “And we had to factor in us burning some bridges and facing scrutiny. This had to be a win for the Appalachian Trail.”

The Conservancy hired an experienced law firm to help negotiate a financial amount that could make on-the-ground differences and also partnered with the Conservation Fund. 

“This is brand new and quite a stretch for us,” she said. “The Conservation Fund has the capacity to help guide us through this.” 

The Virginia-based fund has helped protect 8 million acres nationwide since it was created in 1985. 

Marra said the pipeline builders who approached the Conservancy last autumn seemed sincere and contrite.

“The people I dealt with were honest in acknowledging that there had been significant mistakes and poor handling of this pipeline project,” she said. “At the end of the day, this is about protecting the Appalachian Trail and sometimes this creates less-than-ideal bedfellows.” 

While Marra understands frustrations voiced by Johnson and others whose lives have been disrupted by pipeline planning and construction, she said the majority of Conservancy members and its affiliates have been supportive. 

She addressed the agreement at the Conservancy’s virtual annual meeting on Sept. 12, where the treasurer highlighted the $19.5 million as a “midyear financial highlight.” She also fielded several queries from critics during the Q&A portion of the meeting.

“I don’t think you judge anybody by one decision, you judge them by their actions,” Marra said in an interview after that meeting. “We might not convert everyone, but three, five or 10 years from now, folks will look back and say ‘I wasn’t happy with the agreement, but now we have lands protected.’

“I’m willing to weather this because I know personally we are genuine in our intent. Managing the Appalachian Trail is the long game.”

A series of self-inflicted starts and stops 

The Mountain Valley Pipeline is actually two projects. The mainline is 303 miles and the 72-mile Southgate extension would reach into North Carolina. In the last five years, costs for the entire project have almost doubled from more than $3.5 billion to upward of $6.5 billion, according to a report by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

That same NRDC report cites sloppy construction practices. For instance, the pipeline owners have paid more than $2 million in penalties for 300-plus water quality violations in Virginia and West Virginia. As well, North Carolina recently denied the operators a key water permit for the Southgate extension.

The deadline for the pipeline to be online is Oct. 13. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is in the midst of reviewing Mountain Valley’s request for a two-year extension of that initial construction timeline. 

Before FERC greenlighted the pipeline project, Andrew Downs, the Conservancy’s Virginia regional director said his nonprofit “finds that MVP’s proposed routing could not be worse.”

“The route snakes through the Appalachians requiring thousands of acres of forest to be cleared and creating gashes the width of a 12-lane highway,” Downs wrote in a 2017 opinion piece in the Roanoke Times. “The resulting eyesores would be devastating to the trail and surrounding landscape, and would be seen from as far as 20 miles away.”

In a September letter, a southwest Virginia environmental hydrologist urged FERC to reject the two-year extension because construction has already compromised the delicate karst topography, formed by limestone and other soluble rocks. It is characterized by steep slopes and underground sinkholes, caves, aquifers and streams. Mountain Valley filed its first application with the federal agency in October 2015.

“Since beginning construction of the pipeline in early 2018, MVP has not been able to control erosion and landslides,” Jacob Hileman wrote. “This has resulted in significant harm to water resources and upland forest outside the project’s limits of disturbance … and most worrisome, situations where buried pipe has shifted as a result of unstable hillslopes.”

Hileman’s 20-page document also points to the ongoing suspension of multiple crucial federal permits needed to complete the pipeline, as well as local and project-wide stop-work orders. He attributes those losses to severe deficiencies in the federal environmental impact statement and process by which the pipeline was approved.

The Conservancy and the pipeline operators stated that “there is no relationship between this voluntary agreement and the various federal and state permitting decisions.” In addition, the Conservancy said it will continue to engage in the federal permitting process.

Hileman also disputes the operator’s repeated claims that the pipeline is 92% complete. His math and measurements put that figure just above 51%.

