Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 15, 1993 TAG: 9303150559
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD CARTWRIGHT AUSTIN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
DEEP RECLAMATION, LAND REFORM ARE COALFIELD KEYS
FROM HERE in the coalfields of Southwest Virginia, President Clinton's proposed energy tax feels like the latest in a series of blows to the tottering "kingdom" of Appalachian coal. We mine a billion tons a year in the United States, more than ever before, but the economic benefits from this mining have been shrinking while the polluting consequences intensify.Because of underground mechanization, growing reliance upon surface mining and the shift of production to thick Western seams, coal employment is less than a third of what it once was. Yet the spread of strip mining devours thousands of miles of land in Appalachia, the Midwest and the Northern Plains, while the toxic consequences of burning coal are becoming both socially and environmentally unacceptable. Acid rains damage buildings, lakes and forests; other airborne pollutants attack human health; greenhouse warming threatens the stability of the world's climate.
Many of Appalachia's most accessible coal seams have been exhausted by a century of mining, and it is unlikely that coal will ever again command the prices necessary to justify mining the more difficult reserves. Coal executives warn local communities to plan for the days when the mines must close.
Since 1959, when I began pastoral ministry in the Appalachian coalfields, I have seen hard times aplenty, but none more grim than the hardships now emerging. In a few of the oldest mining areas - such as McDowell County in West Virginia - the collapse of the coal economy is complete. Where 23,000 mined in 1948, only 3,000 remained at work in 1985, and the number continues to dwindle.
Nearly half the population has fled the county since 1970, even though jobs are hard to find elsewhere. Only one sixth of employable adults are working, so the majority must subsist on some form of government payment. Coal-dependent West Virginia ranks 49th among states in per-capita income, and income in McDowell has fallen to half that state's average.
The mountain landscape has been tortured by mining. Only one town was left with any sewage treatment by departing companies. Families haul water home from safe springs in plastic jugs, for many cannot drink the water from their taps, and some dare not even bathe in it.
In the words of sociologist Richard Couto, counties like McDowell have dropped "beyond distress." That is, conditions are far worse than government economic indexes were designed to measure. Yet even from this nadir, creative leadership has emerged in many depleted McDowell towns.
"I feel invigorated," one woman told me. She and her neighbors were renovating an abandoned school for a community center. "The coal companies aren't here to hold us down. It's a mess, but now it's our mess."
Providing a fresh start for the people of the Appalachian coalfields and their ravaged landscapes will require a quality of political leadership not often seen. We need two fundamental changes: land reform and deep reclamation.
During modern history, Appalachia has experienced two great transitions in landholding patterns. A third is required to provide the basis for economic recovery.
The first took place as frontier settlers drove bands of Indian hunters from the hills and claimed private plots for subsistence farming. The second came near the beginning of this century, when land agents representing railroads and coal speculators bought mineral rights for pennies an acre from mountaineers who had little sense of the value of the coal beneath their hills.
Today, 75 percent of the land in Appalachian coalfield counties is owned by coal and land companies with headquarters in places like Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and London, England. The land is held for possible coal, gas or timber development. Rarely will such companies sell land for local use. As mining declines, some land companies propose to develop giant landfills for urban garbage or toxic wastes on depleted coal lands. Citizens throughout Appalachia are resisting proposals to trash their counties with polluting wastes from urban America.
Systematic land reform is necessary to provide the basis for economic revival in the coalfields. Federal or state commissions should condemn corporately held lands that are not in production, paying the value that their owners have claimed for real-estate tax purposes. The lands should then be opened for homesteading by families with productive, agricultural, residential, recreational or reclamation intentions, after such families have been trained in the care of fragile, abused mountain lands.
The gradual reopening of Appalachian coalfield lands to settlement and use by local families or those who wish to return to the mountains would stimulate a social and economic revival from the ingenuity of the people themselves. Hundreds of thousands of small enterprises - farms, craft workshops, stores, local manufactures and tourist facilities - would provide a more secure economic foundation than the marginal industries that mountain counties now try to lure away from high-wage regions of the country. We don't need to steal factories from others. We need our land back.
Deep reclamation is the second fundamental requirement for rebuilding a robust economy and a healthy society in the Appalachian coalfields.
Toxic streams and unsafe water supplies, and eroding strip-mined hillsides where timber struggles in vain to put down roots, will frustrate development efforts. For a century, Appalachian coal has fueled the modernization of America. Its low cost did not reflect the environmental degradation left unattended in these remote hills.
It is the obligation of the larger society, now enriched by our coal, to underwrite the cleanup necessary to restore healthy natural systems so the human community may rebuild.
Appalachian people have the skills required for this reclamation: We can operate bulldozers, plant trees, tend farmland, restore streams. When land is returned to the people and we receive compensation for the work of reclamation, this work will be done well by those close to the land who have eyes to watch over it and hearts to love it. It will be deep reclamation.
Therefore, as part of a land-reform and homesteading strategy, Appalachian lands should be appraised for their reclamation needs. The government should set reclamation targets for each parcel and offer reasonable financial inducements to the homesteaders who undertake the work.
Coal and tobacco, the crumbling twin pillars of the Southern Appalachian economy, can plunge us "beyond distress" when they fall. Alternatively, Appalachia can develop a new economy which offers opportunity to our people, reclaims our despoiled environment, and provides healthful products and services for other Americans to enjoy.
The transition will require vision, political courage, and a willingness to invest in the places we value.
Richard Cartwright Austin, a Presbyterian minister and environmental theologian with Appalachian Ministries Educational Resource Center, was a leader in the 1970s struggle for federal regulation of strip mining.