Rural Economy Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Grocers In Rural Towns Struggle To Stay In Business

There’s a picture frame on the wall next to the customer service desk in the IGA in Inez, Kentucky. Inside the frame is a scrap of beige meat-counter paper, on which a man named Derle Ousley sketched the layout for an ad announcing the opening of his very first grocery store.

“Inez Supermarket Grand Opening,” it reads. The date: September 28, 1959.

Derle Ousley sketched this ad for the grand opening in 1959.

A Mississippian by birth, Ousley moved to Martin County after he served in the Korean War and noticed that Inez, the county seat, had no grocery store. So he opened one.

The supermarket burned down twice, and was rebuilt as many times. It rebranded as the Inez IGA, and Judith Ousley, who was four when the store opened for the first time, took over from her dad.

“He died five years ago this month,” Ousley said. “I’ve tried my best to keep it going, but when the coal left, so did a lot of people. It’s rough.”

When the Inez IGA closed its doors on January 6, the deli was empty and dark. The shelves were mostly bare. Every so often, a customer trundled a rickety shopping cart through the silent aisles.

Like much of Kentucky, which has lost 63 percent of its coal jobs since 2009, Martin County has struggled economically. The county has also made news in recent years for its beleaguered drinking water system, and as the coal jobs went away, so, too, did Ousley’s customer base.

“Back in the boom days, say 30 years ago, we would do $200,000 in a week. Now it’s about $75,000.”

Judith Ousley took over the store from her father, who opened it when she was just four.

The IGA wasn’t the only food option in town, but it’s close. The other, a discount store, has a limited selection that does not include much produce or many other nutritious items. With the closing of the IGA, folks in Inez must travel to another store in Warfield, 10 miles away over treacherous mountain roads, or go out of the county to chain stores 30 or 45 minutes away in Pikeville or Prestonsburg.

Sarah Congleton is already feeling the loss. “Today is the first day of the IGA being closed, and my assistant Robin is searching the county for bagels. Not even whole wheat bagels. Just bagels. And we can’t,” Congleton said.

Congleton works with the University of Kentucky extension office in Inez as the family and consumer science agent. The extension office had been working with the IGA to encourage healthy purchases, like lean meats and whole grains.

The extension office had a grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to address Martin County’s high rates of diabetes and obesity. The work was hard enough with a grocery store, Congleton knew. How could she begrudge a mom on a limited budget for buying junk food she knew her kid would eat over an apple that she knew would go to waste?

Losing the store made that even harder.

“If you’re trying to combat food accessibility and then there goes your grocery store, what do we do?” she asked.

The empty deli counter and bare shelves of the Inez, KY, IGA.

Challenges and Creativity

Inez joins a growing list of rural communities across the country losing their grocery stores, as declining rural populations mean fewer shoppers, and small-town independent groceries find it hard to compete with big box chain stores.

According to an Ohio Valley ReSource analysis of U.S. Department of Agriculture data, between 2010 and 2015, 135 counties in the Ohio Valley saw an increase in the percent of the population with low access to grocery stores. That’s 51 percent of counties in Kentucky, Ohio and West Virginia, compared to 40 percent nation-wide. Ohio saw the greatest increase in low access at 58 percent of counties. The USDA defines low access as .5 miles or more from a grocery store in an urban area and 10 miles or more away in a rural area.

There’s no central organization tracking the closures of rural grocery stores nationwide, but Rial Carver at Kansas State University’s Rural Grocery Initiative knows it is a national problem. “We often get calls saying, ‘Okay, the grocery store just closed, what can we do?’” Carver said. Those calls come from as far away as Alaska and Maine, sometimes in the same week.

According to Carver, the largely rural state of Kansas lost about 100 rural groceries between 2008 and 2018. Declining or aging rural populations, stagnant rural wages, price competition from chain stores, and a generation of mom-and-pops retiring have all contributed to that, and the effect on the grocery’s home community can be stark.

Carver says that particularly in rural areas, grocery stores do more than just provide access to nutritious food. “They can serve as gathering places and be a place to allow for community cohesion,” Carver said. “So if the grocery store goes away, then the community loses those things.”

The Inez, KY, IGA on its last day of business.

