Funding totaling $90 million is slated for green energy jobs throughout the state.
Funding totaling $90 million is slated for green energy jobs throughout the state.
An annual report from the Reclaiming Appalachia Coalition, a group of regional nonprofits in the Virginias and Ohio, lays out projects led by primary sponsor Coalfield Development and the Appalachian Climate Technologies Coalition.
Two-thirds of the funding is from the U.S. Economic Development Administration as part of the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), passed in 2021.
Projects include converting abandoned factories and brownfields in Charleston and Huntington into green manufacturing plants and job training centers, and repurposing abandoned mines into renewable energy fields that would use solar, wind or geothermal sources.
Other purposes for abandoned mines like eco-tourism and recreation, food production and rare earth element development are also planned. West Virginia University is working with the organization on the mine reclamation project.
The group also plans to launch programs for digital technology and “green-collar” workforce training, climate resilience initiatives for small businesses and entrepreneurs and finance other renewable energy projects in the state.
Coalfield Development estimates it will create 5,000 direct jobs and 15,000 indirect jobs in 21 West Virginia counties.
Another project outlined in the report is the SkyView Lodging and Wellness Center. It will include eight to 12 cabins, as well as a center for those in substance use recovery programs, on a partially-reclaimed mine site in Mingo County near Delbarton.
The cabins are meant to provide lodging for bicycle riders alongside a pavilion for substance use recovery programs to host training events and retreats.
“Our project consists of three components that will employ at least 50 former coal miners or people in recovery from Substance Use Disorder with supportive apprenticeship and life skills training programs,” the report said.
The construction is planned to create 30 permanent jobs, 60 temporary construction jobs and 120 on-the-job training positions, according to the report.
It’s being funded separately from the ARPA funds, with the majority of the project being funded through New Market Tax Credit loans totaling $6,158,000. An extra $2 million from the Department of the Interior’s Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization Program is still pending.
Economic development leaders from the Ohio Valley’s coal communities used a Congressional hearing on climate change Tuesday to say that their communities must be central to conversations about climate solutions.
“The justice we call for in this transition is based on the reality that these communities and communities like ours literally fueled the growth of this great nation,” he said. “And they sacrificed lives, families, health, water, prosperity.”
Credit Erica Chambers
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Peter Hille of Mountain Association for Community Economic Development
As Congressional Democrats and others in Washington consider how to help coal-dependent communities, Hille said, they must be willing to provide new investment to these regions.
“Even as they gave us the timber that built our towns, the coal that fired our industries and the steel that made our cars they are owed a debt, and we can repay that debt with the new investments that are needed to grow the new economy,” he said.
Brandon Dennison, founder and CEO of Coalfield Development Corporation, also testified. His southern West Virginia nonprofit helps new businesses get off the ground and retrains workers. For example, the organization has converted a former mountaintop removal mine into a farm that sells produce regionally.
Dennison told the committee that as the transition away from coal continues, it creates not just an economic crisis for Appalachian communities, but a social and environmental one.
It also creates new opportunities for the region.
“The fact that coal isn’t coming back doesn’t mean that Appalachia has no future,” Dennison said. “The void left by coal’s collapse is actually making room for new entrepreneurial sprouts to grow up and Appalachia can be a vital contributor in the fight against climate change.”
Credit Rebecca Kiger
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Jacob Dyer at the Coalfield Development Corporation site.
Both Hille and Dennison testified to the opportunities created by previous federal investment in the region through the Appalachian Regional Commission’s POWER grants and the Abandoned Mine Land Pilot program. Both provide money for economic development projects and job retraining in economically distressed communities.
But they noted any discussion about comprehensive climate change legislation or massive economic transitions away from fossil fuels must take seriously the damage such moves may further cause to extraction-based communities.
“If we don’t pay attention to the economic hurt of extraction communities and invest in solutions that show there is a viable path forward, we’ll only deepen the division in our country,” Dennison said. “We in Appalachia need to know we are valued and the country needs to know we have more to offer than just coal. Too often when discussing economic transitions policymakers announce ‘Well, we can just retrain those people.’ And I do need to say that that is always way easier said than done.”
A Friend of Coal
Not every witness from the Ohio Valley agreed with committee Democrats’ assumption that in order to address climate change, fossil fuels will continue to lose market share.
Bill Bissett, head of the Chamber of Commerce in Huntington, West Virginia, and former president of the Kentucky Coal Association, testified he believed coal mining and the now booming natural gas industry will continue to play a role.
“I believe and would suggest that many of my fellow West Virginians believe that we can produce coal and natural gas while also creating new economic opportunities for our citizens,” he said. “We simply do not have to sacrifice one industry to create new opportunities.”
