This year, nearly $30 million in federal funding will go toward projects that revitalize West Virginia’s coalfield communities and repurpose abandoned mine lands across the state.
In an effort to repurpose abandoned mine lands, state officials have granted millions of dollars in federal funding to community development projects on former West Virginia coalfields.
The funding was secured in the latest round of the Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization (AMLER) Program. Since 2016, the program has provided federal dollars to community and economic development projects that rehabilitate coalfields, as well as the towns surrounding them.
West Virginia has hundreds of abandoned coal mining sites, with an estimated 173,000 acres of land across the state abandoned before 1977 alone.
For 2024, West Virginia was granted just under $30 million through the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE), which oversees the program.
This year’s funding marks the most West Virginia has received since 2016, the first year of the program.
With OSMRE’s final approval still pending, West Virginia officials said that this year’s funding would be divided between 10 different economic development initiatives across the state.
Projects selected for funding by state officials this year include a cattle processing facility in Brooke County, a sports park in Marion County and a heritage center in Ohio County.
Announced Thursday, the following projects were tapped for AMLER funding this year by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, the West Virginia Department of Commerce, the West Virginia Department of Transportation and the Governor’s Office:
Chief Logan Resort and Recreation Center, Logan County: $6,800,000
West Virginia Farm Foods, Brooke County: $4,000,000
City of Thomas Water Improvement Project, Tucker County: $3,000,000
Cleanwater RU2 Process Project, Kanawha County: $2,950,000
Ashland Resort Tourism Park, McDowell County: $2,993,500
Liberty Station Lodge & Tavern, Mercer County: $2,421,968
Opal Smith Highwall and Roanoke Center Expansion, Lewis County: $2,406,739
Gravity Adventure Park, Kanawha County: $2,163,954
A bill that would restrict “rolling coal” — a form of protest in which drivers release thick clouds of smog from there vehicles — advanced in the West Virginia Senate on Monday, but not without pushback from some lawmakers.
A controversial bill that would prohibit “rolling coal” on roadways advanced in the West Virginia Senate Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Monday — but not without pushback from some lawmakers.
Rolling coal refers to modifying diesel fuel in a motor vehicle in order to pollute the air with thick, dark smog. For years, rolling coal on highways has served as a display of allegiance to the coal industry in spite of mounting environmentalist pushback.
Elsewhere in the United States, lawmakers have restricted the form of protest in light of environmental, health and safety concerns associated with emitting a pollutant into the air.
Now, West Virginia legislators are considering their own restrictions on the practice. The West Virginia Senate is actively reviewing Senate Bill 436, which would render the contentious form of protest a misdemeanor.
The bill reached the Senate Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Monday, where discussions focused on the safety risk associated with reduced visibility on West Virginia roads.
Sponsored by Sen. Jack Woodrum, R-Summers, the bill penalizes deliberately selling, making or using diesel additives to produce “visible smoke emissions.” It would apply to all motorized vehicles on public roadways, but not on private land.
The bill passed through the committee Monday but drew pushback from senators who described it as a crackdown on pro-coal West Virginians, or an unnecessary piece of legislation to focus on.
Rolling coal refers to the deliberate emission of thick, black smog from a motor vehicle. Credit: toa555/Adobe Stock
Sen. Robert Karnes, R-Randolph, was an outspoken critic of the bill during Monday’s meeting. Karnes alleged the pending law would suppress some West Virginians’ right to protest.
“People who are doing this rolling coal are simply expressing their support for West Virginia’s coal industry,” Karnes said. “This is an attack on people who support our coal industry.”
“We may not like that particular statement,” he continued. “But they have a right to express their political views.”
Others who voted to advance the bill said that, regardless of their own perceptions of the protests, the law would not mark a clear enough suppression of coal supporters’ rights to preclude it from further consideration.
“I don’t see this as an anti-coal bill,” said Sen. Glen Jeffries, R-Putnam.
Regardless, members of the committee agreed to scale back penalties for those who violate the law.
Under an earlier draft of the bill, repeat rolling coal offenders could face up to six months imprisonment. The committee deemed this excessive, and amended the bill so that violators would only incur fines up to $500.
With the committee’s approval, the amended bill will now return to the Senate where lawmakers will determine whether to send it to the House of Delegates.
