Flash flooding inundated much of Southeastern Kentucky in July 2022, including Breathitt County, above. (Photo by Michael Swensen/Getty Images)

Researchers at public universities in Kentucky and West Virginia are planning to collaborate alongside local residents on a four-year project to better understand, predict and prepare for flash flooding in Appalachia and climate change’s impacts on it.?

Surface coal mining worsened deadly Eastern Kentucky floods in July 2022, study shows

A nearly $1.1 million award from the U.S. National Science Foundation will bring together civil engineers and scientists from environmental and social fields to study a range of topics, including soil moisture’s impact on flash flooding. Researchers also will gauge monitors installed in waterways to help tailor flooding solutions “to community goals, serving as a model for resilience planning in vulnerable communities across the U.S.,” according to the project’s description.?

Researchers will analyze decades of precipitation and streamflow data from the University of Kentucky’s Robinson Forest in Breathitt County and install soil moisture sensors throughout the research forest to better understand flooding in headwater streams.?

Christopher Barton, a University of Kentucky professor of forest hydrology and watershed management and principal investigator for the project, in a statement said researchers want to do everything they can “to build up the infrastructure to understand, predict and prepare for flash floods in this region.”?

“To best help, we also must understand how climate change and landscape alterations affect flash floods,” Barton said.?

The “novel collaboration” is also funding researchers from the University of Louisville, Eastern Kentucky University, West Virginia University and Marshall University. A main goal of the collaboration is developing improved early warning systems to alert communities when flash floods are worsening.

Eastern Kentucky University will also be using the funding to aid high school and middle school teachers develop science education programming and plant trees as a part of reforestation efforts to mitigate flash floods.

Gov. Jim Justice stands with his family — daughter Jill, wife Cathy and son Jay — at his final State of the State address in Charleston, W.Va., on Jan. 10, 2024. (Office of the Gov. Jim Justice)

Federal attorneys asking a court to hold 23 of West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice’s family-owned coal companies in contempt for nonpayment of health and safety fines entered a filing this week saying the companies shouldn’t have entered into a payment plan if they knew they couldn’t honor it.

The filing, entered Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia and first reported by West Virginia MetroNews, comes in response to a memorandum filed last week by Justice family attorneys. In that filing, they contend that the companies in question are too broke to pay the nearly $600,000 they still owe to the government.

In Tuesday’s filing, the federal attorneys say this claim has been made with no evidence and, as such, should not be considered as a valid defense against putting the companies in contempt. Further, the companies should not have entered into a settlement agreement in 2020 if they knew they would not be able to pay what they owe on the set schedule.

“[The companies] willingly and knowingly entered into the payment plan and consent judgment in this case, representing to the government and the Court that it would comply with the payment plan in the consent judgment,” the filing reads. “However, they now claim that they faced financial difficulties at the time of the consent judgment that preclude them from being able to pay. If [the companies] knew they could not comply with the consent judgment at the time of execution, they should have said so.”

In 2023, according to the filing, representatives for the Justice companies told the government that they “had difficulty” making payments, but that the situation would be remedied by borrowing money from another business to catch up on payments. Federal representatives agreed at that time to adjust the payment plan.

“Yet once again, [the companies] failed to comply with the adjusted payment plan. [They] have not provided any explanation for their noncompliance,” the federal attorneys write. “Between August 2023 and?present, [the companies] did not communicate to the government an inability to pay on the modified schedule, nor did they seek alternative payment arrangements with the government.”

In a memorandum earlier this month asking the court to hold the companies in contempt, federal attorneys provided dozens of emails sent between Aug. 14, 2023 and July 9, 2024 reminding the companies of their debts and the past due amounts.

Responses from the companies’ attorneys were few, even as the companies fell months behind on their payments.

“Instead of notifying the government about their alleged inability to comply with the consent judgment, [the companies] have kept their proverbial heads in the sand,” the federal attorneys wrote in Tuesday’s filing. “Even when the government notified Defendants in July 2024 that the government would have no choice but to seek action with the Court unless payment in full was made, [they] offered no explanation or response.”

In last week’s memorandum from the Justice companies, attorneys argued that it would be improper to hold the companies in contempt since their financial struggles are not self-inflicted and have existed since they agreed upon the payment plan. They said the economic downturn in the coal industry is to blame for the financial challenges at the companies. The federal government, they continue, was aware of these challenges.

Since payments were being made — albeit sporadically — from 2020 on, the feds argued Tuesday that this defense shouldn’t stand.

Also in last week’s memorandum, Justice family attorneys requested discovery for the ongoing case. While alleging a dire financial situation at the companies, they did not provide any exhibits or evidence to back up this claim in their filing.

In Tuesday’s filing, federal attorneys say that the request for discovery is “unnecessary and a delay tactic.” The companies, they say, are responsible for proving they are unable to meet their financial obligations and evidence underscoring that claim can be presented at a hearing for the case if it exists.

The nearly $600,000 the federal government is seeking to collect comes from a decade’s worth of unpaid health and safety fines at Justice-owned coal mines. The debt, at one point, totaled about $5.13 million from hundreds of violations incurred since 2014.

The government initially filed suit against the Justices in 2019 to collect the money. In 2020, the Justice-owned companies and the government entered into an agreement where the family would make monthly payments to pay off the debt by March 2024. The debt, however, was not paid off.

Justice has maintained that he is not at all directly involved in his family’s business empire, leaving the companies in the leadership of his children despite refusing to enter most of his businesses into a blind trust.

He said earlier this month that, “if there’s a problem, it gets taken care of … We may be a few minutes late to the fire, but we always show up at the fire.”

Last week, however, Jay Justice — Jim Justice’s son and president of several of the family’s companies — failed to “show up at the fire.”

A federal judge in Alabama filed an order last Thursday finding Jay Justice and Bluestone Coke — of which he is president — in civil contempt.

The order, according to Inside Climate News, came after Jay Justice failed to attend a hearing — despite being ordered to do so by the federal court — for a lawsuit alleging the coking plant is responsible for polluting groundwater and rivers and violating the Clean Water Act.

“[Jay Justice and Bluestone Coke] have violated three separate court orders requiring them to produce responses and negotiate, in good faith, dates for depositions,” the order reads.

The story is republished from West Virginia Watch, a sister publication to the Kentucky Lantern and part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network.

(Getty Images)

Entrepreneurs in Appalachia have ideas for renewable energy projects, but finding funding in rural and low-income areas can be challenging. A new initiative, the Green Bank for Rural America, could help channel funds to small, rural, nonprofit lenders to support projects like community solar arrays, apprenticeships in renewable energy fields and electrified public transit, just to name a few.

The green banking movement began as a way to finance small green energy projects. Banks loan money to businesses all the time, but loan processes can be difficult for business owners in low-income or rural communities. Community development financial institutions, or CDFIs, play a crucial role in supporting projects that otherwise might not get financed.

“CDFIs kind of serve as the on ramp for communities and banks on the highway,” Donna Gambrell, president of Appalachian Community Capital (ACC), said. The firm works to leverage resources toward low-income Appalachian communities through CDFIs. These small, community-based lenders are often better positioned to help businesses and people in under-invested areas.

New federal funding will help ACC provide more assistance to their small lender network. The steering committee for the Green Bank includes multiple CDFIs from across the Appalachian Region, including CommunityWorks Carolina, Grow America, Coalfield Development, Inc. and others.

The Environmental Protection Agency awarded ACC $500 million in seed funding to start a Green Bank for Rural America. The bank will prioritize the Appalachian region’s 582 counties, while also serving other communities across rural America, particularly low-income communities, communities of color, and communities in transition from fossil fuels. Gambrell said the bank will leverage private capital to create thousands of jobs in renewable energy.?

“We wanted to make sure that these were high impact projects, green projects, renewable energy projects that were in low wealth rural communities,” Gambrell said. “The projects themselves would help create jobs that stay in hard hit communities.”

The funds are part of the EPA’S $27 billion Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which was created explicitly to support nonprofit lenders with a history of deep community relationships and investment in local projects. They are also intended to leverage further private investment, which ACC predicts could amount to $1.6 billion for the Appalachian region in total.?

The Green Bank is intended to raise the capacity for community lenders and allow for increased investment in all phases of energy transition and climate resilience, including workforce training, renewable energy storage, electric transit, home energy efficiency and disaster relief.

The money will support work that’s been going on in communities for a long time, Robin Gabbard, the president of Eastern Kentucky’s CDFI, the Mountain Association, said.??

In Eastern Kentucky, the Mountain Association supports rural community centers, groceries, small businesses, charities and homeowners by financing solar panels and energy retrofits that have saved them thousands.?

Gwen Christon runs an IGA grocery store in Isom, a town in Eastern Kentucky that already struggles with exorbitantly high power bills and a lack of grocery options. Climate change is worsening both problems. When her store was devastated by a flood, Christon had to start over, turning her town into a food desert as she searched for ways to reopen, Gabbard said. The Mountain Association helped Christon get funds for improved coolers, heating and air.?

“They’re reaping the benefits of reduced energy costs, so that they can reinvest back into their businesses and continue to grow their workforce, provide lower cost groceries,” Gabbard said.

Western North Carolina is served by five members of Appalachian Community Capital: Carolina Small Business Fund, Carolina Community Impact, Mountain BizWorks, Institute Capital and Piedmont Business Capital.The institutions are preparing to be ready to go when the new funding becomes available in 2025.

This story is republished from Blue Ridge Public Radio and is made possible ?through a partnership between BPR and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.

The family cemetery in Breathitt County where J.D. Vance's grandparents and other ancestors were laid to rest, a place he evoked in a recent speech. (Kentucky Lantern photo by Kevin Nance)

JACKSON — In the 24 hours after J.D. Vance became Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s running mate, Stephen Bowling, director of the Breathitt County Public Library, fielded more than a dozen calls from news media outlets large and small.

The place that Vance in his best-selling memoir wrote “would always have my heart” is back in the spotlight, as the freshman U.S. senator from Ohio prepares to address a national television audience and the Republican National Convention Wednesday night.

Searching for traces of Vance in his ancestral home takes you down winding blacktop through the deep shade of creeksides, past bright fields of Queen Anne’s lace and bottomland plots of corn. It takes you onto people’s porches to ask directions, where, contrary to popular stereotype, an approaching stranger is no big deal. It takes you into a place that is steeped in political violence.

Bloody Breathitt, as it came to be known, was the scene of one of Appalachia’s deadliest feuds.

The violence unfolded in the late 19th century at a time of economic upheaval that sometimes inflamed lingering Civil War animosities. The arrival of the railroad and the coal industry set off a boom that created winners and losers and an “explosion of wealth” that Bowling says communities struggled to manage.

“We still shoot at each other today,” he adds. “We just do it on Facebook. We still shoot a warning shot over people’s heads. We snipe at people. We do it from a keyboard.”?

Still a place of conflicting political loyalties, Breathitt County votes Republican in national elections while most of the voters and local elected officials remain registered Democrats. Breathitt sent a Democrat to the Kentucky House until Republicans redrew the district. In both his runs for president, Republican Donald Trump carried Breathitt. So did Democrat Andy Beshear in both his runs for governor.

Breathitt County’s 13,500 residents have not escaped the bitter polarization dividing the country, says Mark Wireman, who was giving a tour to a reporter from a national news outlet.

Wireman, who was Gatewood Galbraith’s running mate in the 2007 Kentucky Democratic primary for governor, describes himself now as a “Rand Paul, Thomas Massie, Mike Lee Republican.” Wireman worries the nation’s debt is unsustainable and blames President Joe Biden and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky for “kicking that can down the road.”

A longtime family friend who knows Vance, Wireman says the former Marine, Yale Law School graduate and recent venture capitalist is “intelligent, conscientious, God-fearing.”

“I guess I’m happy for him. Some people, his family are scared for him due to what is going on in the country,” a reference to last weekend’s assassination attempt on Trump. “It’s a crazy time. I’ll be praying for him and the country.”

Vance’s grandparents migrated to Middletown, Ohio, where his grandfather worked in an Armco steel mill and where Vance was born in 1984. The family often returned to Breathitt County, where Vance also spent time during summer vacations.

Vance evoked his Kentucky roots in a speech July 10 at ?a conference organized by the New Right group National Conservatism in which he criticized U.S military aid to Ukraine, free trade policies and immigration. Building to a conclusion, he spoke of driving down Kentucky Route 15 to Jackson “where all my relatives came from, the deep heart of Central Appalachia” and recalled proposing to his wife. “I said, honey, I come along with $120,000 worth of law school debt and a cemetery plot in Eastern Kentucky.”

He said he hopes he, his wife and children will be laid to rest “in that small mountain cemetery,” bringing its inhabitants to “seven generations of people who have built this country, who have made things in this country, and who would fight and die to protect this country if they were asked to.”

Whitney Haddix said a friend sent her a clip from Vance’s speech and his words touched her. Haddix, her husband, Brandon, and their three children live just a few hundred yards down the hill from Vance’s family cemetery, one of countless small cemeteries dotting the mountains.

“I feel like he remembered where he came from, that he has appreciation for where he came from and that he hasn’t forgotten, and that means more than words,” she said. “We are not Eastern Kentucky hillbillies. We are not just barefoot and pregnant. We are human beings who actually work hard and who do our best and who are the type of people who will take their shirt off their back to help people. That’s what we do. That’s what’s ingrained in us.”

The Haddix family’s home is near Frozen Creek in a three-acre clearing on the edge of a steep old forest; they also own her grandparents’ nearby farm. Vance has bought more than 100 acres in the area, a buffer that protects the cemetery and tombstone of Bonnie Blanton Vance, the beloved “mamaw” who brought stability to a childhood roiled by Vance’s mother’s addiction.

Sitting on her porch, under which a litter of kittens played, Whitney Haddix said, “I feel like J.D. Vance would do what is right. I feel like he would fight for our country. I’m not a Republican. I’m not a Democrat. I go with what I feel, but I feel as though we need somebody who will stand up for us, for the people they are elected to protect and take care of.”

A registered nurse, Haddix also praises Democrat Beshear, especially for his leadership during the pandemic.

“We are Trump supporters,” she said, adding, intriguingly, that she also is waiting to see who the Democrats nominate for president.

Breathitt residents are aware that the book that put a 31-year-old Vance on the national stage in 2016 to explain the working-class white backlash that helped elect Trump also spurred a backlash among Appalachians. “Hillbilly Elegy” has been criticized for perpetuating the worst stereotypes about the region and its people. The memoir was made into a Netflix movie by producer Ron Howard.