Maryland Democratic Rep. Anthony Brown asked Bissett how he would better prepare for the ongoing economic transition and whether his organization had created a transition plan as the country’s energy mix continues its shift away from coal.
Credit Courtesy of Scott Shoupe.
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Courtesy of Scott Shoupe.
Scott Shoupe worked as a miner before retraining.
Bissett said currently the Huntington Chamber of Commerce hasn’t considered how the region might transition, in large part due to a recent upturn in West Virginia’s metallurgical coal industry.
Metallurgical, or met coal, is used to to make steel. Over the past 18 months, international demand from Asia has boosted demand and spurred production in West Virginia. Most analysts expect international demand for met coal to taper off in 2019.
Bissett expressed concern that federal efforts to tackle climate change will erase recent gains.
Credit Carrie Ray / MACED
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MACED
Scott Shoupe measuring energy consumption in a lighting system.
“Our concern again is that there’s going to be votes made here that’s going to put us back in that jeopardy,” Bissett said. “It’s a very tenuous time, a very fragile time.”
He told Brown the Huntington Chamber of Commerce is supportive of economic development initiatives.
“I think we can do both, Congressman,” Bissett said. “I think we can mine coal, I think we can have a new economy. I think we can do it all because that new economy will benefit from low-cost, reliable electricity generated from natural gas and coal.”
In response, Brown expressed concern that Bissett’s thinking was short-sighted.
“I’m not sure I agree with your assumption over the long term. I think you’re taking a bit of a short to medium term view of it,” Brown said. “How do we together plan the best possible transition here?”
A Green New Deal?
The hearing’s focus on preparing for the ongoing energy transition was superseded by a focus on a plan by Democrats called the Green New Deal, an ambitious policy package that aims to address both economic inequality and climate change.
Republicans on the committee criticized the policy objectives laid out in the Green New Deal, which would eliminate all U.S. carbon emissions from the energy sector and greatly reduce other greenhouse gas emissions from the agriculture and transportation sectors within about a decade, in order to prevent the worst impacts of climate change.
During a particularly testy exchange, Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney decried the framework and said it called on Americans to cease airplane travel. California Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman, a co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, pushed back.
“I was just listening as the gentle lady said we want to outlaw cars and get rid of the military” Huffman said. “There comes a point where this type of questioning is so disingenuous and so completely disconnected from anything factual that there ought to be a mechanism to strike it from the record.”
This week we meet the next person we’ll be following in our Struggle to Stay series. 37-year-old Crystal Snyder is a single mother of two, who says she wants to stay in West Virginia, where her family has lived for several generations. But being a single mom in West Virginia is challenging for her, and sometimes she worries whether raising two kids in this state is good for their health.
15 years ago, Crystal Snyder’s mom was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, which had already spread to the rest of her body. She died a few weeks later when Crystal was just 22 years old.
“When you see a map and it shows you this area of poverty, people die 15-20 years earlier than they do over here in Virginia, and your mother died at 41, it kind of makes you think…is it a good idea for me to leave my children here? Like, part of me wants to take them out so they don’t die 15 years, you know, premature. But…just part of me wants to fight for them because this place is so beautiful.”
Crystal has blonde hair, and her face is tanned from working in the sun. On her back, she has a tattoo of a fiddle; actually the tattoo covers up the name of her second husband, a marriage that was a mistake, she says. She’s made other decisions she isn’t proud of, but being a mom isn’t something she regrets.
“My kids and I, we have a good bond. It’s not been easy.”
Crystal married early, when she was 16. She had her son Aaron a year later, and her daughter Morgan when she was in her 20s.
“I just want to cherish these moments, cause I know it’s not gonna last long, and I am single, and it’s just us, and I’m just trying to relish in these moments. Cause I know I’ll look back and remember, years down the road, this important time that we had together. And I love them.”
Crystal recorded one of her first entries at her home, while she was cooking dinner with her daughter Morgan. While they cook, Morgan tells her mom about an episode of McGiver.
Morgan says she hopes she’ll soon be taller than her mom. At nearly 5 feet, she’s close.
"I love to see new places, but nothing compares to West Virginia."
“She’s independent. She’s been independent since she was like four,” Crystal said, looking down at her daughter with a smile. “She would never let me brush her hair, or pick out her clothes. She always did it on her own. I wanted to because she has beautiful red hair, you know, and she wouldn’t ever let me brush it, but she just developed like her own style, and I’m glad we did that because she knows a lot.”
Credit Kara Lofton/ WVPB
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Crystal Snyder, who is part of a farmer-training program called Refresh Appalachia, fixing a weed eater at a farm in Milton.