But there is a silver lining. Carver says that of the 100 groceries that have closed in Kansas, roughly half of them have reopened, largely due to creative thinking by community members.

“We have seen in the last couple of years more examples of different ownership models,” she said. “So instead of that traditional mom-and-pop, maybe the community steps in and owns the store, or maybe the community runs the store.”

Other communities open coffee shops inside a grocery to turn it into a community gathering place. A Florida town opened its own government-run grocery store after it lost its privately owned one, and stores in Kansas are exploring non-profit models.

Renewable Change

Eastern Kentucky is also home to some creative solutions, as one grocer attacks high energy bills in order to lower overhead costs.

About an hour south of Inez, the IGA in Isom, Kentucky, is bustling. Gwen Christon, who owns the store, noticed the same trends Judith Ousley did: declining foot traffic, lower incomes in the community, and less revenue. She raised her concerns with her account manager at Kentucky Power, the local energy utility, who happened to be a customer at her store.

A few months later, Christon had taken out a loan from the Mountain Association for Community and Economic Development. The nonprofit focuses on economic transition in coal country and, among other things, issues loans to small businesses. Christon used the loan to replace her open refrigerator cases with closed-door cases that would cost less to cool.

“Just doing that, my electric bill went down from $11,000 a month to $7,000,” Christon said.

Next, Christon replaced her roof to add more insulation, further reducing her electric bill. “And then once I get the new roof on, the next thing I want to do is go solar,” Christon added.

Back in Martin County, Ousley plans to run the IGA’s other location in Warfield for a bit, but is looking forward to retiring and starting to volunteer rocking babies at the local hospital. For her employees, the future is a little less certain. Crystal Newsome, a longtime employee, has secured a position at the Warfield IGA, but hopes to move away from her home town soon. “It’s sad, I guess. It’s just gonna be a ghost town.”

SOAR at 6: Group’s Lofty Goals for Coal Country Meet Challenges on the Ground

In a conference hall in Pikeville, Kentucky, this September, Gov. Matt Bevin led an eager audience in a countdown. When the audience reached “One!,” a map on the screen behind the governor lit up with the promise of a high-tech future.

After years of delay and scandal, major portions of the commonwealth’s “middle mile” of high-speed internet were complete.

“There are so many negative haters, so many people who pooh-pooh things and say this can’t happen, it’s not possible,” Bevin told the crowd. “But I’ll tell you what. We’ve never quit.”

The event was the annual summit of a group called Shaping Our Appalachian Region, or SOAR, founded in 2013 to help guide the flagging counties of Appalachian Kentucky into a new, post-coal economy.

SOAR leaders have largely emphasized improved internet service and increased industrial development. But despite the organization’s recent progress, local development officials struggle to fill vacant industrial parks, large areas still lack high-speed internet, and many coalfield residents remain unconvinced that the organization holds the key to a new future.

Limited Scope

SOAR began in the winter of 2013, when 1,700 east Kentucky business leaders, elected officials, agency heads and concerned citizens gathered in that same Pikeville conference center to hatch a bold new agenda. With 27 percent of east Kentucky coal mining jobs lost in just one year and no turnaround on the horizon, the only option was to chart a new path towards a more diverse central Appalachian economy.

Community leaders fanned out across the 54 counties comprising Appalachian Kentucky. They held listening sessions with thousands of Kentuckians and turned in recommendations that included items like involving incarcerated people in community gardens, supporting local artists, and identifying hotspots of air and water pollution resulting from coal mining.

The effort was bipartisan, spearheaded by east Kentucky’s longtime congressman, Republican Hal Rogers, and Democratic former governor Steve Beshear.

The Rural Policy Research Institute said of the inaugural summit, “Everyone there knew the region was ready to respond to the urgency of the moment with a renewed commitment to working in greater unison, toward a preferred future.”

But when SOAR’s leaders turned the working groups’ recommendations into a blueprint for the organization, working group members found them somewhat changed. The organization would start by championing KentuckyWired, the commonwealth’s fiber-optic internet system, and then, with that critical 21st-century infrastructure in place, it would go full throttle on improving health outcomes, developing a tech-savvy workforce, and germinating growth in the region’s industrial and small-business ecosystem. As Congressman Rogers put it in 2019, the focus was “Jobs, jobs, jobs.”