Eighth graders in West Virginia are required to take West Virginia Studies, and coal has shaped many facets of our state’s economy and environment. But as employment in the industry continues to decline, how are teachers and students discussing coal in classrooms today?
Pamela Bush has taught West Virginia Studies in the heart of the state’s southern coalfields, where she grew up, for 16 years. Over time, she’s noticed coal’s presence in the classroom is evolving.
“When I first started, we had a whole unit just on the coal industry,” Bush said.
In more recent years, coal employment has declined in her area and resources like natural gas have entered the economic picture. Now, Bush said the course combines coal with all the natural resources, like salt, iron ore and timber.
“So it’s just another form of a natural resource that we look at rather than being the big, mega powerhouse that it used to be,” she said.
Then, and now, Bush teaches her students about coal’s early history — in particular, about the ways that industrialists and mining families clashed over unionization a century ago.
“I still teach a lot about the labor movement and the coal mining wars,” she said. “Because that is our local history here in the southern coalfields.”
In Cabell County, known for Marshall University and the Ohio River port city of Huntington, Brian Casto has been teaching West Virginia Studies for four years.
He agrees that coal does not have quite the same bearing in West Virginia Studies textbooks as it did several years ago. He’s also noticed more balance now in how they describe the impacts of the coal extraction process.
“Now, you see a lot more things in the textbooks that show the positive impact of coal, but it also argues some of the negative things that have come from it, like the environmental impact,” Casto said.
The current textbook, “West Virginia: 150 Years of Statehood,” discusses the controversial mining method known as strip mining, or surface mining. One passage reads, “it destroys land, and pollutes streams, increasing the potential for erosion and flooding.”
But the book also contends that companies must restore the land once they’re finished. The book reads, “in some instances, the area is actually left in better condition than before it was mined.”
Casto said his students often ask whether there are ways to mine coal in more environmentally responsible ways — or if out-of-work miners could be trained to do other jobs.
“A lot of students say that what needs to happen is how do you maybe lure manufacturing jobs to the area to fill those gaps of employment,” Casto said. “So people can still stay in those places.”
Back over in the coalfields of Logan County, Pamela Bush sees a sharper divide in her classroom.
“You have some students who have the mindset that they know that coal is never going to be as big as what it once was,” Bush said. “And then you have some that will hang on for dear life, you know, it’s gonna come back, it’s going to be as big as it ever was. So it’s kind of a mixture of both.”
In southern West Virginia, coal isn’t history at all — it’s a present and personal part of people’s lives. But that’s not the case in Jefferson County, where Keith Moody has been teaching West Virginia Studies for eight years.
“Jefferson County is in a pretty unique situation,” Moody said. “When you look at the state as a whole, Jefferson County is one of the few counties that does not actually have any coal.”
One of only three, in fact.
Jefferson County is also just an hour-and-a-half from Washington, D.C., and fewer families there have ties to the coal industry.
“Coal doesn’t impact their lives, like it does if you were to live in McDowell County,” he said.
Though they rely on coal in any number of ways, Moody said his students often feel indifferent about the industry and sometimes question why they have to learn about it.
He said many are perplexed by the control that out-of-state investors have had on the coal mined in West Virginia and wonder if it could happen again.
“One question I get from students sometimes is, are we seeing the same thing happening, you know, with natural gas? Are we allowing outsiders from West Virginia to come in and make money off of our industries and our natural resources without putting it back into West Virginia?”
All three teachers say, though, no matter what county you’re from, coal still plays a major role in understanding West Virginia today.
“Our culture is what it is because of the people that came here to work in the coal mines,” Bush said. “We can’t forget the past if we hope to move forward.”
All three teachers envision coal playing a new role in the state’s economy, in the form of tourism. As the resource dwindles, its history remains — and those stories are worth telling for years to come.
One big takeaway from the 2016 election is that people are people — not political categories — which is a topic of interest for former coal miner Gary Bentley.
Bentley is from eastern Kentucky and now lives in Lexington. He has written extensively about his time underground, including in a blog series called ‘In the Black’ for the Daily Yonder.
He spoke with reporter Caitlin Tan about his thoughts going into the general election.