Marra, the leader of the Conservancy, said she was aware that number was controversial, but that her staff had vetted it. She said she felt comfortable citing it when she spoke at the Conservancy’s annual meeting. 

Critics want to eyeball pact language

Johnson, of West Virginia, has exchanged several letters with Marra. 

And even though she told him in a late September email that “We have no more information to share with you,” he is doggedly pursuing access to the stewardship agreement as he also continues to bird-dog the pipeline operators.

Currently, he’s exploring a petition movement and legal options.

The Conservancy has clearly stated that its internal business agreements, regardless of the subject, are shared only with appropriate staff and officers.

“I won’t take no for an answer,” Johnson said. “I’m not expecting to put a halt to the agreement. I want to see its specific language and make sure it is on the up-and-up.”

He emphasized that what he calls a lack of transparency has soured people in the local communities from collaborating with the Conservancy on projects that advance both the region’s cultural heritage and its connection to a rich recreational legacy.

“We’re disappointed,” Johnson said. “We feel like we got kicked in the teeth.”

In the meantime, he’s keeping his Conservancy membership.

‘Less-than-ideal bedfellows’: Mountain Valley Pipeline payout prompts criticism is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Coal country is not without options. But coal’s long legacy of hope, promises and failure has instilled a political inertia that won’t soon be overcome.

The 28-year-old man clearly had opinions on the future of coal, but wouldn’t share them until out of earshot of a group of unemployed miners at a gas station in southern West Virginia.

“Economically, these coal fields are dying,” he said, adding that he personally was done with coal. He’d finished three years of college before going into the mines, and was considering going back to become a teacher.

That conversation took place in 1956. It was recounted by Howard B. Lee in his book, “Bloodletting in Appalachia,” a history of West Virginia’s mine wars. 

Central Appalachia has wrestled with decline ever since. It’s hard to see the end of coal when it’s been dying for 70 years. 

The industry appeared to have a longer life ahead in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, but the last decade has demonstrated otherwise. Yet despite a steady flow of data and warnings from experts, obscurity still exists, delaying a sense of urgency to prepare for drastic changes.

“Transition in Coal Country” is a collaboration of the Energy News Network and WyoFile, made possible by a grant from the Just Transition Fund. The series, reported by Mason Adams and Dustin Bleizeffer, examines how the declining coal industry presents immediate and long-term changes for coal communities in Wyoming and Appalachia, how those communities are coping with change, and what they might learn from each other in charting a path to a sustainable future beyond coal.

Read the rest of the series:
Part one: What’s next for coal country?
Part two: Coal country faces a healthcare crisis
Part three: Coal communities increasingly rely on federal health programs
Part four: How lax fiscal policy has left states flat-footed as mining declines
Part five: Coal country envisions paths forward in manufacturing, reclamation and renewables

In Wyoming, every bust has been followed by another boom in one fossil fuel or the other. Politicians promised voters that coal would drive wealth in Wyoming for generations to come. Now coal’s demise is met with consternation and confusion. Even as it downsizes, the Powder River Basin will remain the cheapest-to-mine thermal coal region in the U.S. with the potential to pick up new supply contracts as higher-cost thermal coal mines close elsewhere. Wyoming is expected to be the last U.S. thermal coal supplier standing in a permanently shrinking industry. 

“Seems like everybody is going on with their life,” said Mike Wandler, president of Gillette-based L&H Industrial, an international manufacturer that also serves the coal, oil and natural gas industries. “There’s still trucks flying off the lots, people are buying things, there’s not a big fire sale. I guess I would say I’ve seen it a lot worse than this. I’ve seen it where you couldn’t rent a U-Haul because everybody was loading them up and heading out. And that’s not happening right now.”

Both regions stand at a crossroads, faced with the decision to lay the groundwork for a post-coal economy or continue to lean into the fossil fuel-powered economic engine that propelled them for decades. 