"I used to call the mailbox dad. I'd drive by the old Cabell County courthouse and I think, 'thats where I used to see my dad.'"
“I’m proud I keep a house. Somehow I keep it going. I just somehow always find a way. I don’t give up.”
There were some scary things that happened to Crystal when she was a little girl.
She remembers late night parties, with strangers coming into their house, drug deals at the home, and fights between her parents.
“It was total neglect. But my mom…had been abused as a child, and it was just turmoil. No, she loved us. But…no…they didn’t know how to take care of kids. No, it was neglect, and abuse. And I was an accident and they weren’t going to have me. Then [my mom] decided not to have an abortion, or maybe she saw my heartbeat, I don’t know. So I’m really lucky to be here.”
“But I wasn’t two, and my mom and dad were fighting, like they fought constantly, and my mom kicked my dad out of the house and said to take me too.”
As a girl, Crystal moved back and forth between her grandparents’ house, her mom’s, and her dad’s. Her parents broke up and got back together several times. Her dad was in and out of prison for most of her childhood, serving time for selling drugs.
"I wanted a stable family. I wanted, I guess, people to care about and who cared about me."
“So I was like a baby before I remember, the first time. I mean I drive by the old Cabell County courthouse and I think, ‘that’s where I used to see my dad.’”
And then, Crystal’s mom met a guy at a truck stop, left with him, and never looked back. Crystal was just 15. She only saw her mom a few times after that.
“She’d come back and visit and say, ‘I’ll never live here again.’ And, I don’t know, I thought she was brave for that, but, I wanted her close.”
Around this time, Crystal decided she wanted a family and kids of her own.
“I wanted a stable family. I wanted, I guess, people to care about and who cared about me.”
Hoping her children are safe and healthy is what weighs heaviest on her mind.
“But just as much of me wants to fight for them, because this place is so beautiful! And I just feel so blessed to live here. And I should be able to live here with clean water! And (sighs) I think the part of me that wants to fight is stronger than the mother in me that wants to get my kids out of here.”
"I'm proud that I shine my light still, maybe more so than if I hadn't of experienced darkness."
But beauty isn’t the only reason Crystal wants to stay in West Virginia.
“I love to travel. I love to see new places, but nothing compares to West Virginia. It’s just not home, like, if you see flat… if you see too far, it’s like, this isn’t right.”
And although Crystal doesn’t have a lot of family here, she does have a sister, who’s a year older. Having that tie is important – especially getting to see their two daughters grow up together.
One evening last summer, they came to Crystal’s house to cook dinner and play.
It had been raining all day. As Crystal and her sister were cooking in the kitchen, the sun peaked through the clouds, and Crystal noticed her niece Olivia and her daughter Morgan dancing and running in the rain. They looked up to see a rainbow peaking out from behind the clouds.
It’s moments like these that make Crystal want to stay, to raise her kids in the mountains. So, she’s going to continue to try to live here, and to make West Virginia better, and safer.
What is Crystal most proud of?
“My tenacity. I’m proud that I shine my light still, maybe more so than if I hadn’t of experienced darkness.”
We first began recording Crystal’s story in January of 2016, in the middle of a major life change. She’d recently been laid off from her job at a nearby T-shirt factory.
20-year-old Colt Brogan always found it easy to make fairly good grades in school. As a kid, he’d dreamed of being an architect. But that changed. Around the time when he was a junior in high school, Colt decided college wasn’t for him.
“It felt too unpredictable. I thought, dealing drugs is safer than going to college. That’s the God’s honest truth,” says Colt.
He didn’t have a lot of money for college, and he knew he couldn’t count on his family for financial assistance. Taking out loans just felt like a gamble to him. College wasn’t familiar, and he didn’t really know a lot of people who knew much about higher education. Drugs though—that’s something he saw regularly. So, at 17, just before he moved out of his mother’s house, he considered becoming a methamphetamine dealer.
“I could have made money that way. I mean, probably would have been an addict. And had an awful life. Made bad choices, went to jail, become a felon. It’s not a good road to go down, but it is lucrative and available.”
This story is part of the Struggle To Stay series. Reporters have spent 6-12 months following the lives of 6 individuals as they decide if they will stay or leave home – and how they survive either way.
He says this was the lowest point in his life, because he was headed down a path he didn’t like. He was smoking marijuana, and he’d begun experimenting with hard drugs, like heroin, crystal meth, and abusing prescription pills, like a lot of his friends and family.
“I didn’t like myself, at all. I didn’t want to be in this world. I would rather die than to be a burden on somebody else. I didn’t want to be that, I’ve seen that too much. I just wanted to be a productive member of society.”