This story has been lightly edited for clarity.
Caitlin Tan: So we actually had you on the show a few years ago, you told us about your 12 years underground in the mines. And you talked about how you don’t like how the national media portrays coal miners. For those who didn’t hear that episode, can you kind of walk us through that again, and why you feel that way? And why you started writing about it?
Gary Bentley: Yes. So you know, I always see two sides coming from people that are outside the region or that aren’t familiar with the coal industry, and the people that worked in it or are still working in it. You get the romanticized photos, a lot of people refer to it as poverty porn, of black and white photos of these miners covered in coal dust, holding picks and shovels and the little metal dinner buckets standing outside of a coal mine or on their front porch. Then you also get the side where it’s the Republican worker standing behind political candidates. And then you’ve got the opioid addiction issue that seems to, for some reason, find its way into all of the coal industry portrayals of the people working. You know, it’s a blend of all of that. And there was a wide variety of people that worked underground, and I worked in several different regions — nobody actually fit into one specific category or mold. And I just wanted people to see what it was really like, what the people were really like and some of the things that went on underground.
Tan:We last talked, you know, four to five years ago. Have your thoughts and opinions morphed on the mining industry or changed?
Bentley: Yeah, I wouldn’t say that my thoughts have necessarily changed, but I’ve seen a lot of things coming from distant friends or family members that have sort of changed my opinion on why a lot of those people maybe leaned in the political direction that they did.
Tan: During the 2016 election, and honestly, still now, Appalachians and coal miners are often labeled as Trump country. And I’m wondering, do you feel like that’s accurate? Or do you feel like there’s more nuance?
Bentley: Yeah, I mean, it is complicated. And I’ll just say, regardless of how people take my answer, but if you look at the region as a whole, I’m gonna say it is “Trump country.” But at the same time, there are a lot of people that live in that area that are not Trump supporters. They don’t support the policies and actions and things that he has said — there are very open-minded people that live in that region. And so to say that everyone from Appalachia is a Trump supporter or supporter of those types of conservative beliefs is inaccurate, but stereotypes and labels exist somewhat for a reason. And when you look at the region as a whole and the majority of the population, unfortunately, I don’t see it being that inaccurate.
Tan:And you say, “unfortunately,” where’s your thought process coming from on that?
Bentley: Well, you know, I hate to think that the area I grew up and lived in and I still care about, would be so stuck in the beliefs of racism, hate and divisiveness that they would still be so staunchly proud and supportive of Trump.
Tan:What kind of issues are on your mind this election cycle? I mean, as a former miner, you had to move away from Appalachia for employment.
Bentley: So politically, my biggest concern is the economy and what’s gonna keep that area alive, and at the same time it’s the systemic racism.
Tan: And you were saying that you’ve kind of over the years tried to understand where friends or family or former co-workers might be coming from, in their values and why they might feel resentment towards the left and feel strongly toward Trump this election cycle. Can you explain more?
Bentley: I guess I would blame the majority of all of that on the media, because a lot of the beliefs and feelings I have come from a place of ignorance of just not knowing, not experiencing. And from the time I was young, it was always you know, coal jobs, coal jobs, coal jobs. There was never any real talk about diversifying the economy. And so the majority of people really believed like, coal is all they have, like, without coal jobs, we have nothing. And in my region of Appalachia, Christianity and Christian values were like, probably the No. 1 thing on people’s minds when they go to vote.
Tan:So back in 2016, then candidate Donald Trump promised to “bring back coal” if he was elected, but in fact, coal production hit some of the lowest levels last year. Do you feel like there’s a way to bring back coal? Do you think Trump could realistically deliver on that promise? Or do you think the decline is inevitable?
Bentley: Well, it’s inevitable. Coal has been in decline when they left the pick and shovel era of mining and brought in machinery. From that point forward, coal jobs have decreased every year. And you know, it’s all a play on numbers. So they may say, “Oh, there was a coal boom, say in 1980.” But in reality, the business may have raised a small bit, and there may have been more coal being purchased. But the number of jobs never increased to the level it was 10 years prior, 20 years prior. Yeah, there may have been 800 new coal jobs in a year. But that doesn’t account for the 3,000 coal jobs that were lost five years prior.