“J.D. Vance is not representative of the Appalachia I know and love,” says Mandi Fugate Sheffel, a Breathitt County resident and founder and owner of a bookstore in nearby Hazard. “He’s not for working people.”

She says she guides customers browsing the Read Spotted Newt’s Appalachian section to books that provide a more complete, nuanced view than “Hillbilly Elegy” of the region’s ethnic and racial diversity and its complexity, including the systemic forces and extractive industries that have saddled it with widespread poverty.?

She recommends Elizabeth’s Catte’s “What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia” and “Appalachian Reckoning” published by the West Virginia University Press; memoirs “Another Appalachia” by Neema Avashia and “No Son of Mine” by Jonathan Corcoran (University Press of Kentucky), and fiction by Silas House and Robert Gipe.

“It’s so frustrating that people who live away from here think ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ is the narrative of Appalachia. … It gives them permission to believe everything they believed about Appalachia” and to write off the region as unredeemable and unworthy of attention and assistance. She said Vance leaned into his Appalachian roots so he could brag about overcoming them and that he has flip-flopped from his earlier opposition to Trump.

Bowling, the library director, says Vance “accurately portrayed his family over the years. The book became a bigger symbol of Appalachia than he intended.” If any place has a right to be aggrieved by Vance’s portrayal, says Bowling, it’s his hometown of Middletown, Ohio.

Vance returns to Breathitt County fairly often to pay respects with family at the cemetery and to visit the public library, where he and his sister sometimes research family history, though less frequently, says Bowling, since winning the 2022 Senate race.

Behind the cash register at Indian Hollow Liquors in Jackson, Aaron Combs said he’s familiar with Vance’s story and local connections. But Vance’s joining the GOP ticket does not seem to have swayed his view of the presidential choices awaiting voters. “I don’t like either one of them, to be honest.”

Himlerville, circa 1920, was the coal camp for the Himler Coal company, a cooperatively owned mining operation in Martin County. Many of Himlerville’s original buildings still stand today. (George Gunnoe Papers, Marshall University)

For over 100 years, Himler House stood on a hill overlooking Beauty, formerly Himlerville, in Martin County. Once the site of grand Christmas parties and banquets, the house was eventually abandoned and fell to ruins.

But few of the teens, vandals, and ghost hunters who frequented the abandoned mansion knew that it had been the center of a unique and radical experiment in Appalachian history: a cooperatively owned coal mine.

The Himler Coal Company, founded in 1918, was owned and operated by a group of predominantly Hungarian miners. The founder of the company was Martin Himler, a Jewish Hungarian immigrant who had arrived in New York in 1907 with 13 cents in his pocket.

Over the course of his life Himler mined coal, published a popular Hungarian-language newspaper, owned a series of businesses, and worked for the Office of Strategic Services arresting and interrogating Nazis in post-war Europe. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2021.

Himler’s house in Beauty, Kentucky, was disassembled in 2022 because it was structurally unsafe. But the house is at the center of the Martin County Historical Society’s efforts to preserve Martin Himler’s legacy and revitalize the town of Beauty in the process.

Cathy Corbin is the director of the Himler Project, a group made up of a mix of local government, civic and educational institutions. The group formed in 2014 after the Himler family brought a manuscript of Martin’s unpublished autobiography to the Martin County Historical and Genealogical Society. Corbin, a former English teacher, agreed to edit the manuscript and prepare it for publication. It was through this process that Corbin came to understand Himler’s significance.

“We realized there was a lot more to Martin Himler than just being an immigrant who came to America and mined coal,” Corbin said in an interview with the Daily Yonder.

One of the primary goals of the Himler Project is to rebuild Himler House and restore it to how it looked in the 1920s, when it was the social center of a thriving coal camp. To that end, Corbin submitted an application to have Himler House designated as a National Historic Landmark. The application is currently being considered by the National Park Service.

“It would be a tremendous economic boost to Martin County to have Himler House designated as a United States National Landmark and possibly Himlerville itself as a historic district,” Corbin said.

Himler Coal

Beauty is one of many former company towns in Eastern Kentucky. But it is not an exaggeration to say its history is wholly unique in Appalachian history, according to Briane Turley, a professor of history at West Virginia University and co-founder of the Appalachian-Hungarian Heritage Project.

Appalachian coal camps were notoriously exploitative. Miners were forced to rent their homes from the company at exorbitant prices, and the company store — the only business in town — used their own currency known as “scrip.” Other expenses, from miners’ equipment and uniforms to their transportation, were taken directly from their wages, creating a system of indentured servitude.

Martin Himler experienced this system firsthand shortly after his arrival to the United States. Born to a Jewish family in a small town called Pászto, Himler immigrated alone at the age of 18. With no contacts or resources besides a distant cousin, he accepted “free transportation” from New York to Thacker, West Virginia, to work in coal mines there.

Upon his arrival, he was informed that he owed $32 (around $1,200 in today’s dollars) for the costs of transportation and equipment. Together with the cost of room and board, and because Himler was not a very good coal miner, he expected to go months without any wages. After only eight days working in the mine, he abandoned most of his belongings and “skipped,” running away on foot to find better circumstances elsewhere.

“It was a form of slavery, and Himler understood that,” Turley told the Daily Yonder. “And he literally had to slip away in the dead of night. Otherwise, they would arrest him, have him dragged back into the camp and force him to work until he paid everything off.”

Himler later worked in another mine in Pennsylvania, along with stints doing everything from shoe cobbling to show business. But this experience in West Virginia’s coal mines was the basis for the eventual founding and operating of Himler Coal as a cooperative in 1918.

During the coalfield labor disputes of the 1920s, Himler Coal sought a middle way between unfettered exploitative capitalism and bloody battles for unionization. According to Turley, Himler was able to create his cooperative because he was a well-known and trusted presence in the Hungarian mining community, which was one of the largest immigrant groups in Appalachia at the time. This was in part due to his weekly newspaper, Magyar Bányázslap (Hungarian Miners’ Journal) which was circulated among Hungarian coal miners nationwide.

“Because he had experienced the worst environments of coal mining in Appalachia before unionization, he knew how difficult the work was and how unfair labor practices were among the corporations that ran the mine,” Turley explained. “The mining companies were out for a lucrative, quick profit.”

In contrast, the miners themselves were shareholders of Himler Coal and sat on the company’s governing board, an arrangement unheard of in Appalachia or elsewhere. Himler himself never owned more than 3% of shares, according to Turley.

Himlerville

Himler Coal’s unique structure was also reflected in its company town, Himlerville. Unlike standard coal camps, Himlerville’s miners owned their own houses. Himler also did away with the oppressive “scrip” system at the company store.

“The company stores in most of Appalachia were terrorist organizations. You either purchased from them or you didn’t survive,” said Turley. “But there it was just one of many stores. You could go someplace else.”

Himlerville was known for its relative luxury. Each house had electricity and indoor plumbing, which was almost unheard of in Appalachian coal camps in those days.

In his autobiography, Himler writes that his personal objective in developing Himlerville was “to raise the standard of living of my people in every respect. My people were encouraged to live up to the standard in their modern and much-appreciated homes, and visiting Americans were astounded to see coal miners eating off white tablecloths and using white napkins.”

Himler also put great emphasis on education. The local school was soon rated the top school in the state of Kentucky. And because such a large percentage of miners and residents were Hungarian, the school was bilingual. Himler also considered Himlerville to be a great Americanization project and organized a night school to teach civics and prepare miners to become U.S. citizens.

According to the Himler House’s registration form for the National Register of Historic Houses, Himlerville was found to be the nation’s second most livable coal town by the U.S. Coal Commission.

“One of my miners told me that life on the camp would have been paradise were it not for the mine,” Himler wrote in his autobiography. “And he was right.”

Of course, Himlerville was not free from controversy. The Hungarian press was divided on Himler’s exploits – he was too conservative for the Left and far too radical for conservatives. Additionally, there was often tension between American-born Appalachians and Hungarian immigrants in Martin County. Linguistic and cultural differences played their part, as did nativism and negative stereotyping on both sides.

But like so many American utopian experiments, Himlerville would prove to be short-lived. After World War I, the coal industry fell into a depression. Supply continued to increase as mines got more efficient, but without the demand driven by the war, prices fell steeply. Like many coal companies in the 1920s, Himler Coal could not survive the downturn in the market and the company struggled financially. A devastating flood in 1928 marked the end of an era. Himler Coal went bankrupt and Himler and most of his miners left the town.

Preserving legacy

Today, nearly 30 original miners’ homes are still standing and in use in Beauty, along with the original Himler Coal company bank, powerhouse, railroad bridge, and Hungarian Cemetery.

Himler House was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1991, but the Martin County Historical Society is aiming to upgrade that status to a National Historic Landmark — a much rarer designation that indicates national significance. The Historical Society also hopes that the rest of Himlerville could eventually be declared a National Historic District. The National Historic Landmark application for Himler House is currently under review.

“Each of these sites are very important to Martin County and to Eastern Kentucky,” said Corbin. “If the house does receive National Landmark designation, this is a tremendous asset for this area of Appalachia, which has been hit hard by lack of coal mining.”

The Himler Project’s goals go beyond rebuilding and restoring the house itself. Celebrating Himlerville’s history and legacy has become an international affair, with Hungarian musicians and scholars participating in cultural and scholarly exchanges in Appalachia.

The Historical Society hopes to develop a museum, and potentially add a restaurant and event space to make the house into a destination for school field trips and tourism alike. Himler’s later work interrogating Nazis for the Office of Strategic Services makes him a local entry point for Holocaust history, a topic that is mandatory in Kentucky public schools. Some other ideas to generate tourist traffic include adding Beauty to a National Scenic Byway like the Coal Heritage Trail, or connecting it physically to a network of local hiking trails.

But historical preservation is never a cheap proposition, especially in the case of a house that has to be rebuilt from its foundations. Charlotte Anderson, president of the Martin County Historical and Genealogical Society, said funding is the biggest obstacle.

The project is estimated to cost nearly $1.9 million dollars, and in one of the poorest counties in Kentucky, that kind of funding is hard to come by. The Historical Society puts on a number of annual fundraisers, selling Polish sausages, sweets, and soup beans at various events.

“One of our board members is somewhat famous in our area for his soup beans, so that’s a big fundraiser for us. Now, when I say big, I mean a thousand dollars or so. That’s about as much as we get at any one time,” Anderson said. “It’s been a slow process, trying to come up with things in order to make the money to get at it.”

Jim Hamos is Martin Himler’s great-great-nephew, and one of several family members involved in the Himler Project. He worries that Beauty is too inaccessible to attract much out-of-state tourism.

“I don’t know how many people will make that sort of trek. It’s one thing when you’re off an interstate highway, but it’s another thing when you’re so remote” Hamos said in an interview with the Daily Yonder. “I find it really interesting. But how it becomes someplace where lots of people will go and pay money, I don’t know. But I’m hopeful.”

The National Parks Service lists tax incentives, access to grants, and assistance with preservation as some of the key benefits of National Historic Landmark status. Corbin is hopeful that such a designation will give the Himler Project the support they need to rebuild Himler House and manage the site as a tourist destination.

In the meantime, Hamos, who was himself a refugee during the Hungarian Revolution, takes inspiration from the lessons that can be learned from Himlerville.

“I’m thrilled that the people of Martin County want to do this. They’re trying to claim a piece of their history,” Hamos said. “I do believe this country is a family of immigrants. So I think that’s what we should be continuing to accept in this country.”

This story is republished from The Daily Yonder under a Creative Commons license.

Valves on a Kentucky River hydroelectric plant await the installation of turbines. (Photo courtesy of Jonathan Moore)

Jonathan Moore sees potential for reliable, durable electric power in Kentucky’s hundreds of miles of waterways, more navigable water than many states can boast.

The Kentucky River is a prime example, says Moore, a partner in the company Appalachian Hydro Associates. Taking advantage of a system of locks and dams dating back to the 19th century, his company has partnered with Berea College in recent years to build two hydroelectric plants at locks?on the Kentucky River. One plant has been online since 2021, and Moore said the second plant should be fully constructed by the end of the year.?

These hydro plants produce only a small amount of electricity, a few megawatts at most, while other renewable energy sources such as utility-scale solar can generate hundreds of megawatts of power. But Moore said the small number “belies the fact that it’s going to generate that power all the time for 100 years or more — basically forever.”?

“Appalachia in general has a good deal of potential,” Moore said. “It’s low-hanging fruit in the renewable energy spectrum for power that can be produced when the wind doesn’t blow in, the sun doesn’t shine.”?

Federal funding, announced Wednesday, will help construct a third hydroelectric plant along the river, another partnership with Berea College.

U.S. Department of Agriculture officials announced more than $375 million in partially forgivable loans and grants across the country through two U.S. Department of Agriculture programs — the funding made possible through the Inflation Reduction Act — to help fund numerous energy projects, including installing rooftop solar panels on farms and heat pumps at small businesses.?

In Kentucky, the USDA is providing about $16.6 million in partially forgivable loans for the latest hydropower plant. Moore said the federal support will help build the plant much more quickly. Power from the third plant, like the others, will be sold at a discount to the utility East Kentucky Power Cooperative to generate revenue for Berea College. Moore said a total of six plants are planned along the river, which he believes can add up to a significant amount of electricity.?

“I’m glad that water’s going to turn a turbine and get some people power,” he said.?

Another grant provided through the USDA is helping a Hancock County farmer try out solar power on his farm for the first time. Justin Obenchain, 37, grows about 20 acres of sweet corn and uses energy-intensive freezers year-round to keep the corn fresh for sale to local schools and elsewhere.?

He learned about the grant program through a local agriculture extension agent and saw solar as a way to curb some of the cost of powering the freezers.

“I thought it would be something that would fit us pretty well,” Obenchain said. “An open mind to what’s coming is going to be very beneficial in the long run.”?

He received a $40,000 grant through the USDA’s Rural Energy for America Program, or REAP, which covered about half the cost of the rooftop solar installations now located on his farm. He expects the about 90 solar panels to be turned on sometime in July, he said, potentially an opportunity to show his neighbors how solar power works for him.?

“??I think everything deserves a look. And some farms it may fit, some it may not,” Obenchain said. “But I think for ours, it’ll be a good fit.”

Walls and trusses for eight homes to be constructed in Wayland are stored on city land across from the 11 homes to be completed by the end of June. (Photo by Jenni Glendenning)

A religiously oriented group using volunteers from many states is doing much of the housing recovery work in flood-ravaged Eastern Kentucky.

The Appalachia Service Project has completed 24 new homes and fully repaired 40 more for flood survivors in Breathitt, Harlan, Knott, Leslie, Magoffin and Perry counties since the flood two years ago.?