Everything changed when he heard about a job working for the Coalfield Development Corporation on a project called Refresh Appalachia- a two and a half year training program to learn farming.
The job became his ticket to stay in southern West Virginia, but also a way for him to leave his home, and the drugs, behind. He had to pass a drug test to get the job.
He says he quit drugs cold turkey, but it wasn’t easy.
“How I believe I got out is, and I think what makes me a little bit different from other people, is I came from a background with strong emphasis on religion. So I had something to believe in. I had hope, where other people can’t see hope.”
He had faith, but he still didn’t have a place to go. So he asked for help from a friend he knew from agriculture class, Adrianna Burton, and her mom.
He says he didn’t know many other people he could stay with, where he wouldn’t feel tempted to use drugs.
It took about two months until Colt felt in control of his emotions again and stopped snapping at people.
He started to feel better, to think more clearly.
He wrote music to refocus his mind.
The summer after he graduated high school, Colt got the job with Refresh Appalachia, where he now works. He actually works at the same high school he attended, growing vegetables in the Lincoln County greenhouse and helping mentor the agriculture students.
His big dream is to one day own a farm or a ranch in Lincoln County. He’d like to be able to hire people, maybe even give teenagers a chance to work and stay, if they need a place to live.
“I know I never had nothing like that. And I know I wouldn’t have hung out with the people I hung out with, or did the things I did if I would have had a big ranch to live on and food to eat every night.”
He shares that dream with Adrianna. Around the time when he got the job with Refresh Appalachia, in June of 2015, they started dating.
“At the time, there would be like a lot of future motivated text messages between us,” Adrianna recalls. “And one of them, from way back then, is still my screen background on my phone. And it’s basically like, we are going to overcome all this, I’m gonna be your husband, we’re gonna have a farm, we’re gonna have 18 kids cause that’s the joke that he had back then,”
Colt and Adrianna say they want to encourage teenagers here to feel hope, and help them learn to grow their own food. Adrianna is going to college at West Virginia University and wants to become a high school Agriculture teacher.
“I want to show these kids that there is an industry that you don’t have to be shady in,” says Adrianna. “Like you can do this right and make something of yourself. Cause even though people might not like to hear it, we’re not always gonna need coal miners. We’re not always gonna need oil rig operators, but we’re always gonna need farmers.”
Meanwhile, Colt’s trying not to worry too much about the details of what he’ll need to do to stay. Like…how much it costs to buy farmland.
“I feel like a home, or land, no matter how big or how much, it’s what you make it,” says Colt. “I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. A lot of West Virginians say, ‘it’s the most beautiful state, why would you want to leave?’ Then on the other hand they’ll give you fifty reasons why you might want to leave.”
Despite the high rates of drug abuse, and poverty, there is more that Colt loves about this state, and Lincoln County.
But is that love enough to keep him here? We’ll hear more on that next week on The Struggle to Stay. Note the audio version of this story may have language that is not suitable for young listeners.
Can a photograph help a community grow? One photographer is shedding some light on ongoing efforts in a region looking for some new ways to sustain itself.
*The music in this story comes from Kai Engle.
Rebecca Kiger is a documentary and portrait photographer raised in West Virginia. The images she captures are often exceptionally emotionally evocative. She says it takes a lot of patience, and a little faith in both her process and her subjects.
“You have to imagine anything’s possible,” Kiger said while mousing over some of her recent images at her studio in Wheeling, West Virginia. “It allows these magical things to happen in the frame.”
Kiger went south in West Virginia this year to document new development projects in some of the communities hardest hit by the economic downturn in the coal industry. She focused on light and relationships to capture what she said was a hopeful scene.
“Photography is painting with light basically,” Kiger explained. “I’m looking for lighting and once I have that, I’m trying to figure out how and I’m going to frame. Then the question I always ask: Why are you doing this?”
Credit Rebecca Kiger
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“Photography is painting with light basically,” Kiger explained. “I’m looking for lighting and once I have that, I’m trying to figure out how and I’m going to frame. Then the question I always ask: Why are you doing this?”
Kiger says even more than she loves photography, she loves people. What motivates her to capture compelling imagery is the desire to tell their stories. To find out if she hit her mark, we asked some of her subjects.
“Captures the Moment”
“Captures the moment, doesn’t it?” Danny Ferguson asked Jacob Dyer as they first glanced through a book of Kiger’s photos. Ferguson is Dyer’s mentor at the Coalfield Development Corporation in Huntington, West Virginia. The two are looking at photos Kiger took while they were building a solar power training site in Kanawha County.