As conventional wisdom goes, hope is not a strategy. The coal industry is still contracting in both regions despite the fact that coal’s political allies hold power on local and federal levels. 

In West Virginia, resort and coal baron Gov. Jim Justice and state lawmakers cut the thermal coal severance tax. And still.

“None of the promises that coal was coming back happened,” said Sean O’Leary, a senior policy analyst with the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. “There’s no turnaround. This is a structural decline.”

No off-ramps 

Appalachia produced the bulk of the nation’s coal before it began to fall off in the 1970s; it was surpassed by the Powder River Basin around the turn of the millennium. Along the way, central Appalachia faced a series of moments when it seemed it might diverge from its reliance on coal. 

The passage of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 marked a potential reset point — when the cost of cleaning up abandoned mines would be covered, and new regulations would ensure the reclamation of surface mines in the future. In retrospect, the law essentially normalized the more environmentally intensive techniques of mountaintop removal mining and handed the responsibility of enforcement to state regulators, who just as often worked to help the industry as watchdog it.

In 2013, U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, a Republican and longtime friend of coal, endorsed an initiative to develop a new economy in eastern Kentucky just a year after he had blasted then-President Barack Obama’s so-called “war on coal.” Eastern Kentucky’s prospects have only grown bleaker as coal has continued to wane.

The 2019 miners’ blockade of a train carrying $1.4 million in coal for bankrupt operator Blackjewel seemed to mark yet another moment of cultural shift. Some of the miners went back to work for other coal companies, and one operator that received assets in Blackjewel’s bankruptcy has now filed for bankruptcy itself.

In Wyoming, Blackjewel’s sudden bankruptcy resulted in a months-long pause in the operation of Eagle Butte and Belle Ayr mines, which threw miners’ lives into chaos, but ultimately resulted in no permanent closure of major mining operations in Wyoming.

That lack of a clear rupture in Wyoming coal might contribute to the ongoing political inertia to plan for coal’s structural decline.

University of Wyoming economist Jason Shogren said that with every challenge to coal, Wyoming chose to increase its wager on the industry’s future.

“We knew this was coming 25-30 years ago,” Shogren said. “We knew that there was going to be a push on reducing fossil fuels for climate change with the Kyoto Protocol back in 1997, and people in the state just decided to run with it. They decided to play defense, and now that day is here.”

Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon’s policy director, Renny MacKay, told WyoFile in a 2019 interview that the state is focused on the need for economic diversification, and it is prepared to help communities struggling with the downturn in coal. However, MacKay said, the governor makes an important distinction when it comes to discussions about communities facing the challenge of an energy transition. “We don’t really call it transition,” MacKay said, “because the communities aren’t looking to transition in Wyoming.”

Wyoming isn’t participating in policymaking that embraces a purposeful shift away from coal, MacKay said. It’s fighting against those forces.

In the Interior West, Wyoming is the only state with no renewable portfolio standard or goals for reducing carbon emissions other than Idaho, which already gets most of its electricity from hydropower. In January, Wyoming joined Montana in jointly petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Washington state’s regulatory roadblock to a proposed coal port expansion on the Columbia River — key to shipping more Powder River Basin coal to Asian markets. Gordon said he’ll continue pitching Wyoming coal to potential Asian buyers, supported by $1 million in Wyoming taxpayer dollars. 

Gordon signed into law a mandate forcing utilities to seek a third-party buyer for coal units in the state that they want to retire ahead of schedule. The state launched an investigation to challenge Rocky Mountain Power’s economic and market analysis used to justify its plans to speed up the retirement of coal-fired power plants.

Perhaps the biggest factor when it comes to efforts to transition, for both Wyoming and Appalachia, is whether voters will continue to endorse efforts to save coal or help coal-dependent communities move beyond it.

Transition tools

Wyoming has several resources at hand to help itself in the decline of coal. More immediate mitigating tools include decommissioning and jobs programs among utilities that plan to retire coal-fired power units in the state, as well as coal mine reclamation — a potential $2 billion endeavor in the Powder River Basin. Wyoming also has more than $20 billion in savings and investments — some of which could be used to more directly help coal communities. 