ASP has 12 homes under construction and is repairing about 24 more. They say they are on pace to complete 45 new homes and fully repair 65 homes by the end of this year.

In coordination with The Home Depot Foundation and Solid Rock Carpenters (nonprofit partners from the Chicago area), ASP brought nearly 400 volunteers to White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, to build the wall sections for 16 new homes (nearly 450 sections in total) and loaded them onto trucks for transport to locations in Kentucky and Tennessee.

Eight houses’ worth of walls and trusses were hauled to property owned by the City of Wayland, just across Kentucky Highway 7 from where ASP is working on its 11th new home for flood survivors. An official groundbreaking is tentatively scheduled for June 26.?

A home “can come together in less than a single day with the help of our volunteers and friends in Kentucky,” said Chris Schroeder, ASP’s director of new build and disaster recovery. He said ASP has “been fortunate enough to serve our friends and neighbors in these areas for many years, even before the flood.”

Schroeder expects all eight homes to be completed by the end of the year. He said the 11 near completion are expected to be turned over to the families by the end of June. Most of the 17 home applications came from people within a 10-minute drive of Wayland.

The application process in Kentucky is handled by Haley Peck, ASP’s disaster recovery office and grant compliance coordinator.

“ASP is working with private landowners and local officials to identify buildable lots, preferably out of the floodplain,” said Grant Vermilya, ASP’s Kentucky flood recovery coordinator. “There is potential for 10 to 15 more in the town of Wayland alone.”?

ASP is looking into an area of private land near where the walls and trusses are stored. Vermilya said the owner is “looking at selling because he wants to see more homes like this pop up” in Wayland.

State government and other entities have helped with the infrastructure for the 11 homes in Wayland. Vermilya said the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky donated funds to purchase the property, and the state is providing up to $100,000 per home. The rest of the gap is filled by the Federal Home Loan Bank or a collection of smaller grants, Vermilya said.

The grants, donations, and volunteer fees all go directly toward materials and logistics for building each home. The Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky and the state supported the acquisition of the Wayland property. ASP says it looks forward to working with entities and local stakeholders to acquire more properties in their disaster recovery effort in Eastern Kentucky.?

In addition to the homes in Wayland, the organization will be building nine homes in phase one of the new high-ground community of Chestnut Ridge in Knott County and an undetermined number in the Skyview subdivision in Perry County.?

ASP has been connecting volunteers with communities in Central Appalachia for over 55 years. This summer, it will host more than 9,000 volunteers in 17 counties to build new homes and repair existing homes in West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee counties that the Appalachian Regional Commission and other agencies have identified as economically distressed and needing help with housing.?

Of the 82 distressed counties in the ARC region, 37 are in Eastern Kentucky. Schroeder and his teams served these communities before the floods. “We’re going to be there until the job is done,” he said.

Schroeder said ASP’s foremost intention is to remain in service of families in need for many more years until the job is done and until those impacted by the flood can get back to a life they can call normal. ASP’s strategic goals are to spend the next few years building 100 new homes and fully repairing 100 more for flood survivors across Eastern Kentucky. ASP has Kentucky centers in Breathitt, Harlan, Knott, Leslie, Magoffin and Perry counties.

ASP’s overall mission is to eradicate substandard housing in Central Appalachia. Over several decades, it has brought thousands of volunteers to the region to build or repair homes for low-income families.

With the help of organizations such as the Federal Home Loan Bank and the federal departments of Agriculture and Housing and Urban Development, ASP has “been able to extend timelines for another two years to meet the people of Appalachia where they are” while being mindful of taxpayer dollars and “stretching those resources as far as they can,” Schroeder said.

The government agencies ASP works with have a disaster recovery program that has been extended “because of the amount of need that they’ve seen in Eastern Kentucky,” Schroeder said. These programs normally provide financial assistance for families affected by a disaster for two years, but “because of the scope of the flood in Eastern Kentucky and other incidents as well, they extended that timeline by another two years.”?

From left, DreamBuilders volunteers Brian Rezac and Pam Brazis, Housing Development Alliance carpenter John Evans, flood survivor Farmer Baker, HDA lead carpenter Steve Hurt and DreamBuilders volunteers Andy Cabrera and Matt Biewer. (Photo by Mindy Miller, Housing Development Alliance)

Farmer Baker was holding on for his life, clutching a pair of post hole diggers, on the night of July 27-28, 2022, as part of Eastern Kentucky’s record flooding swept through his garage on Lower River Caney in Breathitt County. He had already watched the waters sweep away his wife, Vanessa, the only one of 45 victims whose body has not been found.

“I looked up to God in the garage and said, ‘You took her, take me too, but he had a purpose for me, or he would have took me. He wouldn’t have throwed me through that garage door and let me live, not unless he’s got a purpose for me. I don’t know what it is, but he’s got a purpose for me here on this earth. Hopefully I can figure it out.”

Baker spoke Friday to Mindy Miller of the Hazard-based Housing Development Alliance, which is building three homes in the Blue Sky subdivision near the Hazard airport with the help of DreamBuilders, a Maryland-based nonprofit that brought 38 workers to the site for a “blitz build” June 17-21. Miller, HDA’s director of development and communication, provided an unedited recording for this story.

Baker, who has been living with his son, told Miller he will feel comforted living on high ground, but “God knows where you’re at. … And when the time comes, he’s gonna take you, ain’t nobody gonna save you, just like Melissa that night.”

Then he offered his philosophy of living: “The Bible says if you don’t love your neighbor, you don’t love him. I love everybody on this earth, I don’t care who they are.” Choking a bit, he added, “I love the Housing Alliance for getting me this house. I appreciate it so much, you don’t realize it.”

This is the HDA’s 30th year of fulfilling low-income families’ dreams of home ownership in Eastern Kentucky.?

DreamBuilders is an interfaith community of teens and adults who build homes for those in need. This was their second trip to Hazard; last year they largely built two homes in four days for flood survivors.

The group was led by John McBeth, who founded DreamBuilders 22 years ago as a Christian youth group. He said the week at Blue Sky was one of the hottest the organization has encountered, with temperatures in the mid 90s, but “It’s a real blessing to be here, and it’s our experience that we actually get much more back than we give.”

Two DreamBuilders volunteers, Luke Gore and Maddox Shuman, said it took them 10 days to bicycle 562 miles from Westminster, Maryland, staying with friends and family along the way. They were inspired to start an Instagram account to journal their travels: @dreamcyclers.

At the worksite, Miller updated the project’s progress on social media.

The other two homes that went up during the “blitz build” are spec homes that will be available to low-income applicants in the area.

HDA says it designs individual financing packages to be affordable for new homeowners. “This usually involves the combination of a low-interest home loan, along with a subsidy that they qualify for based on different factors,” said Julia Stanganelli, HDA’s flood recovery coordinator.

For flood survivors, Stanganelli said, there are flood-specific grants and forgivable-loan funding for which HDA helps qualify the homeowners. Sometimes, flood survivors also have funds they can contribute from their FEMA awards or funds they’ve received through a home-buyout program, and some may not need to take a loan at all, Stanganelli said: “Every situation tends to be unique.”

The blitz builders had the main walls of all three homes up by Tuesday afternoon and by Friday had all three framed and under roof. The HDA says its carpenters were on the worksites to ensure all work is up to code and passes state inspection.

Now, certified plumbers, electricians, and HVAC subcontractors will come in. It will take six to eight weeks to complete a home after the exterior is sufficiently dry enough to install weather-sensitive material such as drywall, flooring, trim and paint.

Carpenter Lindsey King started out as an apprentice carpenter with HDA’s paid on-the-job training program in residential construction for people in substance-use recovery. She impressed HDA so much as a trainee that it hired her full-time, and she is now the program’s assistant trainer.?

How to volunteer

If you have a group of volunteers interested in sponsoring an HDA project, you will need a maximum of 20 people, a $25,000 contribution for sponsorship, and the ability to spend one week in Eastern Kentucky helping to change the lives of families in need.?

The sponsorship helps finance a new home for a low-income family in need, but the house-raising challenge goes beyond the house; the sponsorship plays an important role in sustaining HDA’s homeownership program for future low-income homeowners and those in need of disaster recovery, Miller said.

Volunteers do not need construction experience. HDA carpenters are onsite at all times while volunteers frame floors and walls, set roofs and trusses, put shingles on the roof, build the porches and decks, install windows and doors, and cover the exterior with house wrap and siding.

As he watched his house go up Friday, Baker said, “You know, you’ve worked you know how many years in your life. You know what you’ve got in your home and you know what you’ve got built up, and all of it taken away from you. …? People think ‘Well, you know, he lost his home, so what?’ but I lost more. In my heart, I lost more … I lost her that night and lost everything I had.”

But now he’s getting part of it back.

Greenbo Lake State Resort Park lodge. (Kentucky State Parks)

A foundation dedicated to continuing a former Kentucky poet laureate’s legacy is renewing a literary workshop in Northeastern Kentucky.?

The Jesse Stuart Foundation will host the Jack Ellis Writers Workshop at Greenbo Lake State Resort Park June 21-22. Several instructors, including George Ella Lyon — another Eastern Kentucky native and poet laureate —?will lead participants in more than a dozen breakout sessions on topics such as crime and fiction writing, poetry, research for writing and publishing processes.?

“Writing, first of all, is for you,” Lyon said in a statement. “It’s really a tool for understanding yourself and helping yourself. Your voice matters. You have stories to tell that nobody else could tell. You look at the world in a way that no one has ever looked at it before.”

Lyon, who has authored poetry collections, adult novels, novels for young people and dozens of children’s picture books and more, is a poet, writer, teacher, musician, storyteller and social activist with Appalachian roots and a global reach, the foundation said.?

James Gifford, CEO and senior editor of the foundation, said Lyon was selected for the workshop because “she is one of Kentucky’s best known literary figures.”?

“She’s an effective presenter and an energetic presenter, and just a genuinely nice person who is very popular with the general public and also the more literate public,” Gifford said.?

The other instructors include Gifford, Stan Bumgardner, Victor M. Depta, Brenda Evans, Keith R. Kappes, Wayne Onkst, Edwina Pendarvis and Christina St. Clair. More information about them, as well as information about registering for the workshop and agenda, can be found at jsfbooks.com/writers-workshop.?

Participants are chosen on a first-come basis. Those selected will pay a $50 registration fee on the first day of the workshop.?

Headquartered in Ashland, the Jesse Stuart Foundation was founded by Stuart and his wife, Naomi Deane Stuart, in 1979. Stuart led a similar writers’ workshop at Murray State University between 1969 and 1977. The foundation now serves as a regional publisher and bookseller of Stuart’s works as well as those by other Kentucky and Appalachian authors.?

Gifford said the foundation is an “institutional extension of Jesse Stuart’s life and work” and seeks to promote literacy and learning as part of its mission. This workshop is a natural extension of that.?

“We wanted to do it as a service to the people of Ashland and Greenup and Northeastern Kentucky, but we also wanted to do it because it was basically an extension of things that Stuart had done during his lifetime,” Gifford said.?

A steam engine at the repair shop owned by the Kentucky Steam Heritage Corp. (Photo provided)

For Chris Campbell, Estill County is where almost everyone has a connection to the rail lines that run by the “twin cities” of Irvine and Ravenna, the latter founded by a railroad in the early 20th century.?

Campbell, while not an Estill County native, is a train enthusiast and president of the Irvine-based nonprofit Kentucky Steam Heritage Corp. that is trying to transform the county’s long-time rail yard into an “economic incubator” that can be a draw for his part of Appalachian Kentucky.?

The vision: turning the rail yard into a community greenspace, dubbed the “The Yard,” featuring a pavilion for music, a campground, jogging trails, a museum and a renovated repair shop where historic steam engines are restored. Campbell foresees thousands of people coming in for music shows, spending the night, spending money at local restaurants and stores, and visiting other Eastern Kentucky attractions.

The nonprofit is getting a big boost ?toward making that a reality in the form of a nearly $5 million federal grant announced this week to clean up the rail yard, remediating decades of industrial use from hauling coal out of Kentucky’s mountains.

Visitors to the new community space could help “a new economy spring up” on ground where the economy has long been based on coal mining and railroading, says Campbell.?

“None of these ideas can even come to fruition if you don’t do the literal groundwork to make it possible. So, the literal groundwork is moving dirt around and to make it legal to have the general public on it,” Campbell told the Lantern.?

The almost $5 million grant is from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Brownfields program, which has more funding to distribute thanks to passage of federal spending bills such as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Two area development districts and the city of Barbourville also recently received grants through the program to assess properties and create an inventory of properties to be potentially remediated and restored.?

Campbell said the work already done toward the project — which includes a music stage that could start hosting music as soon as this fall — has been made possible through private donations and other state and federal funding in recent years.

Along with building that community space, Campbell said, those at the Kentucky Steam Heritage Corporation want to preserve the legacy of the region’s railroading into the future.?

A steam engine repair shop supplied jobs in Ravenna before trains moved to diesel-electric engines, and the nonprofit is restoring a 20th century steam engine that’s seen plenty of time in Kentucky. Campbell said the nonprofit, which owns the rail yard, ?hopes to acquire the tracks from CSX in the future to be able to bring tourists into town by train. He said trains occasionally come down the tracks if they need repairs but the runs are no longer regular.

“People that worked for the railroad were really passionate about it,” Campbell said. “We’re interested in the history of railroading and preserving it but also doing it in a way that’s marketable and has some longevity.”?

Campbell said the nonprofit, which owns the rail yard, ?hopes to acquire the tracks from CSX in the future to be able to bring tourists into town by train. He said trains occasionally come down the tracks but the runs are no longer regular.

Downtown Hazard sits on the North Fork of the Kentucky River. The Perry County seat redoubled its efforts to fix up Main Street when prospective non-coal employers came to town and saw there were no good gathering places for them to take employees or have business meetings. (Photo by Austin Anthony)

CORBIN — Eastern Kentucky is about to get an avalanche of federal and state money to help it transition from its largely disappeared coal economy, but some of its towns are already lifting themselves up and setting examples for the region.

That was the upshot of the 36th annual East Kentucky Leadership Conference in Corbin, where Main Street is pretty much full again and New Orleans-style balconies show that young professionals are migrating there.

“A lot of younger people have wanted to move closer to downtown,” Corbin City Commissioner Allison Moore said during one panel discussion.

Conference attendees also heard about the revitalized downtowns in Hazard and Pineville, and about the hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants for which governments and nonprofits are already applying.