Joyce Pinson, of Friends Drift Inn Kitchen, displays jams and jellies.

But KentuckyWired quickly became mired as costs ballooned and its timeline extended. As most of the eastern Kentucky lagged behind the rest of the country in access to internet, communities continued to struggle to retain residents and build a sustainable economy.

“[SOAR] started as a really great idea, where they were seeking a lot of input from a lot of different people,” said Ivy Brashear, Appalachian Transition Coordinator for MACED, an economic development organization that was involved in SOAR’s early working groups, but has since stepped back. “Over time it has shifted into their approach being outside investment and industrial recruitment,” she said.

Brashear pointed to a recent solar energy project MACED had financed, which helped four Letcher County groups adopt solar energy. “We believe that shifting the way that energy works is a big deal, and it matters to communities, it matters to them saving money, it matters to what they then are able to do with the money they saved. And what we see in places where we’ve helped people transition to solar is, it can be the difference between them staying open and them closing their doors.”

SOAR officials did not return a request for comment, but its principals told the Lexington Herald-Leader last year that its objectives were long-term, and it had been successful in building connections across eastern Kentucky.

The crowd at SOAR’s sixth conference was a bit thinner – about 800, according to executive director Jared Arnett. The event featured a start-up pitch competition and 92 booths running the gambit from addiction recovery programs to an international drone port. Highly produced videos touted projects conceived of and championed by SOAR, projects like the high-tech greenhouse AppHarvest, and teleworks operation Digital Careers Now.

Kentucky entrepreneurs show their products at the 2019 SOAR Summit.

Infrastructure and Industry

Some working at the ground level see a long way to go to meet SOAR’s goals.

“There’s tremendous opportunity that people can take advantage of with our workforce down here, and they don’t realize that,” said Bill McIntosh, who worked as a coal miner for 40 years before taking a grant-funded position as Perry County’s economic development coordinator. Part of his job is luring new businesses to the 236-acre Coalfield Industrial Park that Perry County shares with four nearby counties. Like other industrial parks in the region, this one was built on reclaimed surface mines in the hopes of attracting new businesses to a region desperate for a new source of employment.

McIntosh lamented that as more mine land across the region has been turned into build-ready land, companies have their pick of locations, and businesses he hopes to bring to the industrial park often find one thing or another to make them decide against it.

Siting industrial parks on mine land brings its own challenges. “Sometimes it is remote in that it doesn’t have gas, or it doesn’t have broadband or it doesn’t have rail,” McIntosh said. “That’s going to disqualify you as far as having your site selected for a company to come in and set up shop.”

Part of McIntosh’s job, he said, is shifting outsiders’ perceptions of who Appalachians are. “A lot of people are still seeing negative stereotypes: poverty-stricken area, uneducated workforce. That’s not true,” he said. “The major population group in our workforce, [people aged] 45-64, these are people that come from a industrial background. They can easily be cross-trained in other sectors of industry.”

Perry County’s Coalfields Industrial Park is currently home to a FedEx distribution facility, a trucking company, and a call center that is known for its frequent layoffs. A potential new development was recently announced for the industrial park, an aluminum company that could employ as many as 265 people once it’s up and running. The community in 2018 received nearly a million dollars to bring natural gas to the industrial park.

The focus on industrial growth hints, too, at an unstable future for the region. A recent Brookings Institution report found that manufacturing sector jobs are among the most vulnerable to automation. With other job losses likely in food service and transportation sectors, it is projected that the Ohio Valley could lose about one quarter of its jobs to automation. Some counties in the SOAR region could lose up to 65 percent of their jobs.

MACED’s Brashear said the region’s transition would require work on multiple fronts, but she worried about focusing too heavily on industrial development. “I think our history shows that that doesn’t necessarily work, it doesn’t necessarily build a sustainable economy that isn’t trying to figure it out every 10 years or so.”

Wired for Growth

Broadband access is a challenge across the Ohio Valley. The internet provider data service BroadbandNow estimates that 7 percent of Ohioans, 9 percent of Kentuckians, and 22 percent of West Virginians lack the critical 21st-century infrastructure. Those figures mark an improvement from just a few years ago. In 2017, for example nearly 20 percent of Kentucky homes lacked broadband service.

