When I worked in Appalachia, we could see the slag heap from our house. They had planted trees in it to prevent the minimountain from collapsing, but the run off meant that the stream was red with pollution from the run off.
Upstream, however, the stream had trout, and the mountains were full of game: Deer, pheasants, wild turkeys and at one point, a colony of beavers decided to dam the stream. After locals destroyed their dam twice, those busy beavers tried a third time, leading to a mini lake and the locals gave up.
Much of this forest around the stream had been farms: one could find the foundations of their houses and we would find small areas with herbs and flowers that were not usually seen in the wild, including apple trees that survived after they left.
The forest was legally state game lands, and the locals all had rifles and hunted deer. The first day of deer season was a school holiday. And often one would see the deer hanging from the rafters in the garden (and if you looked carefully, a few illegal deer might be hung up in their garage). No, deer hunting was not just a sport but a way to get meat on the table.
the dirty little secret is that this area was once farms, but the soil, you see, was not good, so like a lot of places in the mountains of the Eastern USA, the people left their un-productive farms to move west, and the forest returned.
In one area, an Amish sect moved in and bought some of these farms, so if you went off the main road, you would find signs warning you to watch for their buggies.
But the mines allowed some of them to move to town and find work. And many of the coal miners who moved in were immigrants from Italy or Eastern Europe.
The mines closed and opened according to the economy:
During the Carter administration, when the Arabs made oil and gasoline hard to get, the mines had reopened. But by the time I was living there, the mines had reclosed and the men had moved to find work elsewhere: often seasonal work in construction, and so they left their families behind, since they owned houses in the town, and the housing in the affluent areas where they were doing construction was too expensive for them, and of course construction work does tend to move from place to place.
Others worked in the local prisons.
But a lot of the older mines had black lung or injuries and were retired. So there was a lot of alcoholism and drug use in those left behind.
Many needed narcotics for chronic pain from injuries and then started using it to get high. Hence the high percentage of illicit drug use.
The doctor's dilemma: give them pain medicine or let them suffer, or worse, know that they would buy medicine on the streets risking overdoses.
We usually supplied narcotics to our patients with chronic pain with a contract that included drug testing and frequent visits to monitor their behavior, and hoped the FDA didn't try to pull our medical license. The problem of chronic pain that goes untreated ia one of the issues not being addressed.
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So a sad area, which probably has gotten worse in the 30 years since I left that area.
But a beautiful area.
and good people.
But some are trying to revive the land.
and some are trying to entice jobs into the area to keep the towns alive.
One way is making old rail lines to hiking trails: Rails to trails.
This brings in tourism, which helps with jobs for restaurants and antique stores and hotels. And of course, in winter there is skiing.
But what about the environment?
TheNatureConservatory blog has an article about reviving the land by fixing the soil so that the natural habitat can come in.
The article seems to be about restoring the devesation of the more modern strip mines rather than the legacy of decades of mining from underground mines that leave behind a lot of toxic slag. But it shows that the natural environment can be restored, which is a first step in reviving the area.
the first step in restoration was decompacting the soil, or what many conservationists I spoke with called “ripping it up.” The idea is to get water infiltrating the soil, to create conditions where seedlings would sprout.
Then came the tree planting. More than 6 million trees have been planted on Central Appalachian mine sites so far. But even that number is only part of the story, Shallows says. “This is about more than planting trees,” says Shallows. “It’s an impressive number. It feels good to plant trees. But we are focused on restoring whole ecosystems here. We want a healthy, functioning, diverse forest.”
This is good, but I am reminded of Lolo's comment: you can't eat the scenery.
But with a decent environment, other ways to revive the economy can be done, since a decent environment will entice the kids, who now leave to work elsewhere, to return home to work in hospitality, in ecology, in caregiving, and in the IT industry.
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