“There are now more resources than we have seen in our entire careers,” said Peter Hille, chairman of the East Kentucky Leadership Foundation and president of the Mountain Association, a nonprofit community-development lending institution based in Berea. He’s been doing community-development work in the region for more than 30 years.

In addition to federal money, state government now has a program to help provide matching funds that local governments often need to get grants, noted Casey Ellis of the Kentucky Council of Area Development Districts. Originally targeted to coal counties, its outlay of $1.5 million helped generate $12.8 million in grants last year, Ellis said.

After the conference, held April 25 and 26, Hille gave some examples of the funding opportunities for governments, nonprofits and others:

• U.S. Energy Department funds to reduce energy consumption and bring renewable energy to census tracts where coal mines have closed since 1999, as well as adjacent tracts.
• New programs through the Appalachian Regional Commission, most recently one for multi-state collaborative projects funded by the bipartisan infrastructure bill of 2021.
• The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s rural energy program, which covers half of the installed cost for efficiency and renewable energy for rural businesses.
• The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s? Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, to bring solar energy to homes of low-income people, and money to build the capacity and workforce needed to install the equipment.
• Several other agencies have money for workforce development and infrastructure, including broadband.

Hille also talked about the federal money at the conference’s closing lunch, but also pointed out the efforts by local leaders, often helped with government grants but mainly spurred by local initiative.

“We’ve been seeing our communities come back to life,” he said, “because they are recreating themselves as places where people can live and choose to live.”

That’s essential as communities look for employers to replace coal jobs, said Bailey Richards, downtown coordinator for the City of Hazard. She said the Perry County seat redoubled its efforts to fix up Main Street when prospective non-coal employers came to town and saw there were no good gathering places for them to take employees or have business meetings.

“We realized you have to build a community,” Richards said in one panel discussion. In the last five years, downtown redevelopment has brought 70 new businesses, 62 of which are still open, accounting for more than 250 jobs. Richards noted proudly that Hazard’s population rose 18 percent from 2010 to 2020, while Pikeville, which has the region’s best-known revitalized downtown, grew 12 percent.

In the Bell County seat of Pineville, Mayor Scott Madon looked out the window of his second-floor insurance office a few years ago and saw a public square with 20 percent of its buildings occupied. Now it’s 100 percent full, after a redevelopment plan that will hit its second big phase this summer, Madon said during a panel discussion.

One key was a five-year moratorium on property-tax assessment increases, which required the cooperation of the county government. Madon said the first property to emerge from the moratorium will pay $10,000 in property taxes this year, after generating only $400 a year before it was redeveloped. To help businesses succeed, Southeast Community College helps them work up business plans, and checks with them each quarter to see how they’re doing.

Hille said successes like Pineville’s and Corbin’s usually have “spark plugs” like Andy Salmons, who is both Corbin’s Main street manager and owner of a former drug store converted into a local-food restaurant and bar with apartments above. He did that 12 years ago, when half of downtown buildings were empty.

Skeptics, and there were many, “said nobody’s going to come to a farm-to-table, craft-beer bar in Corbin,” Salmons said. He ran out of money just before it was time to open, and people who wanted to see him succeed rounded up the last thing he needed for the Wrigley Taproom and Eatery: chairs.?

More openings followed, the town went fully “wet,” not just for restaurants, and other towns noticed and followed suit. “Corbin was a game changer in this region,” said Jacob Roan, the city’s parks director.

Some relief coming for housing shortage

Much of the conference focused on the region’s chronic housing shortage, which has been worsened by floods, inflation and high interest rates, which have also raised rents and home prices. But wait. “Help is on the way,” said Pam Johnson of Fahe, formerly the Federation of Appalachian Housing Enterprises.

Using flood-relief money and other funds, and donated land, the state has started seven housing developments in the counties hit hardest by the 2022 flooding. It recently started taking applications for $298 million in federal disaster-recovery money intended for housing and infrastructure to support it.

The application deadline is June 1, said Matt Stephens, general counsel of the state Department for Local Government. The five counties hurt most by the floods – Breathitt, Letcher, Knott, Perry and Pike – will get 80% of the money. The other 20% is allocated to 15 other counties flooded in 2022.

“We’re looking at a summer and fall of housing starts that we have not seen,” Johnson said. “That’s going to give a boost to the communities.”

Eastern Kentucky has a housing shortage partly because it has shortages of three things related to housing: developable land, infrastructure and contractor, said Wendy Smith, a deputy executive director of Kentucky Housing Corp., a state agency.

Smith said rents have climbed so much that landlords who once took federal Section 8 housing vouchers no longer do so, to avoid inspections required by the program, and more than half the people who got vouchers from KHC turn them back in because they can’t find housing in the 210 days the voucher can be used.

She said there is little new “middle housing” such as duplexes and triplexes, on which developers make less money. And while there is money for apartment buildings and rent subsidies, many people in Eastern Kentucky don’t like apartment living.

“It’s because we’re connected to the land,” Corbin Mayor Suzie Rasmus said, unlike “the rest of the nation, that is so transitory.”

This story is the first in the latest series of stories about Appalachian Kentucky from the Institute for Rural Journalism, based at the University of Kentucky. If you have story ideas, contact Director Emeritus Al Cross at [email protected] or Jenni Glendenning, the institute’s David Hawpe Fellow in Appalachian Reporting, at [email protected].?

A poster, handprinted by Just a Jar Design Press in Marietta, Ohio, will be available for sale. (Appalshop)

Appalshop has announced the lineup for Seedtime on the Cumberland June 1 in Whitesburg.

The free annual festival will feature live music, jam sessions, food and art, including a quilt exhibit hosted by the Southeast Kentucky African American Museum and Cultural Center.

Performers for the 2024 festival include Sunrise Ridge, John Haywood, Jay Skaggs, Randy Wilson, The Heavenly Voices (from Williams Chapel AME Zion Church in Big Stone Gap, Virginia), Mike Ellison, Coaltown Dixie, Matthew Sidney Parsons featuring Logan Cooper, and Sarah Kate Morgan.

The punk show will feature the Laurel Hells Ramblers, Appalachiatari, Kareem Ledell, geonovah, Dungeon, LIPS, Hedonista and Killii Killii.

The main event will be held from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. June 1 at Appalshop’s Solar Pavilion at 91 Madison Avenue in downtown Whitesburg. The? punk show will begin at 7 p.m. at the Whitesburg Skate Park, 122 Arizona Avenue.

Founded in 1969, Appalshop is an arts, media and education nonprofit based in Whitesburg that seeks to document and revitalize the traditions and creativity of? Appalachia. A news release says Seedtime on the Cumberland “furthers Appalshop’s mission by celebrating Appalachian culture, music, and stories that commercial media won’t share; challenging stereotypes; supporting grassroots efforts to achieve justice and equity; and celebrating cultural diversity.”?

For more information, call (606) 633-0108, visit appalshop.org/seedtime, or email [email protected].

Haley Autumn Dawn Ann Crank poses for a photo with her hometown of Hazard behind her on March 25, 2024. (Photo by Austin Anthony for The Hechinger Report)

HAZARD — Haley Autumn Dawn Ann Crank thinks she might like to become a teacher. There’s a shortage of teachers in this corner of Kentucky, and Crank, who has eight siblings, gets kids.

“I just fit in with them,” Crank said during a shift one February day at the Big Blue Smokehouse, where she works as a waitress.?

For now, the recent high school graduate is taking some education courses at the local community college. But to pursue a teaching degree at a public, comprehensive university, she’ll need to commute four hours roundtrip or leave the town she grew up in and loves.

Neither of those options is feasible — or even conceivable — for many residents of Hazard, a close-knit community of just over 5,000 tucked into the hills of Southeast Kentucky. Like many rural Americans, the people here are place-bound, their educational choices constrained by geography as much as by cost. With family and jobs tying them to the region, and no local four-year option, many settle for a two-year degree, or skip college altogether.?

Until fairly recently, that decision made economic sense. Mining jobs were plentiful, and the money was good. But the collapse of the coal industry here and across Appalachia has made it harder to survive on a high school education. Today, just under half the residents over the age of 16 in Perry County, where Hazard sits, are employed; the national average is 63 percent. More than a quarter of the county’s residents are in poverty; the median household income is $45,000, compared to $75,000 nationally.?

Now, spurred by concerns that low levels of college attainment are holding back the southeastern swath of the state, the Kentucky legislature is exploring ways to bring baccalaureate degrees to the region. The leading option calls for turning Hazard’s community and technical college into a standalone institution offering a handful of degrees in high-demand fields, like teaching and nursing.

The move to expand education here comes as many states are cutting majors at rural colleges and merging rural institutions, blaming funding shortfalls and steadily dwindling enrollments.

If successful, the new college could bring economic growth to one of the poorest and least educated parts of the country and serve as a model for the thousands of other “educational deserts” scattered across America. Proponents say it has the potential to transform the region and the lives of its battered but resilient residents.

But the proposal carries significant costs and risks. Building a residence hall alone would cost an estimated $18 million; running the new college would add millions more to the tab. Enrollment might fall short of projections, and the hoped-for jobs might not materialize. And if they didn’t, the newly-educated residents would likely take their degrees elsewhere, deepening the region’s “brain drain.”

“The hope is that if you build the institution, employers will come,” said Aaron Thompson, president of the Kentucky Council on Postsecondary Education, which has studied the idea on behalf of the legislature. “But it is somewhat of an experiment.”

Still, Thompson said, it’s an experiment worth exploring.?

“To say you need to move to be prosperous is not a solution, and that’s pretty much been the solution since many of the coal mines disappeared,” he said.

At the airport in Lexington, there’s a sign greeting passengers that reads, “You’ve landed in one smart city.” Lexington, the sign proclaims, is ranked #11 among larger cities in the share of the population with a bachelor’s degree or higher.

But drive a couple hours to the southeast, and the picture changes. Only 13 percent of the residents of Perry County over the age of 25 hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, well below the national average of 34 percent.?

Study: Building a new public university in Southeastern Kentucky ‘problematic’

Michelle Ritchie-Curtis, the co-principal of Perry County Central High School, said the problem isn’t convincing kids to go to college, it’s keeping them there. Though nearly two-thirds of the county’s high school graduates continue on to college, just over a third of those who enroll in public four-years graduate within six years, compared to close to 60 percent statewide, according to the Council on Postsecondary Education.?

In Hazard, as in many rural places, kids grow up hearing the message that they need to leave to succeed. But many return after a year or two, citing homesickness or the high cost of college, Ritchie-Curtis said. Sometimes, they feel ashamed about abandoning their aspirations. They take off a semester, and it becomes years, she said.?

Those who make it to graduation and leave tend to stay gone, discouraged by the region’s limited job opportunities. This exodus, and the lack of a four-year college nearby, have hampered Hazard’s ability to attract employers who might fill the void left by the decline of coal, said Zach Lawrence, executive director of the Hazard-Perry County Economic Development Alliance.

Ritchie-Curtis said that having a local option would solve the homesickness problem and could save students money in room and board. It could also help stem the region’s brain drain and alleviate a teaching shortage that has forced the school to hire a growing number of career changers, she added.

To Jennifer Lindon, the president of Hazard Community and Technical College, “it all boils down to equity.”

“If we can provide a [four-year] education, and make it affordable, perhaps we can break the cycle of poverty in Southeast Kentucky,” she said.

MIT, Yale and other elite colleges are finally reaching out to rural students

Converting Hazard’s two-year college into a four-year institution wasn’t among the options initially considered by the Kentucky General Assembly. When lawmakers asked the state’s Council on Postsecondary Education to study the feasibility of bringing four-year degrees to Southeast Kentucky, it offered three approaches: building a new public university; creating a satellite campus of an existing comprehensive university; or acquiring a private college to convert into a public one.?

But the council concluded in its report that each of those alternatives was “in some way problematic.” A new university would be prohibitively expensive and might fail; a new branch campus could suffer the same enrollment challenges as existing satellites; and acquiring a private college would be legally complicated.?

The council considered the possibility of allowing the community college to offer baccalaureate degrees — something a growing number of states permit — but worried that doing so would lead to “mission creep” and “intense competition” for the state’s dwindling number of high school graduates.

Instead, the council recommended that the legislature study the idea of making Hazard’s community college a standalone institution offering both technical degrees and a few bachelor’s programs “in line with workforce demand.” Starting small, the council suggested, would allow policymakers and college leaders to gauge student demand before building out baccalaureate offerings.

That approach makes sense to Sen. Robert Stivers, the president of the Kentucky Senate, and the sponsor of the bill that commissioned the council’s study.?

“I don’t think you can just jump off the cliff into the lake,” he said. “You need to be a little more measured.”?

But Andrew Koricich, executive director of the Alliance for Research on Regional Colleges at Appalachian State University, said the region’s residents deserve a comprehensive college. He likened the limited offerings envisioned by the council to former President George W. Bush’s “soft bigotry of low expectations.”

“There’s this idea that rural people should be happy they have anything,” he said.?

Koricich pointed to the recent merger of Martin Methodist University, a private religious college, with the University of Tennessee system as proof that the legal hurdles to acquiring a private college aren’t insurmountable.?

But Thompson, the CPE president, said that the private colleges in southeast Kentucky are located too far from most residents and the schools weren’t interested in being acquired, anyway. He argued that while a comprehensive university might be “ideal,” it wasn’t realistic.

“In an ideal world, I’d be young again with a great back,” he said. “But in reality, I work with what I’ve got. And that’s what we’re doing here.”

Rural universities, already few and far between, are being stripped of majors

When Stivers was growing up in southeastern Kentucky in the ’60s and ’70s, coal was king. A high school graduate could get a job paying $15 an hour — good money at the time — without ever setting foot in a college classroom, he said.?

With mining jobs so abundant, “there wasn’t a value placed on education,” Stivers recalled.

Coal production peaked in eastern Kentucky in 1990, and has been on the decline ever since. Today, there are just over 400 individuals employed in coal jobs in Perry County.

The shrinking of the sector has had ripple effects across Appalachia, hurting industries that support mining and local businesses that cater to its workers. Many residents have migrated to urban centers, seeking work, and once-thriving downtowns have been hollowed out.

By the middle of the last decade, most of the buildings in downtown Hazard were either empty or occupied by attorneys and banks. The only place to gather was a hole-in-the-wall bar called the Broken Spoke Lounge, recalled Luke Glaser, a city commissioner and assistant principal at Hazard High School. When the Grand Hotel burned down, in 2015, a sense of resignation settled in, Glaser said.