SOAR officials hope that reliable, fast internet will help the region retain its workforce and compete for high-tech industries. In fact, SOAR was a part of early conversations about a statewide broadband network, for which bids were solicited in the summer of 2014. The Kentucky Communications Network Authority, a government agency, would spearhead the construction of 3,000 miles of fiber-optic cable, a “middle mile” that would bring high-speed internet to government offices and other key buildings, and would allow private internet service providers to hook in, for a price, to bring wireless internet to businesses and communities across the region.

But the “last mile” to connect rural, dispersed homes and businesses, is still a challenge. KCNA interim executive director Deck Decker says residents may have to wait anywhere from six months to several years before broadband is available in their homes and businesses.

“We’re going to try to get in local civic leaders, business leaders, we’re going to get in a room and start discussing this last mile and see who has the best plan,” Decker told a small crowd at the SOAR summit. “I don’t think anybody in this room will tell you they’ve got a magic bullet that’s just going to automatically make the last mile appear in, you know, Harlan County, but we’re going to give it our best,” he said.

Decker said each community would need to find the best way for it to make use of the fiber-optic network, whether it be a private company, a public investment, or a public-private partnership. But the investment will likely be a hurdle for rural counties with far-flung communities.

“I’ve had major providers sit in my office and say, if they can’t get a payback on their investment in 18 months, they can’t do it, because they can’t build a business case for it,” Lonnie Lawson said. Lawson is a KentuckyWired board member and CEO of the Center for Rural Development. He hopes to provide some seed money to help internet service providers justify the investment expense.

Lawson said he hopes the network will allow more Kentuckians to work from home or in high-tech careers, and will help Kentucky students complete digital homework in their own homes.

“It’s about the only solution of trying to keep our best and brightest in the region,” Lawson said. “Otherwise, if we don’t have job opportunities, then our young people are going to leave, and our region is going to suffer year, after year, after year.”

How a Carbon Tax Could End Some Coal Towns, or Fund a New Future

Declining coal tax revenues place coal-reliant counties in Appalachia at risk of fiscal collapse, according to new research from the centrist Brookings Institution and Columbia University. Policies designed to prevent further climate change would accelerate that decline, the report found, but could also provide a new stream of revenue to help communities rebound from coal’s demise.

The report published by Brookings and the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia quantified how much of a coal-producing county’s budget came from coal, via severance taxes, property taxes, and contracts such as royalties and lease bonuses. Then authors analyzed what it might mean for those county governments if the U.S. instituted a modest price on carbon emissions. The report found that under such a policy, counties that are reliant on coal would be at risk of defaulting on bonds, failing to provide basic services such as waste removal or infrastructure maintenance, and even bankruptcy.

Adele Morris, senior fellow and policy director at the Brookings Institution and one of the report’s co-authors, said the loss of tax revenue from coal producers would have far-reaching consequences. “You have the workers who are dislocated, you have the loss of property tax and sales tax revenue, people are closing schools and limiting other government services, and then what happens is, people move away,” she said. “And then you get this sort of death spiral.”

The report notes that many coal communities are already experiencing some of these effects without a climate policy in place. Coal employment declined by 50 percent in Appalachia between 2011 and 2016, and according to recent data from the Appalachian Regional Commission, 190 of 420 Appalachian counties are considered distressed or at risk, in no small part due to the downturn in the coal industry.

Morris acknowledged that voters in coal regions would likely always view climate change policies as a threat to their livelihoods. “But a lot of people recognize … that coal is not doing so well right now, even without a climate policy,” Morris said.

She said the report’s findings serve as a call to county and state officials to prioritize economic diversification. “Whether you think climate change is a problem or not, if there’s a significant chance that we’re going to do something about it, then you’ve got to be prepared.”

Morris and her co-authors lay out a scenario in which policy aimed at mitigating climate change could also provide substantial funding for coal-dependent communities to soften the blow and diversify their economies.