“If we’re thinking about hard times and any kind of insurance package to help smooth out the income stream over half a century, a lot of attention should be paid to the sovereign wealth fund,” Shogren said. “If people in Wyoming were more aware of what they actually have in [state savings and investments], we might be more aggressive in how we choose to invest those resources.” 

A recent analysis suggests the state can give itself more leeway in how it invests its sovereign wealth. “Everyone agrees that the downturn in the minerals industry is bad news for Wyoming,” author Ben Gose wrote in a series published by WyoFile. “But Wyoming’s weak investment returns also represent a significant — and rarely discussed — reason the state is going to have to cut spending or raise taxes.”

States actively seeking coal transition strategies, such as Colorado, are looking toward securitization. It’s a refinancing tool that can help reduce the ratepayer impact of retiring coal units early. Portions of savings from securitization go toward renewable energy and community development projects, which can in turn attract additional funds from the federal government.

Grassroots nonprofit groups such as the Powder River Basin Resource Council (which hosted a series of four webinars this summer focusing on communities in transition), Appalachian Voices and others have generated a font of ideas for assisting communities in transition from coal.

In late June, a range of local, tribal and labor leaders from coal communities across America endorsed the National Economic Transition (NET) Platform, developed through a process led by the Just Transition Fund. (The Just Transition Fund also provided a grant to fund this series.) The platform outlines principles and processes, but largely leaves specific details to be developed by local communities.

Coalfield communities “literally fueled the growth of the nation,” said Peter Hille, president of the community economic development nonprofit Mountain Association in eastern Kentucky. “There is a debt to be paid. Justice demands we bring new investment to these places: to build a new economy, to revitalize communities and to educate people of all ages to be ready.”

Congress continues to consider its role in sustaining coal country, too. In July, U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois introduced “the Marshall Plan for Coal Country Act” to establish a plan to stabilize local economies after a mine closure, fund environmental restoration and provide healthcare and higher education for coal workers.

Another, more regional plan titled “Reimagine Appalachia,” developed by Policy Matters Ohio, West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, Keystone Research Center and Kentucky Center for Economic Policy, proposes public investments to expand opportunity, investing in climate-friendly infrastructure and businesses, and promoting workers rights to rebuild the middle class.

None of these packages come cheap. The geographic scope and sheer depth of the crisis facing coal communities requires a heavy investment that only the federal government is capable of making. Congress has previously intervened for coal miners and their families. In December 2019, lawmakers shifted money from an abandoned mine land fund to prop up the United Mine Workers of America’s 1974 retirement plan, which had been squeezed over decades and thrown into uncertainty by the recent bankruptcy of Murray Energy.

Securing support for an expensive, large-scale transition in coal country will be challenging, especially amid the coronavirus pandemic. On one hand, lawmakers — especially conservative Republicans who represent coal communities on Capitol Hill — may be wary of voting for such a large expenditure after spending trillions on economic stimulus bills. On the other, the transformative effect of the pandemic during a presidential election year may provide a rare opportunity to build political consensus behind a transition package.

“I feel like there’s a lot of energy behind systems change right now,” said Mary Cromer, deputy director of the Appalachian Citizens Law Center. “There are a lot more discussions about just transition now than there were before. Some of that is because just transition is part and parcel to the rethinking of the way we’ve ordered our society that’s going on right now. I am hopeful about that.”

Survival is anything but certain for coal country is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Communities contemplate how to survive a post-extraction economy.

NEW RIVER GORGE — The blue rubber rafts shriek as they slide down steep metal rails, each guided by a crew that will soon be floating down a 9-mile stretch of river, replete with Class III, IV and V rapids and the ghosts of now-shuttered coal mines and processing plants.