The region has also been hard hit by opioids, which were aggressively marketed to rural doctors treating miners for injuries and black lung disease. In 2017, Perry County had the highest opioid abuse hospitalization rate in the nation.

Then, in 2021, and again in 2022, the region suffered severe flooding, which washed away homes and took the lives of almost 50 residents of Southeast Kentucky.

Yet Hazard is also in the midst of what Glaser calls an “Appalachian Renaissance,” a revival being led by 20- and 30-somethings who have come home or moved to the area in recent years. Though Appalachian Kentucky lost 2.2 percent of its population between 2010 and 2019, Hazard grew by 13 percent.?

A decade ago, a group of long-time residents and young people began meeting with a mission to revitalize Hazard’s main street. The group, which called itself InVision Hazard, hired a downtown coordinator and brought free Wi-Fi and improved signage to the downtown area.

Over the past four-and-a-half years, close to 70 new businesses have opened within a three-mile radius of downtown, and only eight have closed, according to Betsy Clemons, executive director of the Hazard Perry County Chamber of Commerce. There’s an independent bookstore, an arts alliance that will put on seven full-length productions this year, and a toy store — all run by residents who grew up in Hazard and returned as adults.

The Grand Hotel, which stood as a burned-out shell for years, has finally been torn down, making way for an outdoor entertainment park with space for food trucks and a portable stage, and plans for live entertainment on Friday nights.

As the downtown has transformed, collective feelings of apathy and resignation have given way to a new sense of possibility, Glaser said. Brightly colored murals reading “We Can Do This,” and “Together” adorn the sides of two downtown buildings.

To Mandi Sheffel, the owner of Read Spotted Newt bookstore, the creation of a four-year college feels like a logical next step for a place that was recently dubbed “a hip destination for young people” (a description that both delights and amuses people here).

“In every college town I’ve been to, there’s a vibe, a pride in the community,” she said.

These days, Hazard is feeling that pride, too.

On the vocational campus of Hazard Community and Technical College in February, Jordan Joseph and Austin Cox, recent high school grads, stood alongside a tractor trailer truck, pointing out its parts. In as little as four weeks, they could become commercially licensed truck drivers, a career that pays close to $2,000 a week.

Both men followed dads and grandads into the profession and said they couldn’t imagine sitting in a classroom for four years after high school. Like the sign on the side of the truck they were working on said, they want to “Get in, Get Out, and Get to Work.”

Inside one of the campus’ labs, a pair of aspiring electricians said they doubted many local residents would be able to afford a four-year degree.

“I don’t think you’d get a lot of people,” said Walker Isaacs, one of the students.

Their skepticism underscores a key risk in creating a four-year college in a place that’s never had one: There’s no guarantee students will enroll. Larger forces — including a looming decline in the number of high school graduates, an improved labor market, and public doubts about the value of higher education — could dampen demand for four-year degrees, forcing the college to either cut costs or seek state funding to cover its losses.

Recognizing this risk — and the possibility that employers won’t show up, either — the Council declined to give an “unqualified endorsement” to the idea of turning the community college into a four-year institution, saying further study was needed. In February,? Stivers, the state Senate president, introduced a bill that calls on the council to survey potential students and employers about the idea and to provide more detailed estimates of its potential costs and revenues.

Converting the college could also cause enrollment to fall at the state’s existing public and private four-years. Eastern Kentucky University, the hardest hit, could lose as many as 250 students in the seventh year after conversion, the council estimated in its report. While the council did not examine the possible effect on private colleges in the region, the president of Union College in Barbourville, Marcia Hawkins, said in a statement that, “Depending on the majors added, such a move could certainly impact enrollment at our southern and eastern Kentucky institutions.”

But on the main campus of Hazard Community and Technical College, there’s growing excitement about the prospect of the two-year college becoming a four-year.

Ashley Smith, who is studying to become a registered nurse, said the proposed conversion would make it easier for her to earn the bachelor’s degree she’s always wanted. With three kids at home, she can’t manage an hours-long commute to and from class.

Another nursing student, Lakyn Bolen, said she’d be more likely to continue her education if she could do so from home. She left Hazard once to finish a four-year degree, and is reluctant to do so again.

“It’s not fun going away,” Bolen said. “We definitely need more nursing opportunities here.”

Dylon Baker, assistant vice president of workforce initiatives for Appalachian Regional Healthcare, agrees. His nonprofit, which operates 14 hospitals in Kentucky and West Virginia, has struggled with staffing shortages and spent millions on contract workers. The shortages have forced the system to shutter some beds, reducing access to care in a region with high rates of diabetes, cancer and heart disease.

“We are taking care of the sickest of the sickest,” Baker said. “We have to give them access to quality health care.”

Hazard’s community college already offers some higher-level degrees, such as nursing, through partnerships with four-year public and private colleges in Kentucky. But most of the programs are online-only, and many students prefer in-person learning, said Deronda Mobelini, chief student affairs officer. Others lack access to broadband internet or can’t afford it.

If the conversion goes through, the college will continue to offer online baccalaureates and a wide range of certificates and associate degrees, said Lindon, the HCTC president. She envisions a system of “differential tuition” where students seeking four-year degrees would pay less during the first two years of their programs.

Though the college would still cater to commuters, a residence hall would attract students from a wider area and alleviate a housing shortage made more acute by the recent floods, Lindon said.

Ultimately, the future of the institution will rest with the Kentucky legislature, which must decide if it wants to spend some of its continuing budget surplus on bringing four-year degrees to an underserved corner of the state.

But Lindon is already imagining the possibilities, and the Appalachian culture course that she’d make mandatory for students seeking bachelor’s degrees.

“For too long, we’ve been taught to hide or even be ashamed of where we’re from,” she said. “We want to teach young people to be proud of our Appalachian heritage.”

This story about access to higher education was produced by?The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our?higher education newsletter. Listen to our?higher education podcast.

A graphic of the proposed Bell County storage facility. (Gov. Andy Beshear/Youtube)

FRANKFORT — An Eastern Kentucky coal mining site set to become a giant hydropower battery is getting a significant boost from the federal government.?

Florida-based Rye Development is in line for an $81 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy for its Lewis Ridge Pumped Storage Project.?

The funding is provided through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.?

A release from the company says it’s one of the first hydropower pumped storage facilities built in more than 30 years and the first ever built on former coal mine land.?

The utility-scale battery would be able to provide up to eight hours of on-demand, consistent power.

Hydropower pumped storage facilities work by having two water reservoirs at different elevations. Water is released when demand for electricity is high; it flows downhill through a turbine to generate power. The water is pumped back uphill when demand for power is low.

At a Thursday news conference with Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear and legislative leaders, Rye Development chief executive officer Paul Jacob said the Bell County project was unlike any “that’s been built around the world.”?

“This is a mountain that has on it five different coal seams and countless mines,” Jacob said. “We’re building on the top of that mountain basically a 60-acre pool. That itself is an engineering challenge. But the federal grant that we’ve received is going to help de-risk that and help us accelerate the project.”?

Rye Development plans to invest $1.3 billion in the 287-megawatt project, estimated to create about 1,500 construction jobs, 30 “operation” jobs and generate enough energy to power almost 67,000 homes, according to a press release from Beshear’s office. Jacob said the project could take seven to 10 years to construct, with the project’s longevity lasting up to a century.

Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, called the project regionally “transformational,” saying it would have a huge impact on a region that was previously a “rich energy production area.”?

“This is a perfect example: how when people come together in a region, the impact that you can have, no longer just a county, a city — but six, eight, 10, 12 counties. And I have to say this: maybe even a little bit into Tennessee,” Stivers said.?

Beshear hailed the project, saying state officials believed the project was the “largest investment ever in Eastern Kentucky.”?

“We have a lot of sites like this that could be a part of a clean energy future on top of an abandoned coal mine,” Beshear said.?

There are dozens of utility-scale hydropower pumped storage facilities across the country, according to the Center for Land Use Interpretation. Rye Development also has such storage facilities in the Pacific Northwest.?

Sen. Johnnie Turner, R-Harlan, who represents Bell County, said the “mountains was coal first” and ?“hydro first now.”?

“We’re moving on,” Turner said.?

Robert Stivers (LRC Public Information)

Senate President Robert Stivers wants another study on how to expand higher education opportunities in Southeastern Kentucky.?

This time, the Manchester Republican is sponsoring Senate Joint Resolution 132 calling on the Council on Postsecondary Education to study turning the Hazard Community and Technical College into a four-year residential university.?

Study: Building a new public university in Southeastern Kentucky ‘problematic’

The idea was studied as part of another recent CPE study directed by legislation from Stivers last year. CPE’s “preferred approach” to expanding higher education in Southeastern Kentucky was to make HCTC a stand-alone college or university offering both sub-baccalaureate technical programs and a few bachelor’s programs “in line with area workforce demand.” However, the report said CPE could not provide an unqualified endorsement of this option without more stakeholder engagement, risk-benefit analysis and understanding of student demand.?

In a floor speech, Stivers said CPE had found the region is an “educational desert.”?

The report identified the Kentucky River Area Development District as the best location for an increased university presence, calling the area ?a “postsecondary desert,” lacking broad access to a university. Hazard is centrally located in the district at the Hal Rogers Parkway and KY 15.

“So this resolution just looks to get further information about both the viability from an economic development standpoint, the competition of other institutions and the impact on them, and the overall costs and feasibility of developing something of that nature and what the governmental structure should be,” Stivers said. “Should it be kind of like a hybrid model of baccalaureate plus technical degrees and certifications?”?

The Senate president also filed Senate Bill 1, which would set up endowed research funding for research consortiums between two or more public universities. He said the funding could encourage Kentucky universities to work together on projects in growing fields, such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and more.?

“It’s great to have our universities play on the courts and the football fields, but this would incent them because you’d have to have at least two universities make the joint application to do some type of research project to bring their students in, to bring their investigators in, to encourage faculty to come there to do cutting-edge research,” Stivers said.?

Hours after filing his legislation, Stivers spoke about his goals in front of hundreds of business leaders during the Kentucky Chamber Day Dinner in Lexington. There, Stivers called for four-laning the Hal Rogers Parkway, much like the Mountain Parkway is being widened, to open travel between London and Hazard.?

“Let’s don’t be competitors. Let’s be collaborators. Let’s look at and see how we can develop cutting-edge technology and be competitive in an era in a world that is now moving in that direction,” Stivers told the crowd. “We have the time, we have the opportunity and we have the resources.”?

President Joe Biden speaks at the National Prayer Breakfast in the U.S. Capitol’s Statuary Hall on Thursday, Feb. 1, 2024. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — Italian opera singer Andrea Bocelli performed inside the U.S. Capitol’s cathedral-like Statuary Hall on Thursday morning for the National Prayer Breakfast, an annual event attended by members of Congress and the president.

The ceremony featured numerous prayers, including one that Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn and New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand delivered specifically for President Joe Biden.

“The presidency is bigger than one person or one party — it is an American institution, and as such, we should pray for the president and our country,” Blackburn said.

She then quoted from Dwight D. Eisenhower’s first inaugural address, where the former president said, “Give us, we pray, the power to discern clearly right from wrong and allow all our words and actions to be governed thereby.”

The breakfast was a short reprieve from the partisanship that’s marked the last few months on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have been huddling behind closed doors in an attempt to reach agreement on border security and immigration policy changes as well as funding for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

The focus on religion and prayer that physically brought Republicans and Democrats together also came just as Biden’s reelection campaign ramps up and Republicans look to win back not only the White House, but the Senate.

This was the 72nd year for the National Prayer Breakfast, which began in 1953 as a way to unite people “of different backgrounds, religions and political affiliations through the power of prayer,” according to the program.

Johnson reads from Old Testament

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, sat next to Biden in the front row of the event, except when he read Psalm 37 from the Old Testament.

“Do not fret because of those who are evil or be envious of those who do wrong, for like the grass, they will soon wither, like green plants, they will soon die away,” Johnson said. “Trust in the Lord and do good.”

Biden, speaking at the breakfast that was attended by a few dozen members of Congress, praised Bocelli’s performance.

“By the way, I am an unadulterated fan of Bocelli,” Biden said. “And you know that to be the case.”

Biden called the tenor “incredible” and said that it was like listening to a “choir of herald angels” when Bocelli, the singer’s son and his daughter performed near Christmas at the White House during Biden’s first year in office. The singer has also been important at other points in Biden’s life, he said.

“In a difficult time for our family, after we lost our son Beau, you expressed in a song what we felt in our hearts,” Biden said, noting the song was “Fall on Me.”

“Andrea, you were a gift to my family at that moment and you continue to be.”

Biden told the crowd that he has attended several prayer breakfasts over the years and that he and first lady Jill Biden have “been humbled by the prayers of so many when we needed them badly.”

“It means everything to us,” Biden said. “And we’re all blessed to live in a nation where we can all practice our many faiths and practice them freely. And where we can come together and lift up our nation and each other in our own prayers, especially in tough times.”

Prayers for fallen troops, members of Congress

Biden said his prayers remain with the three U.S. troops killed by a drone attack in Jordan last weekend. The three — Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett — were all from bases in Georgia.

Biden plans to travel to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Friday to witness their bodies return home in what’s called a “dignified transfer.”

“They risked it all and we’ll never forget the sacrifice and service to our country that the dozens of service members who were wounded and are recovering now,” Biden said.

Biden said his prayer for members of Congress is the one that states, “And He will raise you up on eagle’s wings and bear you on the breath of dawn and make you shine like the sun. And until we meet again, may God hold you in the palm of his hand.”

While Biden and lawmakers don’t always agree, he said, they should remember that they’re all Americans.

“We have really tough, tough differences. We really go at one another,” Biden said. “Let’s remember who the hell, who we are. We’re the United States of America. It’s all about dignity and respect, so let’s practice it.”

(Source: Governor's office)

Gov. Andy Beshear’s administration last week announced plans for “higher ground” developments in Floyd and Letcher counties, bringing the total to seven, as part of rebuilding efforts from floods in 2021 and 2022.

The 92-acre Grand View site off U.S. 23 in the Letcher County town of Jenkins will have room for 115 homes partially funded by the Team Eastern Kentucky Flood Relief Fund, in partnership with nonprofit builders FAHE Housing and HOMES Inc., according to a news release from the governor’s office.

Additional land is available for future developments, playground and park space and walking trails that could eventually connect the community to downtown Jenkins.

The Johnson family donated the land in hopes of helping flood survivors and chose the name Grand View.

“What an honor and a proud moment for the Johnson brothers — Gregory, Garnie and George — to be able to contribute to Eastern Kentucky and Letcher County by donating this beautiful piece of land,” said Gregory Johnson. “We are thrilled that it will benefit the entire community and look forward to seeing the stability of safe housing provide hope and prosperity for the people of Jenkins.”