Quantifying the Decline

Brookings Institution economists used data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration to model the implications on the coal industry of common climate change proposals, such as a tax on carbon emissions. Under a tax of $25 per metric ton, which is similar to a policy proposed by presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) several years ago, coal production is expected to drop by 77 percent by 2030.

To understand what such a sharp downturn would mean for coal-reliant communities, Morris and her team assessed outcomes in counties that dealt with similar losses from the textile and manufacturing industries. Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, for example, lost over one third of its steel jobs in a single year, 1984. Within three years, the town amassed $400,000 in debt. The local utility threatened to shut off the city’s streetlights over delinquent bills. The state government had to step in to bail out Aliquippa, but the city is still considered “distressed” decades later.

A similar fate may await places like Boone County, West Virginia, which has already faced steep consequences from the coal downturn and would be even further compromised by a carbon tax.

In 2015, coal-related property taxes generated approximately $21 million for Boone County’s schools and county government. In addition, Boone County received over $2.4 million from severance and reallocation taxes. In the same year, 21 percent of Boone County’s labor force was tied to coal, meaning the continued gradual decline under the status quo and a sharper decline under a carbon tax scenario would also seriously hamstring Boone County families’ financial health.

Coal production declined by 70 percent from 2012 to 2017 in the county, translating to a 38 percent decline in revenue flowing to the county government in the same period.

According to the report, revenue declines led to “painful spending cuts.” Boone County in 2015 closed three of its 10 public schools and cut back on its solid waste program.

The reports authors say that rather than promoting alternative economic investment, the West Virginia government has passed legislation to promote new investment from coal by further reducing taxes on some kinds of mining, despite a dark outlook for the industry under any scenario.

The report’s authors write that “while some politicians in coal-reliant areas may claim to have a path to bringing coal back, such bluster is irresponsible given the robust negative projections for the industry.”

Morris urged lawmakers to recognize the likelihood of coal’s continued decline. “You can’t just be weaving stories about how coal is coming back,” she said. “It’s doing a disservice to the people you represent, and wishful thinking, the time for that is over.”

Bond Risks

Governments use bonds to finance infrastructure improvements and other projects, and nationwide, state and local issuers have about a million outstanding securities, with $3.8 trillion in outstanding debt.

Morris said economists have begun to worry that climate-related threats could destabilize the municipal bond industry, which has historically been a safe investment category. But bond issuers do not adequately understand or document the risks associated with climate change or climate change policy to investors.

“These bonds will be maturing in a time frame where we very well might have some kind of price on carbon or some kind of other greenhouse gas regulation, and you have to recognize that there’s this policy scenario that could be quite detrimental to the risks associated with these bonds,” she said.

Although Boone County itself has no bonds, towns within Boone County do.

The Silver Lining

Policy proposals currently in place or under consideration that aim to support economic development projects in Appalachian coal country include the POWER grants from the ARC and pending legislation known as the RECLAIM Act, which would dedicate more federal funds to mine cleanup and economic development. But Morris said such proposals were “small potatoes” compared to the scale of the challenges communities face.

Morris said that although a carbon tax could spell the end of many coal-reliant communities, it could also point them in the direction of a new future. A $25 per ton carbon tax would likely raise a trillion dollars in revenue over 10 years, she said, “And that kind of revenue allows for a very generous support for coal-reliant areas. That could bring in tens of billions of dollars per year … to buffer the impact on governments.”

Ohio Valley Farmers Unsure About New Trump Trade Aid Payments

The U. S. Department of Agriculture announced Thursday details of a second round of aid totaling $16 billion for farmers affected by the trade war with China. But some Ohio Valley farmers worry about the ongoing consequences of these payments and tariffs.

As with the first round of tariff relief offered last year, farmers will again be paid extra for the soybeans, pork and dairy they produce. But instead of paying farmers a flat rate, USDA officials said these payments will depend on the assessed “trade damage” and the commodity production of each county.

USDA Undersecretary for Farm Production and Conservation Bill Northey said agency economists first will assess the county-level impact of tariffs. “We then divide that by the acres planted within that county, and then have a [payment] no matter which crops you plant,” he said.

USDA officials say this will more accurately determine the right amount of payments for each farmer. But it also leaves farmers without specifics about how much they might receive from the payments. Specialty crops including cranberries, grapes and tree nuts were also included to be eligible for relief payments.