Tan: That brings me to my last question, which is that you live and work in Lexington now. Do you ever see yourself coming back to Appalachia?
Bentley: You know, I don’t know that I would, or could, I’m not saying I wouldn’t, because I would love to live there, but at this point in time, I could not go back because of the lack of job opportunities. Also I’ve got to think about the future of my daughter, you know, what would she do? Is she gonna be forced to leave as I was? And until there is a drastic change in the economy and more job opportunities, I can’t go back. And the majority of my friends that have been forced to leave the area, just like I was, they say the same thing. You know, there’s nothing that would allow me to go back.
Tan:Is there anything else related to what we’re talking about that you wanted to say or add?
Bentley: So, my biggest concern is I would like for people, when they go vote, when they look at who they’re going to vote for, that they would look for who is going to do the most for the area they live in and actually boost the economy and make positive impacts and changes, because nobody can bring the coal industry back. Nobody can change where the coal industry is at this time.
The Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) announced this week $43.3 million in grants to support economic diversification in the region’s coal-impacted communities. Seven of those projects are in West Virginia.
The funds will go to projects in Princeton, Elkins, Summersville, Wheeling, Beckley and Huntington.
The largest award in West Virginia went to a project called Thundercloud Gigabit City Deployment that will support approximately 25 miles of fiber construction and create a fiber loop that will connect Barboursville to downtown Huntington.
Huntington city leaders, who ultimately were rewarded $2.35 million for the project on Wednesday, raised concerns about the application process in September, after learning national telecommunications provider Comcast objected to the project and the city’s request for funding.
The project, which received $2.3 million, is part of a larger broadband expansion in the region.
In Beckley, $50,000 will go to support a strategic plan to improve aviation workplace training and education in the region.
The awards are part of the POWER initiative, a federal grant program aimed at supporting communities affected by job losses in the coal industry.
ARC has invested over $238 million across Appalachia since 2015. So far, most of the POWER investments have been in eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia, and southwestern Pennsylvania.
Amid the rolling hills and strip-mined mountain tops that stretch through Logan County, West Virginia is Route 10 — a newer highway that was 20 years in the making. It made road travel in southern West Virginia more accessible, but it also replaced the McDonald airfield.
And like most airports in the coalfields, the McDonald airfield is but a faint memory, recalled only by a few who used to fly there.
“We loved our little airport, and so we always took good care of it,” said Andrew York, a professional pilot from southern West Virginia.
York learned to fly at McDonald airfield in the 90s. It was known by locals as Taplin airfield, for its proximity to the unincorporated town of Taplin.
“It always looked good in the spring and summer in the fall,” he said. “It was always nicely mowed and trimmed and we’d have cookouts, and it was a throwback airport. There was nothing new there.”
The Way It Was
In the mid-1900s, the southern coalfields were once home to at least 40 airfields, or landing strips for airplanes, but today there are 28.
York’s grandfather, Edsel Varney, a legendary WWII fighter pilot, helped found Taplin airfield after the war. At that time, Taplin was a big deal.
John F. Kennedy flew into Taplin for a campaign stump speech before he was elected president. Also, actor Lorne Greene who played Mr. Cartwright on Television’s ‘Bonanza’ flew into the small Logan County airport.
In fact, local airfields popped up across southern West Virginia in the 1900s. At least 12 were opened between the 1930s and the later 1960s. They were used as training facilities, military fields and as a way to get around West Virginia.
Flight revolutionized travel in the Mountain State, said Merle Cole, Raleigh County Historical Society marker program officer.
“It took 50 minutes to fly, what would take you almost seven hours on a train and nearly as long by car,” Cole said.
Two Industries Intertwined
Many of these historic airfields have disappeared, much like Taplin. They have been replaced by highways, strip malls and some have been overtaken by the forests.
There are not many people left who still know the history of these tiny airports, and very little history was written down. Like so much else tied to the once prosperous coal towns throughout Appalachia, many of these stories have been forgotten with time.
But the airfield history that we do know, Cole said, is partly related to the boom and bust cycle of coal mining.
“Flying is an expensive business. You gotta’ have a lot of money invested in airplanes, and airports and runways and staff and crew,” he said. “If you’re operating a small, private or personal strip, you still got to have the money to keep that plane in the air.”