In Floyd County, the Wayland Volunteer Fire Department sold a four-acre site on Kentucky 1086? in Wayland that is build-ready with infrastructure in place. Up to a dozen homes can be built on the land, and building can start immediately, according to the governor’s office.

In partnership with the Appalachian Service Project, the Team Eastern Kentucky Flood Relief Fund will provide up to $100,000 per home for building and land costs. Appalachia Service Project is a nonprofit committed to building and repairing homes for low-income families.

“There are many families who want to stay in Floyd County but are in need of a safe, affordable home,” said Walter Crouch, president and CEO of Appalachia Service Project. “We always work to keep impacted families on their own property, wherever it’s safe and feasible, to limit further needs or displacements, but we’re also very grateful for our partners who’ve helped us locate high-ground, build-ready properties, like this one in Wayland, where we can keep families in the community they love — and we have local folks ready to move in as soon as these new homes are completed.”

Beshear announced an additional $8 million to help Floyd County build 33 new homes and rehabilitate one vacant home in the New Hope neighborhood in Prestonsburg. The homes will be for Kentuckians directly affected by the 2021 and 2022 flood events that impacted Floyd County.

These funds are in addition to the $2 million Beshear announced to acquire the land for the homes. The funds come from the Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program.

Beshear last December announced ambitions for creating new planned communities on “higher ground” outside the floodplain in the Kentucky mountains.?

Previously announced high-ground communities, include The Cottages at Thompson Branch in Letcher County, Skyview in Perry County, Chestnut Ridge and Olive Branch in Knott County and New Hope Estates in Floyd County.

Record floods struck parts of Kentucky in July 2022. Bays Street in Jackson, the Breathitt County seat, was one of many places under water. (Michael Swensen/Getty Images)

The cost of flood insurance is a large recovery barrier for people living in Eastern Kentucky flood plains, says a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

Researcher Matt Klesta reported what locals have said: Flood insurance is too expensive for most residents. Also, floods have made affordable housing problems worse and driven locals from their homes, decreasing the available workforce.

The report, published in September, focused on the July 2022 floods and the 13-county federal disaster area. The water destroyed homes, displaced thousands of Kentuckians and killed at least 44 people. From July 26-30, 2022, up to 16 inches of rain fell, pushing creeks and rivers far out of their banks, according to the National Weather Service.

“The July 2022 flood was not the region’s first, nor will it be its last,” the researcher wrote. “It’s in these situations that close-knit communities with deep family ties to the land demonstrate their resourcefulness. However, despite eastern Kentucky’s resilience, its recovery is made more challenging by the decline of the coal industry, which has led to the loss of many well-paying jobs and a steady exodus of people from the region.”

Expensive to stay?

It’s expensive to stay. The new research says that homeowners insurance with a flood policy, on average, could cost a family in the affected areas 7% of their median household income. In the 13 most impacted counties, a flood insurance policy could cost $1,384? annually.

After receiving federal aid for flood damage, a property owner is required to have flood insurance or else be disqualified for future aid. ?The Federal Emergency Management Agency, which manages the flood insurance program, requires those who live in a high-risk flood area, known as a Special Flood Hazard Area, and who have a federal government-backed mortgage to have flood insurance. Those who also accepted aid from FEMA after floods — like thousands of households did in Eastern Kentucky after the 2022 floods — are also required to purchase flood insurance.

Few Kentuckians have flood insurance. Rate increases, announced earlier this year to make up for the program’s massive losses, are putting it even further out of reach.

The Fed report also shows that 74% of the some 9,000 damaged housing units were in Breathitt, Knott, Letcher and Perry Counties.

In the 13 flood-impacted counties, the report says, 37% of households, including 55% of renters, made less than $25,000 a year ?in 2021.

This is significant because “low-income households and renters are more likely to suffer permanent displacement because they often have fewer relocation options and lower-quality housing is more likely to be demolished instead of being rebuilt.”

Meanwhile, as people leave the area, the labor market suffers. The report shows that United States Postal Service residential vacancies increased by 19% from the third to the fourth quarter in 2022.

“Fewer residents mean fewer people available to fill jobs,” the paper states. And the construction industry has decreased by 24%, which further pauses housing recovery.

“This shortage of skilled trades workers, such as carpenters, electricians, and plumbers, has led to a backlog of people waiting to get their homes repaired or replaced,” the report found.

For the full report, “Resilience and Recovery: Insights from the July 2022 Eastern Kentucky Flood,” visit the site.

The former surface coal mine in Roxana where U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers wants to build a federal prison. (Photo by No New Letcher Prison)

More than 185 organizations — from across Kentucky and the nation — are urging Congress to reject “fast-tracking” construction of a federal prison in Letcher County.

A Sept. 19 letter to leaders and members of congressional appropriations committees urges them to remove language that Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky put into a House appropriations bill in July. Opponents say Rogers’ provision, giving the long-debated prison a quick path to approval, would trample the rights of the public and prisoners.

Under Rogers provision, government decisions about “construction and operation” of the prison would not be subject to judicial review; there would be no environmental impact study, and the U.S. attorney general would be required to approve the prison within 30 days of the appropriations bill’s enactment.

Opponents in their letter say that Rogers’ provision blocking legal challenges — similar to Congress’ exemption for construction of the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline in West Virginia — would strip away legal protections and recourse for inmates who already would be “isolated hundreds of miles from their loved ones” and “uniquely vulnerable to maltreatment and abuse.”

The letter also says, “Letcher County community members and other stakeholders from across the country should have a say when it comes to such a significant change in the community, particularly given the price tag of over $500 million taxpayer dollars and the false promises of prison-based economic development.”

Rogers has been been pursuing the project for years and appeared to prevail in 2018, but the Trump administration decided to defund the project, saying it was no longer needed, and the Biden administration excluded the project from its 2024 budget proposal. Rogers and other local boosters of the prison say it would create jobs and economic spinoffs in area suffering from the coal industry’s decline.

Rogers told Spectrum News in July: “The federal government needs more prison space. This property qualifies to the nth degree, and it’s proceeding. … We’ll continue to support it.”

The letter’s signatories range from the American Civil Liberties Union to Square Dance Farms of Blackey in Letcher County. It was sent to congressional members of the appropriations committees, the Problem Solvers Caucus and the Second Chance Task Force.

Read the letter:

Organizers Kathi Johnson, Amelia Black Kirk, Mark Boykin, Beth Howard, and Elliot Frederick speaking at an event. (Photo by Jared Hamilton)

When community organizers started knocking on doors in Boyd County, they were ready to listen to what people had to say about the biggest issues in their lives. What surprised the canvassers was how ready residents were to talk.

“It was just house after house after house of people talking to me for 20 or 30 minutes,” said Beth Howard of organizing efforts in the northeastern Kentucky county of 48,000 residents.

“It was just very clear from the beginning that they wanted to talk about what was going on in their lives.”

About two-thirds of residences in Boyd County are owner-occupied. But most of the people Howard and others talked to were renters. Since housing issues were at the top of their list of concerns, the Appalachian People’s Union, the organization that grew out of the door-to-door canvassing, will start with working on those issues. The hope is to add more issues later.

Howard said the working-class residents she and others talked to weren’t used to being asked for their opinions.

“People don’t ask them what they think about anything and they have a lot to say,” she said. “They felt like nobody cared.”

Boyd County lies at the confluence of the Big Sandy and Ohio rivers, which form the borders with West Virginia and Ohio, respectively. Part of a metropolitan area with Huntington, West Virginia, the county lies in an industrial and fossil-fuel production corridor surrounded by largely rural and small-town development. Ashland, population 22,000, is Boyd County’s largest city, and a quarter of the county’s population is rural, according to the Census definition.

Howard said bringing people together is the first step to creating change.

“It felt like something different,” she said of the initial conversations with residents. “This was something deeper where people really had a yearning to change their material day-to-day lives and to build something where there is belonging.”

Howard decided to focus on organizing in Eastern Kentucky because she grew up about an hour away in Morehead. She said there is potential to make good changes in Appalachia, and she wanted to focus on rural areas and small towns.

“There are just so many opportunities that I saw in Appalachia and in my home state,” she said.

Howard said the area’s long history of working-class resistance and organizing made it a place where a group like Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ), Appalachian People’s Union’s parent organization, could build a large coalition. SURJ is a national organization that focuses on organizing around economic and racial justice.

Celina Culver, Eastern Kentucky field organizer for SURJ, said residents in Boyd County talked about their experience with housing as renters.

“We’ve knocked on over 1,000 doors to talk to mostly tenants about their experiences,” Culver said. “Folks talked about times when they hadn’t had heat in their apartments for three winters and their landlord hadn’t fixed it yet. People were talking about pest and rodent infestations and landlords not being held accountable to fix it. They talked about the way that takes a mental and physical and emotional toll on people.”

In many cases, she said, residents felt they were powerless to do anything about the issues they faced for fear of angering their landlord. With a dwindling supply of affordable housing, the fear of having no place to live left them caught in untenable situations.

“No matter where you come from, no matter what you look like, people need to have a place to call home in order to live the healthy and safe lives we deserve,” Culver said. “It’s really dehumanizing when you have to live in a place where you don’t feel safe.”

In July the Appalachian People’s Union held a rally for housing rights in Ashland. More than 70 people showed up, Culver said.

The group called on attendees to join them in working on housing issues. Attendees donned red bandanas, reminiscent of the red bandanas worn by the “Redneck Army” during the Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed labor rebellion in U.S. history, which occurred in Blair, West Virginia, just two hours to the southeast of Ashland, in 1921.

“We asked everybody to put them on to show that we’re in solidarity with each other,” she said. “So, we had a really powerful moment at the end of all of us putting on our red bandanas together and committing to the organization and this work.”

From here, Howard said, the group will work on getting a “Tenants Bill of Rights” passed through the local council to give renters some protections when it comes to housing issues.

In the future, she said, the group can come together over other issues.

“When people can come together around a material need, then I believe that’s when the other transformations can happen,” Howard said. “We believe by coming in around material issues, which a lot of people are more than happy to talk about, then we can kind of get to these issues that have been more polarized largely.”

This article first appeared on The Daily Yonder and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

UK men's basketball head coach John Calipari, middle, joins Gov. Andy Beshear, right, for a conversation during the opening day of the Appalachian Regional Commission's annual conference. Rocky Adkins, a Beshear adviser, left, introduced them. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

ASHLAND — Reflecting on his Appalachian roots, University of Kentucky men’s basketball head coach John Calipari spoke of the resiliency he sees in his upbringing, his players and Kentuckians.?

Calipari, who grew up in Moon Township, Pennsylvania, and has family ties to West Virginia, spoke in conversation with Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear on the opening day of the Appalachian Regional Commission’s annual conference at the Paramount Arts Center in Ashland.

The theme of this year’s two-day conference, attended by government and economic development officials from a 13-state region, is “Appalachia Rises: Resilience, Strength & Transformation.”

Calipari and Beshear discussed supporting Kentuckians in the aftermath of devastating tornadoes in Western Kentucky and floods in Eastern Kentucky.

The coach, the son of a steel mill worker, said his parents taught him the value of earning through hard work as well as paying it forward. Calipari and the UK basketball team supported relief efforts in various ways, including holding special games as fundraisers.?

“Part of the reason I’ve done what I’ve done in our state of Kentucky is because I could see the impact right there in front of me,” Calipari said.?

ARC, a federal organization, represents 13 states and has supported economic development initiatives and public works projects in the region since it was founded in 1965.?

Beshear, who was chosen by his fellow governors as the ARC states’ co-chair earlier this year, is seeking re-election in Kentucky. He addressed conference attendees and presented grant awards to Kentucky organizations and communities before speaking with Calipari, who called Beshear “a governor who cares and has done great work.”?

Beshear and Calipari recalled a moment when UK fans praised Michael McGuire, a coal miner who rushed after work with coal dust still on his face to watch a basketball game with his son. The photo that the coach shared online went viral. He later gave tickets to the miner.?

“It says a lot about our country that it touched a chord, hard working people, a coal miner who cares so much about his son he couldn’t care less what he looked (like),” Calipari said.?

“He wanted that moment with his son,” Beshear added.

Calipari also talked about overcoming generational poverty, which he said is something he’s seen with players who go on to have NBA careers.

Beshear said ARC efforts also focus on poverty. “They’re trying to lift people up in a region that sometimes feels forgotten, that has suffered from the changing economy,” Beshear said.?

The ARC conference is being held in Ashland — a town of about more than 20,000 located on the banks of the Ohio River in northeastern Kentucky.

While speaking with reporters, Beshear said the near future for Eastern Kentucky “could be special,” particularly the region around Ashland which includes industrial brownfield sites that could be used for future economic projects.

“One of the reasons I am running for a second term is to not only continue this record setting economic development, but also to make good on my promise to fully rebuild after the flooding that hit this region,” Beshear said.?

ARC Federal Co-Chair Gayle Manchin, a former first lady of West Virginia and the wife of U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, presented ARC grant awards with Beshear Monday morning. Manchin said that within the next ARC grant cycle, funding may be allocated to rebuilding homes in Eastern Kentucky affected by flooding in 2022.?

In an interview with the Kentucky Lantern, Manchin highlighted how Appalachian states are seeking to overcome hardships, including the downturn of the coal industry and responding to the opioid crisis. Annual conferences allow representatives across member states to share ideas with one another.?

President Joe Biden appointed Manchin to the role in 2021. While she continues to serve with the commission, she said her goal is to see the region begin to think about itself as a whole.?

“We don’t need to be 13 states doing good things. We need to be the Appalachian region doing transformative things and I think we can get there and I think the conversations are starting,” she said. “I think there are some good projects coming out and I think there will be better projects coming out.”

Pine Mountain Settlement School's Charlotte F. Hedges Memorial Chapel, designed by architect Mary Rockwell Hook was built 1922-24. Italian immigrant Luigi Zande, a stonemason, worked on the building. (Photo from Pine Mountain Settlement School Collections)

This story has been updated with a statement released Wednesday ?by Pine Mountain Settlement School.

An Appalachian arts nonprofit’s gathering at Pine Mountain Settlement School in Harlan County ended abruptly last weekend after local residents objected to the group’s presence in the chapel, raising concerns among attendees about their safety.

A statement issued by the Waymakers Collective says participants decided to end their annual assembly a day early “for the safety of everyone in attendance,” including the school’s staff.