The new payments are scheduled to be delivered in three phases, the first in July or August.

West Kentucky soybean farmer Jed Clark said while he appreciates these new payments, he’s worried that payments by county might lead to unintended discrepancies in how much each farmer receives.

“I think it will happen, and I think you’ll probably see some pretty drastic cases of it happening,” Clark said. “It’s hard to cover the diversity of farmers and their practices in a county and throw a blanket over that whole county.”

Clark said because these payments give farmers incentive to grow more, it could potentially increase the already large supply of crops such as soybeans, and that could make depressed crop prices even worse for farmers.

Farmers have been facing financial struggles because of low crop prices, caused in part by retaliatory tariffs and the overproduction of crops. Most Ohio Valley farmers hope the new payments cover more of their losses than the last round of payments, but more importantly, they hope to see trade deals struck with China and other countries soon.

“Corn farmers only got a penny per bushel [last time], and that certainly didn’t account for the price loss they’ve had,” Ohio Corn and Wheat Growers Spokesperson Brad Reynolds said. “I think those safety nets are there, farmers are glad that they’re there, but they’d rather not rely on programs.”

Central Ohio dairy farmer Chuck Moellendick said for the dairy industry, other trade deals in the works with Mexico and Canada are just as important because of the large supply of milk products that await shipping.

“Mexico’s our biggest exporter,” Mollendick said. “All of those things will disappear a lot quicker without tariffs on them. It makes us a lot more competitive.”

Mexico dropped retaliatory tariffs on U.S. cheese and dairy-based whey products last week after the Trump administration dropped tariffs on Mexican steel and aluminum.

U.S. Attorney Sues West Virginia Hemp Farm Over Seeds’ Origin

A U.S. attorney is suing a West Virginia hemp farm and others, saying they violating the federal Controlled Substances Act.

U.S. Attorney Mike Stuart has sued Matthew Mallory of CAMO Hemp WV, and Gary Kale of Grassy Run Farms. Grassy Run Farms owns the land, The Charleston Gazette-Mail reported Saturday.

The lawsuit charges the farmers with manufacturing, cultivation, possession, and intent to distribute marijuana and not hemp, the newspaper said. Hemp and marijuana come from the cannabis sativa plant, but by state law hemp must be comprised of less than 1 percent THC, the psychoactive compound that gives marijuana users a high.

The complaint says the farmers purchased their hemp seeds in Kentucky and brought them over the West Virginia state line. A state pilot program only allows hemp producers to obtain seeds internationally, via the state Department of Agriculture, the lawsuit said.

The complaint also said the defendants indicated they would install security measures around the farm. However, that allegedly hasn’t happened.

If Stuart prevails in the lawsuit, the farmers’ plants, property, equipment and seeds could all be seized and forfeited to the government. His complaint says the federal government could receive either $250,000 in civil penalties or twice the sum of the defendants’ gross receipts.

The farmers’ attorneys argue the Agricultural Act of 2014 protects their right to grow hemp under state laws. Also, the Farm Bill and related provisions of a federal appropriations bill together state that no congressional appropriated funds can prevent the transportation, processing or sale of hemp under a state program authorized under the federal legislation.

Norman Bailey, chief of staff to the state agriculture commissioner, said in a written statement that West Virginia’s laws and regulations are silent as to the source of seeds for participation in the program.

Bailey said Kentucky and North Carolina have both concluded that buying seeds over state lines isn’t a violation of federal law. The department is monitoring the situation and has not yet decided whether it will intervene in the case, he said.

Stuart said the lawsuit isn’t a statement of a position for or against hemp, but really is about an issue of lax regulatory oversight from the West Virginia Department of Agriculture.

“Based on the action we filed, I think it’s plain that this dispute doesn’t center on a public policy debate about industrial hemp, but on the dangers of lax regulation (and) oversight by a state agency which is trusted by the people of West Virginia to enforce its regulatory scheme,” he said.

J. Morgan Leach is the CEO of the West Virginia Farmers Cooperative, which includes the defendants in the lawsuit.

“We are confused on why the U.S. Attorney’s Office is working so diligently to thwart a growing agricultural industry in the state,” he said. “Especially, one that Congress has clearly shown its support for, and when there are so many other serious issues affecting West Virginia.”