Raft after raft descends the skids from a parking lot for commercial outfitters before arriving at the put-in, where guides instruct their crews of clients. The churn of activity is a little lower than what it might typically be on a hot day in late July, but it’s still surprisingly busy for a Monday morning in the midst of the novel coronavirus pandemic. 

The steady flow of boats into West Virginia’s New River also exemplifies the progress that the outdoor adventure industry has made toward diversifying the regional economy around the river. 

“Transition in Coal Country” is a collaboration of the Energy News Network and WyoFile, made possible by a grant from the Just Transition Fund. The series, reported by Mason Adams and Dustin Bleizeffer, examines how the declining coal industry presents immediate and long-term changes for coal communities in Wyoming and Appalachia, how those communities are coping with change, and what they might learn from each other in charting a path to a sustainable future beyond coal.

Read the rest of the series:
Part one: What’s next for coal country?
Part two: Coal country faces a healthcare crisis
Part three: Coal communities increasingly rely on federal health programs
Part four: How lax fiscal policy has left states flat-footed as mining declines
Part five: Coal country envisions paths forward in manufacturing, reclamation and renewables

Signs of the industry’s past in the New River Gorge can still be seen at Kay Moor, where remnants of a coal tipple, coking furnaces and an iron frame reading “Your family wants you to work safely” can still be seen in the forest above the river. 

Fayette County produced 3.2 million tons of coal in 2019, about 3% of West Virginia’s total, but today the county is known less for coal than its plunge into outdoor adventure, beginning with the rafting industry that emerged in the ‘60s and ‘70s as coal was winding down. Outfitters and adventurists were attracted by access to the gorge and surpluses of cheap housing and storefronts in the wake of coal’s post-World War II decline. 

The New River Gorge became a magnet for rafters, climbers, hikers and mountain bikers, to the point that West Virginia historian John Alexander Williams included it as an example of a possible economic path forward in his comprehensive 2002 history of Appalachia, citing “the growth of whitewater rafting and other recreational activities that have changed the New River Gorge from a transportation barrier into a tourist attraction.”

Tourism creates seasonal jobs and economic activity, not just among outfitters and guide services but in restaurant, lodging and other service businesses. 

But “that in and of itself isn’t enough to create resilience in the community,” said Kelly Jo Drey, a part-time raft guide and former Fayette County employee who worked on turning recreation into economic development. “The thing that outdoor recreation provides for the community that’s more far-reaching in its impact is the ability of those amenities to bring people here and keep people here for other reasons.”

As the COVID-19 pandemic pushes more people to work remotely, communities like Fayetteville hope to attract new residents who can do their jobs while living in a beautiful region in close proximity to recreation opportunities. In doing so, the town is competing against numerous other coal communities trying to emulate its relative success by using outdoor recreation as one strategy to diversify their economies. 

Dozens of communities in the Appalachian coal economy have been plotting a course beyond coal for decades, relying on local culture, outdoor recreation, tech jobs and a skilled labor force to expand their economies. 

In Wyoming, where coal’s downturn has been more recent and abrupt, initial responses to expand and diversify have played to “readily acceptable” jobs and businesses that match the state’s culture and labor force, including coal technology research and recruiting gun manufacturers. 

In a move driven by state-level policies, gun manufacturer Weatherby moved from California to the mining town of Sheridan, a community at the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains expanding its reputation as a gateway to Yellowstone and the West. Other firearms manufacturers have also found a warm reception in Wyoming: Magpul and Stag Arms both relocated operations to Cheyenne — citing a like-minded gun culture and policies.

Tourism and outdoor recreation play a prominent role in Wyoming’s economy— No. 2 to mineral extraction in terms of revenue to the state while dwarfing minerals in terms of jobs. More than half of the state is public lands, including six national parks, eight national forests and 13 state parks. Its population density is six people per square mile, second-lowest behind Alaska. The COVID-19 pandemic has made these factors a draw to Wyoming beyond tourism and outdoor recreation, according to economic development officials.