The decision to leave came after “a group of white men and women in trucks and on ATVs from the surrounding” area blocked exit roads and paths and demanded that conference participants leave the chapel.

“We were shocked by this as we had rented out the entire campus of PMSS for our event and were treating the entire property with respect and in the manner we had communicated to PMSS prior to the event,” the Waymakers statement said.

Kentucky State Police and the Harlan County sheriff’s office were called to the scene Saturday but no charges or arrests were made.

Harlan County Sheriff Chris Brewer said deputies remained at the campus “for several hours out of precaution to keep the peace.” He also said his office is not conducting an investigation.

The? confrontation has already cost the school one event. Nicole Garneau, organizer of the Rebellious Performance Retreat, said she is moving the five-day immersive theater workshop from Pine Mountain Settlement School, where it had been scheduled to be held over Labor Day weekend.

“I cannot host a retreat dedicated to supporting artists working on challenging material in a place where we do not feel safe,” Garneau told the Lantern in an email.?“I will be sharing the new location of the retreat only with people who are registered.”?

A statement released Wednesday by the Pine Mountain Settlement School said that photos of the conference posted on social media, especially of the chapel, “upset some members of the local community, who interpreted this as non-Christian.” They reached out to interim director Jason Brashear and board of trustees chair James Greene who asked the Waymakers to vacate the chapel.

“The Collective agreed they would relocate the space at their next class break. However, some community members decided on their own to come to campus, entering the chapel, and blocking access to buildings and roads,” says the PMSS statement.

The statement, printed below, says the school “is reviewing its policies and procedures to ensure that this type of misunderstanding does not occur in the future and to ensure the safety of all guests, visitors, and staff. Pine Mountain will continue its tradition of being open and welcoming to all as well as to promote mutual understanding among all those it serves.”

Founded in 1913 and set on 800 acres, the Pine Mountain Settlement School is a national historic landmark. It once served as a boarding school for young Kentuckians; its residence and dining halls and other buildings still host visitors and events throughout the year, including wildflower and fall color weekends.

Brashear, the interim director, said 5,000 students visited last year to hike, study nature and learn square dancing and crafts.

The Kentucky Arts Council provides operating support to the school “from state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts,” according to the PMSS website.

The Kentucky Natural Lands Trust, which raises money to preserve Kentucky forests and natural habitats, has held artists weekends at the campus. The land trust, Kentucky songwriter Daniel Martin Moore and 40 musicians teamed up in 2019 to produce a double album titled “Pine Mountain Sessions” recorded in the school’s chapel which benefited KNLT and the school.

The Waymakers Collective, which says it has distributed more than $1 million in grants to Appalachian artists and arts organizations, describes itself as “a multiracial group that is also inclusive of queer and trans people.”?

The Waymakers’ statement said that for its annual gathering the chapel had been set up as space “for rest and quiet reflection” and “healing.”

“The set up of the room included pillows, meditation cushions, soothing lights, plants, crystals, and some artwork including a painting that included an ‘Om’ symbol,” the statement said.

“It was a spa-like environment to help facilitate restorativeness, rest, and reflection.”?

“Our coordinator specifically asked if there were any special instructions that should be honored in the chapel,” the statement says. “The only instructions given were not to move the pews as the floors were recently resurfaced. Our team requested two tables in the chapel to display aromatherapy oils and other items for the participants, and upon our arrival, the tables were set up?by the PMSS staff.”

On Saturday, a few conference participants were “gathered in the chapel to rest: taking naps or sitting in quiet reflection or prayer” when two men and a woman who were not part of the group entered and sat apart watching, said the statement.

More people arrived, said the statement, and conference attendees were told that they were “desecrating a Christian space” amid demands that they leave, according to the statement, which also said the local residents used “their vehicles to block the roads and paths to exit.”

The settlement school staff intervened and separated the two groups, said the statement.

“The group of people who entered the chapel stayed for over an hour, often lingering on the outside of where we were gathered as though to tell us we were not welcome and were being watched,” the statement said.

The statement says they later learned that Facebook posts had accused the group of “desecrating the chapel and other horrible allegations that simply are not true.”

The weekly Tri-City News, also of Harlan County, in an article posted on its Facebook page, reported that Bledsoe resident Tate Napier said that he was part of a group of “eight or nine” who entered the chapel “because we wanted to make sure the House of The Lord wasn’t being disrespected.”?

Napier is quoted as saying, “The people in the chapel said they were doing nothing wrong, and I asked if they were in there to worship Jesus, and a few started raising their voices at me, so I told them to just get their stuff — that we weren’t there to argue, and I even helped them gather their things and pack them to their cars. After that all happened, the state police and sheriff deputies showed up, and they agreed to stay out of the chapel, but then, ultimately, they decided to leave because they said they felt unsafe.”

On Tuesday afternoon, Napier posted on his Facebook page that he had received a lot of requests from reporters and journalists — the Lantern sent him a direct message via Facebook — seeking interviews but that he had decided to “leave it” with the interview he gave “a local journalist” on Saturday.

“The news and social media are tools the devil uses the most to stir up division, and I don’t want to partake in anymore,” he said.

Garneau, an actor who has performed at the settlement school, said the decision to cancel the Labor Day weekend performance retreat had left her angry and sad.

“I have attended many wonderful gatherings at Pine Mountain Settlement School, many of which were dedicated to social and racial justice. Rural Eastern Kentucky needs a place like PMSS where people can come together to make Kentucky, and the world, a better place,” she said.?

“I am angry and sad that some members of the Harlan community decided to violate a sacred space for healing, and in so doing, traumatize an entire community of folks gathered at PMSS. I fear this will have repercussions for years to come.”?

The Waymakers Collective statement ended with an invitation to the settlement school staff and leadership to “think, with us, about how to ensure Pine Mountain Settlement School continues to be the inclusive, beautiful, and hospitable place it has historically been for many of us — including how best to communicate with potential guests what your boundaries are for the use of your campus.”

A storefront in Hindman says Knott County is "coming back better and stronger than before," in December 2022. On Friday, Gov. Andy Beshear said a second Knott County site will house survivors of Eastern Kentucky floods. (Kentucky Lantern photo by McKenna Horsley)

Another residential community to house survivors of last summer’s Eastern Kentucky floods will be in Knott County, along Chestnut Ridge Drive, Gov. Andy Beshear announced Friday.?

The news, along with the Thursday announcement of a Floyd County site, come on the heels of the one-year anniversary of devastating floods that killed 45 people. Flooding began on July 26, 2022.??

The latest Knott County site, which will be dubbed the Chestnut Ridge High-Ground Community, is near the unincorporated community of Soft Shell and is east of the Knott County Sportsplex, a press release from the governor’s office said. With amenities such as walking trails and outdoor recreation areas, the site covers more than 100 acres and will have single-family residential lots.?

Beshear, who traveled to Eastern Kentucky Friday, said in the release that “when the floods hit, we promised each other that we would be there for one another until every life and structure is rebuilt. Today we get to announce plans for a new, safe and resilient high-ground community in Knott County that will lift up this entire region.”

A time frame for the project to be completed was not included in the press release, but the property costs $2.37 million and is owned by Western Pocahontas Properties, a West Virginia-based company. Before the Beshear administration acquires it, a federal environmental review must be completed to determine if disaster relief funding from the Community Development Block Grant program is eligible for the site.?

Western Pocahontas will donate the right of way for an access road to the site. The state plans to use CDBG funds through the Kentucky Housing Corporation to build homes on the site.?

The press release said the acreage the state will develop will accompany land donated by Joe and Kelly Craft to the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky. Joe Craft, now an executive of coal producer Alliance Resource Partners, is a Hazard native. His wife, Kelly Craft, is a former United Nations ambassador and unsuccessfully sought the Republican gubernatorial nomination earlier this year.?

The combined community will have about 200 homes, possibly with multi-family apartments.??

Other residential sites for flooding survivors have been announced in Talcum, which is near the Knott-Perry county line, as well as near downtown Hazard.

Kentucky voters rewarded Gov. Andy Beshear for his efforts on behalf of Eastern Kentucky after devastating flooding. Above, Beshear spoke to media in Whitesburg after the flash floods of July 2022. (Photo by Michael Swensen/Getty Images)

The day after the one-year anniversary of devastating floods in Eastern Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear announced plans to provide 34 single-family homes to house flood survivors.

Beshear said Thursday that $2 million in Community Development Block Grant funds will be given to the county to acquire two vacant lots — a total of 34 acres — in Prestonsburg. The funds will be used to rehabilitate one home and build 33 new homes along Cliff Road and Old Cliff Road. No timeframe was given on how long the project will take to complete.?

According to a press release from the governor’s office, the lots are out of the flood plain. Kentuckians directly affected by 2021 and 2022 flood events in Floyd County will be housed in the homes.?

After the property is acquired, funding to help Floyd County build supportive infrastructure, such as water, sewer and roads, will be announced. The Mountain Housing Corporation will be the site constructor.?

“Housing remains the top priority as we continue rebuilding from the floods,” Beshear said in a statement. “We promised to be with Eastern Kentucky until every structure, home and life is rebuilt. We’re keeping that promise, and we’ll be back here soon with more updates on this project.”

Last summer, flooding killed 45 people across the region. Other “higher ground” sites have been announced in Talcum, which is near the Knott-Perry county line, as well as near downtown Hazard.?

Flooding began on July 26, 2022. Since then, residents, housing advocates and state officials have worked to secure permanent shelter for victims of the floods.??

Floyd County Judge/Executive Robbie Williams said in the press release that recovering from the floods “would take years” and added the county’s residents are “still standing, and we’re building a better future for our people.”?

“We celebrated a lot of good news today in Prestonsburg,” Prestonsburg Mayor Les Stapleton said in the press release. “We have more good news coming, and a lot of reasons to hope. We are grateful for these funds and will keep building a better future for our people.”

Beshear will travel to Eastern Kentucky again on Friday. While in Knott, Letcher and Perry counties, he will share more updates on initiatives to rehouse flooding victims.

Republican Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who is seeking to unseat Beshear in this year’s gubernatorial race, campaigned in the region Thursday. He had stops in Perry, Letcher, Harlan and Bell counties.

Miners have suffered more exposure to silica dust as more rock must be removed to reach dwindling coal seams. (Getty Images)

Correction: This story previously stated the Mine Safety and Health Administration was not holding a hearing on the new silica dust proposal close to Appalachian coal communities. MSHA announced Thursday it had added a hearing in Beckley, West Virginia on Aug. 10. We regret the error.

Gary Harriston, 69, compares what it feels like to have coal workers’ pneumoconiosis, known commonly as black lung, to running out of air or not being able to “catch my wind.”?

He remembers working as a coal miner decades ago and dashing to a bathhouse to get out of a rain — and knowing. “I started running up there. At the steps when I got into the bathhouse, I’m standing there, can’t breathe. And I’m thinking, ‘Oh, you’re getting ready to die,’” Harriston said. “That’s when I really realized that I had it. It was kind of a scary situation.”

In recent decades, a surge of black lung — and a surge in more severe cases of the disease — has struck Appalachian coal miners, including in Kentucky, with diagnoses coming decades earlier in life than before.?

A study last year confirmed that miners’ exposure to silica dust was driving the recent epidemic of severe black lung.?

As modern mining machines became more efficient at chipping into rock to reach coal seams, black lung experts have said, coal miners were exposed to higher rates of crystalline silica dust created by cutting through quartz, along with exposure to coal dust that has long been present in mines.? Breathing excessive dust leads to pneumoconiosis that cripples lung capacity and leads to death. More accessible coal seams are gone, Harriston said, which means more rock must be cut to reach the coal that’s left, creating more dust for miners to breathe.

Harriston, the National Black Lung Association president who lives in Beckley, West Virginia, believes a long-awaited regulation will help contain the recent epidemic of black lung and protect current and future miners. But the proposed rule is by no means perfect, he and others say.??

The federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) previously regulated only exposure to overall levels of dust during a coal miner’s work shift, as measured by dust monitors worn by miners.?

A proposed rule published July 13 would create a separate exposure limit for silica dust, lower the maximum exposure limit for silica dust and create an “action level” of exposure lower than the limit that would require a coal mine operator to take “periodic” dust samples.?

Coal companies still responsible for dust monitoring

A major problem remains with the proposal, according to advocates: MSHA largely still relies on dust sampling data submitted by the companies themselves.?

Coal companies across Appalachia have a history of cheating on dust sampling, with a couple Kentucky coal companies pleading guilty to federal charges in recent years for doing so.?

Willie Dodson, the Central Appalachian field coordinator for the environmental nonprofit Appalachian Voices, said he’s heard anecdotes from miners in Kentucky, West Virginia and Virginia about not trusting company-submitted dust samples. One example of concerns include samples being taken only in less dusty parts of a mine.?

“A lot of the samples are taken by a monitor that a worker wears, and so which worker is wearing it and what part of the operation is that worker working in has a huge influence on, ‘Is it really reflecting the conditions that most of the workers are in?’” Dodson said.?

Dodson said common stories from miners also include operators temporarily changing the working conditions of mines on days when they know federal inspectors are coming, including improving ventilation and hanging curtains to contain dust.?

The president of the Kentucky Coal Association, representing mining companies in the state, did not immediately respond to an interview request about the proposed rule.?

Dodson said it would be better to have MSHA inspectors conduct more of the sampling themselves, but the federal agency has struggled with maintaining funding in recent years. An article by Dodson published in April detailed an analysis that showed funding for MSHA had fallen since 2013 along with the number of coal mine inspectors employed by the agency.?

“I mean, if MSHA was just rolling in dough and not investing it more in mine inspectors, then I might be more upset,” Dodson said. “I’m upset at Congress for not giving MSHA the money they need to protect coal miners.”

With the proposal now open for public comment, MSHA plans to hold three public hearings on the new regulation in Arlington, Virginia, on Aug. 2, Beckley, West Virginia on Aug. 10 and Denver, Colorado, on Aug. 21.?

MSHA announced the addition of a hearing in Beckley, West Virginia following criticism by mine safety advocates that the two other hearings were not particularly close to Appalachian coal communities.

Courtney Rhoades, the black lung organizer for the Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center in Whitesburg, said advocates are “going to make sure that Central Appalachia is heard” in the months ahead.

“The coal mines continue to be plagued by this epidemic. But this silica rule is the first step to hopefully changing that,” Rhoades said.

Silas House is inducted as Kentucky poet laureate at the annual Kentucky Writers Day celebration in the state Capitol rotunda in Frankfort. (Photo by Tom Eblen)

LOUISVILLE – Growing up in Eastern Kentucky, author Silas House saw early the power of representation in literature.?