Landowners Fight Pipeline in Case Headed To U.S. Appeals Court

George Jones was against the Mountain Valley Pipeline from the start.

The natural gas pipeline is routed to run through the southwest Virginia farm his family has owned for seven generations. The 88-year-old Navy veteran never considered signing an easement agreement with the developers, because he thought the whole thing seemed an affront to his property rights. But state law meant he couldn’t even keep surveyors out.

As work chugs along toward having the pipeline in service by the end of the year, Jones and a coalition of more than a dozen other like-minded Virginia and West Virginia landowners have taken their fight to court.

They sued project developers and the federal regulators who approved the pipeline, arguing that taking their property through eminent domain is an unconstitutional land grab. They say regulators have “run wild,” granting developers of the approximately 300-mile-long (480-kilometer-long) project land acquisition powers, which are usually reserved for government entities.

“He fought in the Korean War for other countries’ freedom, and then he comes back home … and he’s fighting for his own freedom, for his own land,” said son Donald Jones, who has power of attorney after his father suffered a stroke that limited his speech.

A hearing Thursday before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond comes as other legal challenges against the project proliferate and protests escalate, with some opponents camped out in trees along the pipeline’s path in an attempt to prevent construction work.

Mountain Valley, part of a pipeline boom underway to carry natural gas out of the Appalachian Basin, would run south through the center of West Virginia. It would cross steep mountains, old-growth forests, hundreds of bodies of water and the Appalachian Trail before connecting in southern Virginia to the more than 10,000-mile Transco pipeline system. A 70-mile extension into North Carolina was recently proposed.

Developers say the buried pipeline, 3½ feet in diameter, is intended to serve markets in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic. They insist it will boost local economies through new jobs and tax revenue and aid the transition from dirtier-burning coal.

Wade Massie, an attorney representing the pipeline in the lawsuit, declined to discuss the case and referred questions to a spokeswoman who works for lead developer EQT Corp. She didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The landowners, however, insist the pipeline won’t do a thing to help them, their families or their neighbors. Many believe the gas is destined for export overseas.

“If it were a school or hospital or highway or a library, we’d probably give them the land,” said Becky Crabtree, a retired teacher in West Virginia who along with her husband, Roger, is a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “But this is not going to do anybody in the area or in our family any good at all.”

In this Thursday, May 3, 2018 photo, downed trees mark the route of the proposed Mountain Valley pipeline in Lindside, W.Va.

In signing off on the pipeline, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission noted that the pipeline’s capacity — 2 billion cubic feet (0.06 billion cubic meters) a day — been claimed by companies that want to ship the gas. But critics say that because the shippers are affiliates of the companies developing the pipeline, that doesn’t show a true market need.

“Basically, the corporations have taken power to do whatever they want over individual rights. We have to say, where does this end?” said Constantine Chlepas, another plaintiff who worries his organic apiary will be harmed.

The landowners seeking relief hope the appeals court will reverse the decision of a lower court judge, who didn’t rule on the constitutional issues in the case but dismissed them, saying she lacked subject matter jurisdiction.

U.S. District Judge Elizabeth Dillon said the landowners must first apply for a rehearing before the commission and, after receiving a hearing there, seek review in a federal appeals court.

Some of the plaintiffs and other pipeline opponents have done just that — asked the commission to reconsider its decision — but they say the way that process plays out leaves them with no meaningful opportunity for judicial review.

The commission has issued what’s called a “tolling order,” a decision that allows members more time to consider appeals but also allows work on the pipeline to continue.

FERC spokeswoman Tamara Young-Allen said the agency doesn’t comment on pending litigation.

Justin Lugar, an attorney for the landowners, said his clients face a high hurdle in the lawsuit and the clock is ticking.

“Even if we win the jurisdiction argument, the pipe could be in the ground by the time this thing could be heard,” he said.

Crabtree, though, said she’s holding out hope. She pointed to the numerous legal challenges and the growing number of tree sitters who have blocked work on the project, saying she feels public sentiment against the pipeline is growing.

“The fire is spreading,” she said.