“I really do believe the work that people do remotely [during the pandemic] will accelerate plans for people to do more remote work,” said Wyoming Business Council Executive Director Josh Dorrell, adding that the council is actively working to recruit more tech and information-based businesses to work remotely in the state. 

But the Powder River Basin’s wind-swept grasslands are a long way from Yellowstone and the Tetons, both figuratively and literally. And despite these efforts, there’s no interchangeable roadmap to the essential challenge of rebuilding rural economies once dominated by coal. 

The damage done by decades of reliance on the coal industry — unreclaimed mineland, depressed local revenues, depopulation and environmental degradation — makes it difficult to attract new economic development in Appalachian regions, especially to places that aren’t located along major transportation corridors. Yet for many, moving isn’t a viable option.

“People care about their place,” said Tom Hansell, a documentary filmmaker, author and artist who teaches at Appalachian State University and made the film and book “After Coal.”  “In some cases, people don’t have a lot of options to move — their educational background or financial freedom didn’t allow them to move and find employment. But there’s also an intense connection to place and culture that’s tied into identity. That’s what kept people in those places and provided a foundation — not a financial but a community foundation — to survive.”

Playing to one’s strengths

Keith Kinsinger spied through the observation glass of a whirring Deckel Maho DMU 200 FD — a five-axis automated machining “robot” and one of the most sophisticated pieces of equipment at L&H Industrial’s expansive welding, machining and manufacturing campus in Gillette. He was using the Deckel Maho to cut metal teeth on a large industrial gear.

“I’ve had my eye on this machine ever since I started here,” Kinsinger, 21, said. “If you can dream it, this machine can do it.”

Kinsinger worked a stint in the oilfields after high school but worried about job security. A friend recommended machining courses. 

“I thought that was a good career choice and I started going to college,” he said. He enrolled at Gillette Community College, then finished up at Northern Wyoming Community College in nearby Sheridan. L&H regularly recruits students from local trades programs to find talent like Kinsinger.

The Gillette native said he feels secure in his job, even considering the energy downturn. 

“We’re still keeping a steady 40 hours a week,” Kinsinger said. “I think it’s a good career. Hasn’t let me down yet.” 

The declining Powder River Basin coal industry — once a lifeline for L&H — no longer threatens the company’s viability or ability to keep growing in the heart of Wyoming coal country.

“Even if there wasn’t anything to do here in Wyoming, I believe that the 200 [L&H employees] that are here would stay here working and getting paid the same, and everything would just be shipped to somewhere else in the world,” L&H Industrial president Mike Wandler said.

If the key to diversifying against the cyclical boom-and-bust nature of an extraction economy — or even the loss of a major economic driver — is to play to one’s strengths, then L&H is a prime example in Wyoming.

Seven years ago, coal mining clients made up 30% of L&H’s revenue. Now it’s 10%. Yet the company’s financial position is stronger than ever, mostly because 60% of its customers are outside Wyoming and across the world. L&H started out in 1964 as a small, family-owned welding shop serving the oil and gas industry in northeast Wyoming. It expanded to serve the region’s coal mines as a way to sustain itself during oil and gas downturns. But even that level of diversification doesn’t ensure sustained success, Wandler said. 

It became obvious that L&H’s innovations to save money for coal mines in Wyoming could be exported to mines across the world, Wandler said. The next step was to build on its expertise in advanced manufacturing.

“In Gillette, Wyoming, you can create a heavy industrial business that sells mostly out of Wyoming and out of the country, and that’s where you get your diversity,” Wandler said. “They don’t need to completely reinvent themselves, but you have to be selling into the world economy and you have to be figuring out how you can be relevant in the world.”

Wandler sees untapped potential for manufacturing in Wyoming. He served on the Wyoming Business Council board of directors, and also played key roles in former Gov. Matt Mead’s ENDOW and ENGAGE efforts to drive economic diversification in Wyoming. Many coal, oil and gas service companies can branch into manufacturing, including aerospace and defense contracts, Wandler said.