“It was a rough day that day, we was behind the gun,” Ferguson remembered.
Credit Rebecca Kiger
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“It was a rough day that day, we was behind the gun,” Ferguson remembered.
He’s Coalfield Development’s Lincoln County crew chief. He explained that in the wake of the ailing coal industry, his organization is working to create diverse, next-generation jobs.
“I grew up in Lincoln County – that’s the whole reason I took this job,” he said. “I’d see all these kids with no possibilities, couldn’t get a job because everywhere they’d apply they’d say they want two to five years experience. Well how you gonna get the experience if no one will hire you?”
Credit Rebecca Kiger
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Danny Ferguson (L) and Jacob Dyer (R). . Ferguson is Dyer’s mentor at the Coalfield Development Corporation in Huntington, West Virginia.
Teaching young people from the region like Jacob Dyer how to work with and install solar panels is one way Coalfield Development is hoping to support a more diverse economy.
“I’d prefer to stay here,” Dyer said, “stay home and be around my family. And help the economy, you know?”
Ferguson pointed to a black and white portrait of Jacob’s face. “That one picture says ‘Jacob.’ I’ve worked with him for a year and I’ve learned a lot about him,” he said. “That’s amazing. That’s what I would call a ‘wall-hanger.’”
Ferguson said while working, they barely noticed Rebecca Kiger. But he does remember talking with her during lunch.
“She was trying to find out more and she took what she found out and actually said it in a picture. To me, that’s amazing.”
Hopeful Outlook
Credit Rebecca Kiger
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Jacob Dyer of Coalfield Development Corp.
“I probably listened to and shared more than I ever have on any other assignment,” Kiger remembered.
She says she’s grateful for work opportunities that allow her to put social media down and connect to people of all philosophies and backgrounds.
“I felt hopeful after listening to them talk about ways that they can transform communities and build communities up. I loved every minute of it. I hope the pictures I take will bring more attention to their efforts so that they can grow,” Kiger said.
The photos Kiger took were commissioned by the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation – a charitable nonprofit that funds economic development projects in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. The title of the latest annual report, which Kiger was hired to help illustrate: Aspire. Invest. Prosper. Transitioning to West Virginia’s New Economy.
Last month the Coalfield Development Corporation and Solar Holler announced they would expand an already existing partnership to help transition miners from coal jobs into a new industry. The announcement meant a new training facility at West Edge in the Westmoreland neighborhood of Huntington, but will work with laid off miners throughout the state’s southern coalfields.
Credit Coalfield Development Corporation
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Conceptual drawing of the Solar Training facility.
The Huntington solar training institute is just one of many training programs that the Coalfield Development Corporation offers to coal miners looking for work outside of the industry. The non-profit also trains laid off miners to work in hazmat and asbestos removal. Workers in the different programs also take classes at local community colleges.
Shepherdstown-based Solar Holler works to install solar panels at businesses and organizations around the state.
Deacon Stone is the President of Rediscover Appalachia and a Project Manager with the Coalfield Development Corporation. Workers who deconstruct and renovate housing units in the southern part of the state will also help renovate the new training space this winter.
Until then training continues in places like Mingo county, where students are taught the ins and outs of hanging solar panels.
“We have Solar Holler playing a developer role churning up business that our young people will get to educationally and experientially benefit from when they do the actual installs and we’re doing all of that work already,” Stone said.
Credit Coalfield Development Corporation
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Conceptual drawings of the Solar Training facility.
The partnership between the Coalfield Development Corporation and Solar Holler began in 2015 and has already led to some installations around West Virginia. One is at Edward Tucker Architects. The group recently bought and renovated a new space in Huntington and decided to add the solar panels to their facility. Ed Tucker is the President of Edward Tucker Architects. He said it just made sense to work with the budding relationship.
“We’re really excited about Coalfield’s program and the ability to put local folks to work cause we understand that spending in our community and keeping the dollars at home and investing in the people at home is a good thing,” Tucker said.
Tucker said they qualified for a USDA grant to help fund the project and are doing a leasing program for the 51 panels that sit atop the building. He said it won’t be long before they see the benefit in their electric bills. He says it’s expected to cut their electric costs in half.
Dan Conant is the Founder of Sollar Holler. He said it’s projects like these and more that are in the works that make the development of a training facility in Huntington all the more exciting.
“It’s going to mean that we can build out our facilities so that everything they could possibly see out in the real world, they will have experienced first,” Conant said. “It’s going to speed up all the installations because they will have seen it before.”
The partnership choose projects based on a triple-bottom line. They look for projects that are good for people, good for the planet and good for profit to help the program continue to function as a hands on experience for laid off workers who need a new career.