Lead character John-Boy in the award-winning television series “The Waltons,” for example, was his “hero.”?

Here was a young country boy who, like House, dreamed of writing.?

“I didn’t know anybody who wanted to be a writer,” said House, who on April 24 became Kentucky’s new poet laureate. “I especially didn’t even know any boys who would admit to reading.?So I was pretty lonely in the world as a reader, as a boy.”?

In his new post, House feels “an extra layer of responsibility” to represent Kentuckians — and the full spectrum of the human experience, he said in a recent sweeping interview with the Kentucky Lantern.?

People call him many things: Appalachian writer, working class writer, a writer of faith.?

Now, he’s the state’s first openly gay poet laureate.?

“I’m not offended by any of those labels,” the New York Times bestselling author said. “But … the way I think of myself is totally multifaceted.”?

He strives to represent his characters that way, too.?

“Any good writer is fascinated by human beings,” said House, whose awards include the 2023 Southern Book Prize and the Duggins Prize.?

He started studying people in the long holiness church services he attended as a child.?

“I was not allowed to take any toys with me, but I was allowed to take a notebook and pencil,” he said. “I remember studying people during those church services, and I would write … a little character sketch about everybody in the church … when you really look closely at people, it’s hard to see them as one dimensional.”?

‘There is no monolithic gay person.’?

House’s appointment as poet laureate – the first openly gay Kentuckian in the role – comes after a legislative session featuring several?anti-LGBTQ bills.?

Lawmakers banned gender-affirming care for transgender minors amid some bipartisan opposition.?

Additionally, schools can now keep trans students from using the bathroom of their choice and teachers can misgender trans youth.?

Drag shows also came under heat this session, which ended March 30.?

“There are so many people that have felt … belittled and hurt by that legislation,” House said. “It feels like it’s legislation by a very vocal majority of the legislators that doesn’t really line up with the majority of Kentuckians, which, in a way, makes it even more frustrating.”?

House, who’s spoken openly about having a transgender son, said the push for more parents’ rights this session didn’t include parents of LGBTQ+ children.?

“No LGBT person I know is asking for special rights — they’re only asking to be treated equally. The same as parents of LGBT people should be treated like any other parents,” he said. “I think that’s one of the things that the legislation really has illuminated is that the parents of LGBT children are being given less rights than the parents of straight children.”?

He’s focused on being “diplomatic” while representing all Kentuckians in his new role.?

“I know that it’s important especially for young queer people to see me in the public,” he said. “I’m just happy to be out there as an openly gay person and to be visible and to show people that there is no monolithic gay person.”?

Being gay also shouldn’t be politicized, House said.?

“Somebody said to me the other day: ‘Why do you have to be so political about being gay?’” he said. “I’m not the one who politicized being gay. I’m just living my life.”?

‘No agenda’ when writing.?

Gov. Andy Beshear praised House’s work when introducing him as the new poet laureate.?

“We are so proud of Silas, who grew up in Kentucky, was educated in Kentucky and now represents our state with such pride,” Beshear said. “Our commonwealth is fortunate to have him here teaching our future writers and now serving as our literary ambassador to the world.”

After Beshear — who is running for a second term ?— announced House’s appointment, the Republican Governors Association featured the writer in a 28-second attack ad calling him a “radical.”?

Among those who jumped to House’s defense on Twitter was singer Jason Isbell, who tweeted, “Silas is my friend and he’s a wonderful person and y’all can just stay mad.”?

“Anybody who knows me knows how much I love Kentucky,” House said in response to the ad. “I, especially as poet laureate, seek to represent as many Kentuckians as I can. I think that my many different identities allows me to represent a whole lot of Kentuckians because I’m not just one thing. Nor is anybody else.”?

House wants people to think when they read his work, but said he doesn’t write with an agenda.?

He seeks to challenge people’s way of thinking — just like literature did for him.?

The reach of literature: Books can change a worldview?

House’s latest book, “Lark Ascending,” is full of warning signs about what can happen when people buy into extremism.?

“I know literature can get to people like that and can change people like that because it’s happened to me,” House said.?

When he was a child, he said, he mostly believed whatever he learned in church. But when he was 14, he read the frequently banned book, “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker.

“I had been raised with this idea of God as this old white man in the sky with a big long white beard and he’s watching everything and he’s ready to throw a lightning bolt at anybody who disobeys,” House explained. “And suddenly she is showing me this idea of God that is loving and wants people to be happy and wants people to have pleasure. … Part of me was resisting this, because I’m like, ‘that’s not the God I was taught about.’ And the other part of me is like, ‘this is the God that makes so much more sense to me.’”?

“The Color Purple” also exposed him to race and to people unlike him for the first time.?

“I was only raised around white people,” he said. “It wasn’t an integrated place.”?

Literature, he learned, can set in motion a thinking evolution and expanding point of view.?

“That book totally changed my way of thinking,” he said. “It changed my worldview so that I evolved in my thinking afterwards.”

Coal and climate change: ‘We have to transition.’?

In 2021 and 2022, House’s home region of Eastern Kentucky was hit with back-to-back deadly floods.?

Though the region has survived many such catastrophes, science predicts flooding will become worse as Kentucky’s climate warms because of climate-warming emissions built up in the atmosphere.?

House has often written about climate change, too, and advocated for protecting natural resources.?

“I hear a lot of politicians talking about ‘we need a transitional economy,’” he told the Lantern. “That’s their job – is to make that happen. And one way that that could really happen is through … being a part of solar and wind power creation.”?

Kentucky is missing an opportunity, he said, to lead when it comes to solving the climate crisis.?

“The whole state is just a ripe opportunity for that to happen in a widespread way and we’re not taking advantage of it,” he added. “I think it’s easy to see why we’re not because it doesn’t behoove some politicians as much as other forms of energy do.”?

House grew up in a coal and tobacco economy. His uncles, grandfather and brother-in-law worked in coal mines. His coal mining grandfather lost a leg in the mines, House said, and suffered from black lung, which is lung scarring from coal dust inhalation.?

“I just keep hearing ‘coal’ dragged out,” House said. “It’s a proud heritage. We fueled the world. And I’m really proud to be the grandson of a coal miner. That’s a big part of my identity. … But we have to move beyond that. We have to transition.”

Lawmakers need to be “more progressive in their thinking about a just transitional economy for Kentucky,” House said.?

He wishes climate change and natural resources discussions were not politicized.?

“It just blows my mind that things like … keeping our water clean is politicized,” he said. “There’s this whole idea that if you say, if you acknowledge that climate change is real, then … you’ve … exposed yourself as too liberal or something. It boggles my mind that … we don’t do everything in our power to protect our water and our resources. It just speaks of what an instant gratification way of thinking we have.”?

‘Poetry has really always sustained me.’?

Kentucky’s poet laureate, whose job is to elevate the literary arts in the state, need not be a poet.

House is known for his novels but he has published poetry. And the genre “has really always sustained me,” House said, comparing the form to music and song.?

“The first thing I do when I start working on a novel is: I gather the poetry that is going to speak thematically and tonally to the novel I’m working on,” House said.?

To him, the best poetry is accessible verse and “can speak to you pretty easily.”?

One of the poets he thinks does that well is Ada Limón, the United States poet laureate who makes a home in Lexington but is from Sonoma, California.?

“A lot of people are turned off by poetry that makes them feel dumb,” House said. “And her poetry is easy to read even while it’s incredibly profound, thought provoking.”?

Other notable writers of our time have called Kentucky home – bell hooks, Barbara Kingsolver, Wendell Berry and more.

House wants to use his tenure to bring more attention to Kentucky’s writing community — essentially marrying tourism with the literary tradition.?

“The state is wonderful (at) historical markers, but there’s not a lot of them about our literature,” he said. “So I want to figure out ways to better acknowledge our literary history and our legacy and make that more visible for people who are visiting.”?

He also wants to create a program that will teach Kentucky youth how to “take oral histories from their elders,” and produce them.?

“I have … a two-year window where I can do a lot of things to help, especially young writers,” House said.?

Already, House’s days are full. He teaches at Berea College and Spalding University’s Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing. He’s a freelancer and self-promoter on top of being a writer.?

As a creative, though, it’s important that he finds stillness to avoid burnout.?

He finds it by the creek in his yard or lying in the grass with his dog, Ari.?

Laura Humphrey walks a wheelbarrow to a pile of debris while volunteering to clean up in Perry County near Hazard on Aug. 6, 2022. Thousands of Eastern Kentucky residents lost their homes ater devastating rain storms flooded the area. (Photo by Michael Swensen/Getty Images)

HAZARD — How does one of the nation’s poorest rural regions recover from the most disastrous flooding some of its communities have ever seen?

“Neighbors, heroes and leaders.”

That answer was the three-legged theme sounded repeatedly by Peter Hille, chair of the East Kentucky Leadership Foundation, at its annual conference in Hazard Thursday and Friday — exactly nine months after the flash floods left many in Southeastern Kentucky wondering about their region’s future.

The 35th annual East Kentucky Leadership Conference made clear that the disaster had created a greater sense of community among neighbors, some of whom responded by becoming heroes and leaders. Several were spotlighted in the annual East Kentucky Leadership Awards:

• Kate Clemons of Hazard, who didn’t know anyone in Knott County but organized free-food distribution there immediately after the flood and is still running a food center in Hindman;
• Whitesburg firefighter Charles “Red” Colwell, who can’t swim but rescued 14 people from deep, rushing floodwaters and is now chief of the department in the Letcher County seat;
• Nathan Day of Knott County, who rescued nine people and told Hazard’s WYMT, “I just feel like if everyone would open their doors and open their hearts, this world would be a better place.”
• Gwen Johnson of the Hemphill Community Center in Letcher County, a distribution site for supplies and place of refuge and healing space where people could gather to feel a sense of community;
• Donna Campbell and the Lost Creek Fire Department in Perry County, which rescued people and served as a distribution center for supplies, and is organizing rebuilding of homes;
• The Rousseau Volunteer Fire Department in Breathitt County, which rescued 15 people, including 12 in an attic, and has helped more than 4,000 families;
• Scott McReynolds and the Housing Development Alliance, which helped preserve 41 homes, repaired 31 and placed six families in new homes, and has applicaitons for 120 more.
• Gerry Roll and the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky, which has raised more than $7.4 million for flood relief and has written more than 8,000 checks.

For each plaque handed out Thursday night, 10 to 20 more people or organizations deserve the same recognition, McReynolds told the crowd at Hazard Community and Technical College.

Roll, CEO of the foundation, said in accepting its award, “We’re here for you. We are you, you are us. That’s what community is.”

The foundation and other philanthropies made major differences in the recovery, said Lynn Knight, an economic development consultant in Washington and New Orleans who has done much post-disaster work and attended the conference.

Knight also told the Institute for Rural Journalism that the region is fortunate to have several community development finance institutions, such as Hille’s Mountain Associationand the Kentucky Highlands Investment Corp., which can play a role in financing the recovery. The combination of CDFIs and philanthropy make the region unique, she said.

The disaster has helped some local governments and officials overcome political and geographic rivalries that have often impeded progress in the region.

“The biggest success we’ve had is tearing down the walls” between local governments, said Perry County Judge-Executive Scott Alexander, quoting Hazard Mayor Donald “Happy” Mobelini as saying that “If something’s good for the city, it’s good for the county, and if something’s good for the county, it’s good for the city.”

Alexander said Friday morning that should also apply to competition between counties for jobs. “There’s nothing wrong with somebody living in Perry County and working in Knott County,” he said. “So let’s look at Appalachia as a whole. Let’s tear those barriers down.”

Much of the conference was devoted to the experiences, opinions and hopes of high-school students in the region, which will be the topic of future reports from the Institute for Rural Journalism.

The reporting is being done by Ivy Brashear in her role as the Institute’s first David Hawpe Fellow in Appalachian Reporting, named for the late Louisville Courier Journal editor who was born in Pike County and was the newspaper’s East Kentucky Bureau chief in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The fellowship is for students at the University of Kentucky, Hawpe’s alma mater. Brashear, a native of Perry County, is a Ph.D. student in the UK College of Communication and Information. If you have story ideas for her, you may email her here.

This story is republished from The Rural Blog, published by the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based at the University of Kentucky.

Flash flooding inundated much of Southeastern Kentucky in July 2022, including Breathitt County, above. (Photo by Michael Swensen/Getty Images)

Representatives from across Appalachia will convene in Ashland Sept. 11-12? for the Appalachian Regional Commission’s annual conference.?

Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear announced the location, theme and date at the Delta Hotel in Downtown Ashland on Tuesday. He was joined by the commission’s federal co-chair Gayle Manchin.

The conference theme is “Appalachia Rises: Resilience, Strength & Transformation.” An ARC media advisory said this year’s event will feature partners throughout the region “who work daily to strengthen the region by creating and expanding workforce development, growing sectors like outdoor recreation, developing entrepreneurs, and building leadership and community capacity.”?

Beshear said the conference will support efforts to improve the lives of Appalachian families. He noted the collaboration that followed following devastating floods last summer, including support for recovery efforts in Eastern Kentucky from the National Guards of Ohio and West Virginia.??

“I have said this is going to be the toughest rebuild in the history of the United States, but it happened to the toughest people,” the governor said. “The strength and spirit of our people is extraordinary, and because of that strength and resiliency, we will see a brighter future. We will rebuild every home and every life no matter how long it takes. This is what ARC is all about.”?

Earlier this year, Beshear was elected by governors in other ARC member states to serve as the state co-chair of the commission for 2023. He is the first from Kentucky since 2015, when his father and then-Gov. Steve Beshear held the position.

Manchin expressed gratitude for those working to prepare Ashland for the conference later this year. President Biden appointed her to her role in 2021.?

“It will allow us to connect with all 13 of our states,” Manchin said of the upcoming conference. “It will allow to bring us together to talk about new ideas, to share best practices, to brag on what we’re doing in our communities, but most importantly to share that camaraderie that we all love, the family, the people, the opportunity that we have each been given to give back, to work together, and again, to bring our Appalachian region to parity.

A press release from Beshear’s office said ARC opened a call for conference programming Tuesday. Submissions are due April 21. Details about registration and programs will be released this summer.

The ARC is a federal economic development agency for 13 states. It serves 423 counties in the region.

Last year, Kentucky received more than $51 million from the ARC for projects such as a water treatment plant, a steel manufacturing facility in Middlesboro and improvements at Breaks Interstate Park in Pike County.?

Located in northeastern Kentucky, Ashland is in the Tri-State Area of Kentucky, West Virginia and Ohio.?