Local leaders in Sheridan County, which also serves the Powder River Basin coal industry, redoubled efforts to diversify after the coal-bed methane gas industry went bust in 2010. Since then, Sheridan County has expanded jobs in tech and manufacturing, including Kennon Products, which manufactures sun shields and other products for government and private aviation. Other local service companies have expanded beyond oil, natural gas and coal to tailor to wind energy customers; wind developers are poised to invest some $10 billion in Wyoming.

Adventures in reinventing mineland

In parts of Appalachia, coal has been joined, though not replaced, by a burgeoning industry that seeks funding for schemes to repurpose land on and around former mines into new economic endeavors. These ideas range wildly, but often involve outdoor recreation, heritage tourism, agriculture or renewable energy.

Often, these proposals seek nonprofit grants or federal funding from the more than $300 million that Congress has appropriated for the Abandoned Mine Lands Fund that was established through the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Action of 1977. The nonprofit advocacy group Appalachian Voices produced reports in 2016 and 2018 in collaboration with a number of other organizations that promoted redevelopment of dozens of sites throughout central Appalachia, including several that eventually won Abandoned Mine Lands funding. 

The federal funding has also been used to support the development of federal and state prisons, which have become major employers in several coal communities. Not all of those prison projects have found success. 

Other projects aiming to reinvent former mineland have fallen as well. 

In 2016, a plan to farm lavender at a reclaimed strip mine in Boone County, West Virginia, won grants from the Benedum Foundation and the Appalachian Regional Commission, then abruptly collapsed when the grants ran out. Similarly, the nonprofit Mined Mines promised to train and place people in coding jobs, but failed to follow through on its promises, leading to accusations of fraud.

What’s working

Appalachia has seen successes, often small and built over time. Fayetteville, West Virginia, has the advantage of its location near the New River Gorge National River, a unit of the National Park Service, while other communities market attractions in national forests and state parks. Both Kentucky and Virginia have built networks of off-road trails modeled after West Virginia’s Hatfield-McCoy Trails, which wind more than 700 miles across 14 counties in the state’s southern coalfields.

Many communities are building hospitality industries around outdoor adventure in hopes of attracting not just visitors, but talented workers and companies that want to hire them. Making that happen requires infrastructure — and not just basics like good water and reliable electricity, but broadband internet, healthcare access and higher education to train an ever-evolving workforce. In places struggling to maintain basic government services, that’s a tall order.

Even the effort to find solutions has proven beneficial.

“One of the things that really gives me hope is that people are more willing than ever to come together right now — despite what their politics are, despite what they believe in — and think about how they rebuild a thriving community that considers all of the people who live there, all of the people who may visit there, and all of the aspects that are unique to that particular place,” said Ivy Brashear, Appalachian transition director for the Mountain Association. “Previous to the past decade or so, we hadn’t seen that in a way that’s been able to catch fire and spread across the region. It’s really powerful.”

Those conversations have created a new energy among groups like the Letcher County Culture Hub and What’s Next EKY?!, which seek to empower locals to advance their own ideas. Combined with the ability to connect on social media, people are finding mutual support that is slowly changing the internal narrative about coal country.

“What we’re seeing with these groups is that young people are understanding they can live the kind of life they want to live while staying in place,” Brashear said. “A lot of young people are staying in the region and investing in their own communities.” 

Can coal technology and renewable energy help fill in the gaps?

Wyoming taxpayers have invested tens of millions of dollars over the past 15 years to help advance technologies to reduce coal’s greenhouse gas emissions — a significant driver of climate change.

The potential for advancements in capturing carbon from coal is frequently mischaracterized and misunderstood as a panacea for Wyoming’s coal industry. It is not. If the goal is to save or extend the life of the Powder River Basin coal mining industry, the window of opportunity is quickly slamming shut.