While the coal industry soared in the mid-1900s, financing the airfields was not an issue, Cole said, adding that flying was relatively new and exciting, only invented a few decades earlier.
“People had extra cash on hand, people got their pilot’s license and learned to fly,” Cole said.
Pursuing his passion for flying, Edsel Varnie, Andrew York’s grandfather, used his fighter pilot experience to work his way up from being a coal miner to flying coal barons through the southern coalfields.
“If you’re a coal president or you’re in charge of the coal mines or something, I guess you don’t want to drive, you know, an hour and a half, two hours depending on what part of the southern coalfield you’re coming from,” York said. “But you had all these little communities that had their own airport, and it gave them access out of the coalfields.”
An “Uphill” Battle
Although flying was more efficient than driving, the topography still made flying difficult. To land a plane one needs long stretches of flat land, something the mountain state, especially the southern coalfields, lacks.
Runways have to be built either on top of flattened mountains or in flat land near the rivers, Randy Coller, pilot and airport inspector, said. Coller has inspected airports all over the country, including West Virginia.
“Generally, they’re shorter runways. And if they’re built in a valley it makes it extra difficult because there’ll be fog in the valley meaning it takes a while for the fog to lift out of the valley for it to be used,” Coller said.
The Taplin airfield, remember the little Logan County airport, was listed as ‘hazardous’ even while it was still open. It was about 2,600 feet of unpaved, grass runway. For comparison, a more typical runway is paved and around 6,000 feet.
West Virginia Route 10 cuts through half of what used to be the McDonald, or Taplin, Airfield.
Taplin was also in a valley and shaped in a curve, or what pilots call a ‘dog leg,’ making it tricky to land, York said.
“You might be able to see some of the airfield but not a lot of it because you had a ridge between you and the airfield. So, you followed the river, a windy river,” York said. “So, you wasn’t really flying straight to the runway. And then all of a sudden you get around at one point at Rich Creek, and bam, there’s the runway and you would land. That’s not normal.”
Within the regional pilot community, it was thought that if one could land a plane at Taplin, one could land a plane most anywhere, York said.
The End Of An Era
With the decline of the coal industry and along with it, West Virginia’s economy, Cole, the historian in Raleigh County, said the smaller airfields were no longer used.
“When the coal industry started dying off, many went away, and people simply didn’t have the money to pay for their hobbies or their transportation in some cases,” Cole said.
But the decline was not solely related to the coal industry. Randy Coller, the airfield inspector, said there are several other factors not specific to West Virginia.
“After WWII there was kind of an upsurge in pilots because a lot of the veterans had access to the GI Bill and they learned to fly, but that generation of pilots is dying out,” he said.
Also, the opening of larger regional airports and more stringent regulations made it harder for local operations to stay open, Coller said. But some communities hold out, Coller added, hoping to one day reopen their airfields.
One in Wyoming County is not used much for flying these days, but it is still maintained for other reasons.
“I myself have walked at the airport or ridden my bike as a young child. And now I enjoy taking my kids up there as well,” said LeAnn Biggs, a West Virginia native.
The airfield is a long strip of empty pavement, much like a running track, great for recreating.
“We take long walks up there, my children ride their bikes, splashing the mud puddles, and just enjoy the scenery,” Biggs said.
Many of the airfields in West Virginia’s coalfields have disappeared with time, taking with them much of the rich history. Some have turned into strip mines or chemical factories, others reclaimed by the forests. But there are some clues left behind.
In Welch there is a locked gate, with an old metal sign that reads, ‘Welch Airport.’ Along Route 10 in Logan County, there is a turnoff that is called, ‘Airport Road.’ It takes you to what is left of Taplin Airfield – an overgrown field lining the banks of a windy river, that offers a glimmer of what it once was.
This story is part of West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Southern Coalfields Reporting Project which is supported by a grant from the National Coal Heritage Area Authority.
**An earlier version of this story misquoted Merle Cole. The correct version is, “It took 50 minutes to fly, what would take you almost seven hours on a train and nearly as long by car,” instead of, “It took 15 minutes to fly, what would take you almost seven hours on a train and nearly as long by car.”