That’s because the future of Powder River Basin coal is tied to the U.S. coal-fired power plant fleet, and that fleet is quickly being retired, experts agree.

“We recognize that the clock is ticking,” said Jason Begger, executive director of the Wyoming Infrastructure Authority, which oversees the Wyoming Integrated Test Center — a coal technology incubator launched in 2014 to “scale up” coal technologies for commercial deployment. “If we don’t make some pretty giant leaps in scaling up and commercializing these technologies over the next five to 10 years, I think the [U.S. thermal coal] market is sort of going to pass us by.”

Not all coal technology and research accomplishes the same goal. Begger said some of the Integrated Test Center’s research is aimed at post-combustion strategies that might be applied at some U.S. coal-fired power plants — the most urgent need for Wyoming’s coal mining industry. Other research, however, aims at pre-combustion strategies for yet-to-be-built coal plants — most likely outside the U.S. — or for smaller boutique markets for coal-derived products such as building materials.

The latter has become a major focal point for the University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources, which now has an annual budget of about $10 million.

Wyoming may benefit from the eventual commercial deployment of coal-conversion technologies for building materials at home, or even pre-combustion applications overseas, Begger said. But time is quickly running out for a post-combustion technology fix to help preserve today’s U.S. power market for Wyoming coal.

“At some point there will be a tipping point where [U.S.] utilities feel like reinvesting in their coal fleet probably isn’t a direction they’re going to head, and that’s just kind of the cold hard truth,” Begger said.

Central Appalachia also is looking for ways to prolong the fossil fuel industry. Virginia lawmakers approved legislation to kickstart energy research in the coalfields for ideas such as emissions control strategies and using mine pools to cool data centers. 

Appalachia’s elected officials also are bullish on a plan to build out a new petrochemical industry in the Ohio Valley of western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky. The idea is to extend the shale gas boom of the early 2000s through the manufacture of natural gas byproducts such as ethane, which is used to make plastics and chemicals. A federal report released in June trumpeted potential for growth “at a scale not seen since the Industrial Revolution” through “energy resource production, next generation manufacturing, and petrochemical industry development and expansion.”

Yet that window may be closing as well. The same month the report was released, energy analysts warned that natural gas fracking firms face an impending wave of bankruptcy reminiscent of that which has devastated coal in recent years. For Appalachians, it’s an all-too-familiar pattern.

Wind energy could potentially play a significant role in Wyoming’s transition away from coal. Since 2014, wind energy developers have proposed investing nearly $10 billion in the state, which ranks among the top 10 in the nation for onshore wind energy potential.

For context, cities across America clamored at the opportunity to host Amazon’s second headquarters, a $5 billion windfall. Power Company of Wyoming’s 3,000-megawatt Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Energy Project in south-central Wyoming is a $5 billion project. PacifiCorp, which operates as Rocky Mountain Power in Wyoming, plans to spend nearly $4 billion in Wyoming on wind, transmission and battery storage in the state.

“There is no other sector now, anywhere, that is thinking about a $4 billion investment in Wyoming,” University of Wyoming energy economist Rob Godby said. “This is actually a great chance to diversify the economy and move to a fuel-secure outcome where we could be producing electricity for another several decades.”

Wind, however, is a complicated topic in Wyoming. Despite the fact that ongoing wind energy buildout and upgrade projects in Carbon County alone have boosted local sales and use taxes there 215% during the past year, many lawmakers see any gains for wind as a net loss for Wyoming coal. The Wyoming Legislature continually reexamines how the state will tax the industry, including measures that some wind developers say threaten Wyoming’s potential for wind development.

“We need certainty and stability in tax policy,” said Kara Choquette, communications director for Power Company of Wyoming. “Our project has been under development for 12 years in Wyoming, and only four of those years did wind tax policy not change, or there wasn’t the threat of a change.”

Coal country envisions paths forward in manufacturing, reclamation and renewables is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.