How Many Jobs are from Coal?

An article about southwest Virginia in last week’s Washington Post drew the attention of the Daily Yonder when Post reporter Amy Gardner said that the coal industry “provides most of the region’s jobs,” but offered no evidence to support that claim. Reporters Bill Bishop and Tim Marema use Bureau of Economic Analysis data to point out that in Wise County, where Gardner visited, coal makes up only 11.5 percent of employment. In Kentucky’s largest coal-producing counties, coal makes up between 10 and 20 percent of jobs, as seen in this chart.   “What’s interesting,” say Bishop and Marema, “is how the national press constantly overstates the importance of coal to the economies of eastern coal states.” They write: Coal has been a declining part of the Appalachian employment picture for more than half a century. As the industry mechanized, it needed fewer miners. When more coal was mined from the surface, beginning in the early 1960s, the industry needed fewer miners still. On top of mechanization are newer trends that will only accelerate this employment decline: the rising competitiveness of increasingly cheaper and/or preferred alternatives, including coal from other regions, natural gas, and renewable energy; the diminishing coal reserves in Central Appalachia; and the reality of greater protections from coal’s health and environmental impacts. Read more here and here. About Jason BaileyJason Bailey is Director of the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy and serves as Research and Policy Director of the Mountain Association for Community Economic Development. Since 1998...

Rural County Aims to be Most Sustainable in Kentucky

New Pioneers for a Sustainable Future, a community non-profit “working to create positive change in rural Kentucky counties” has helped to position Washington County, Kentucky to become the most sustainable county in Kentucky. Recently profiled by UK’s College of Agriculture news, their efforts have included a series of small steps, beginning with the clean up of 27 illegal dumpsites in 2001. By building consensus and working with stakeholder groups throughout the community, Washington County’s Pioneers have created a sustainability ethic that includes curbside recycling, energy efficiency and lighting improvements, support for local food and a county-wide master plan that promotes farmland preservation while encouraging growth. The County has drawn on support from the UK College of Agriculture and Cooperative Extension, including Professor Lori Garkovich. “What I find in the community are a lot of creative thinkers and leaders,” she said. “This is a community with elastic boundaries between different organizations, both public and private. They reach out to each other. They explore collaborations that are public-private or unique public-public ones.” Speaking about the source of motivation for Washington County’s sustainability efforts, Dennis Morgeson, a horticulture extension agent for the county, said, “It all comes back to the people here in the community. They want to keep it the way it is. They have connections to the land, and they want future generations to have that connection. The only way to have that is to preserve it.” By taking a small-steps approach, and building a wide base of support throughout...

ARRA Funding Helps Kentucky Business Expand

Rebecca Moon is the owner and operator of Custom Maid Service, a full-service commercial cleaning business, in Floyd County, Kentucky. Custom Maid Service uses environmentally responsible cleaning supplies to serve clients such as medical clinics and construction companies that need building sites to be prepared for occupancy. The business was founded by Rebecca after a debilitating car accident left her facing severe financial hardship and unable to continue in her previous job. The Mountain Association for Community Economic Development (MACED) extended a microloan in 2005 to help Ms. Moon purchase commercial equipment necessary to expand the business from a home-based cleaning service. In addition to supporting her own family, Rebecca’s business has created jobs. Custom Maid Service now has 16 regular employees, and another 17 employees are called in to help with cleaning construction sites as needed. The jobs are good jobs, too. Wages are higher than the industry average. Employees are offered health care benefits as well as reimbursement for food and mileage. Seeking to expand her business by providing laundry services for commercial health care clinics, Ms. Moon recently approached MACED for another loan. Using American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds, MACED extended a $50,000 loan with the maximum term possible for repayment to finance the purchase of three Energy Star-rated washing machines as well as three dryers. The loan will also finance the purchase of additional cleaning equipment so Custom Maid Service can add more clients. Rebecca projects that her annual sales will triple in the...

Health and Sustainable Economic Development

A few years ago, Hans Rosling's talk on world development available through the TED Talks web-site generated signficant interest and conversation around economic development. One of Roslings key findings is that Health and Education are absolutely essential to development–the findings are robust and persistent over time and across cultures. Sustainable development in Appalachia is no different. Our region suffers from poor health and low educational attainment relative to the rest of the country. The two go hand-in-hand, but today I'll focus on health. A transition to economic vitality will require that we aggressively pursue improvements in health and health care. In a recent study published in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers found that living in poverty is actually more hazardous to your health than smoking or obesity. The study makes a clear connection between poverty, education and health as did Professor Emeritus and founder of the Center for Social Epidemiology and Population Health at the University of Michigan, George Kaplan, in his recent study The Poor Pay More–Poverty's High Cost to Health. Kaplan's study finds that: [G]ood health is not merely a function of doctor visits and adequate health care coverage. Health is also powerfully affected by a range of other factors such as neighborhood safety, work hazards, housing quality, the availability of social and economic supports during times of need, and access to nutritious food, physical activity, quality education, and jobs that pay livable wages. To be sure, individual choices play a role in shaping health...

Spotlight: Appalachia Ohio in Transition

Appalachia Ohio is on the move with programs to plan for and implement Appalachian Transition. Congressman Zack Space (OH-18) has launched the second portion of his RENEW Ohio-18 initiative focused on redevelopment and transition in his Appalachian distirict–see The RENEW Ohio Report (2008) which begins the dialogue on transition efforts in Appalachia Ohio. Congressman Space sees the need for transition: "We must act boldly and aggressively to now ensure that the economic devastations that Appalachian Ohio has witnessed in recent years are never allowed to happen again." http://space.house.gov/index.cfm?sectionid=97§iontree;=97 “The solutions and ideas we come up with will not change things today or tomorrow, but they will lay the groundwork necessary to create sustainable, long-term growth. Government cannot create the jobs, but we can use the resources at our disposal to create the conditions necessary to achieve that growth.” http://www.progressohio.org/page/community/post/daveharding/C3h9). RENEW OH work groups will meet in the coming weeks to prepare for a May 23rd Summit in Zanesville, OH: February 29: RENEW OH-18 Broadband Working Group Meeting, New Philadelphia, OH March 21: RENEW OH-18 Agriculture Working Group Meeting, Coshocton, OH April 11: RENEW OH-18 Alternative Energy Working Group Meeting, Nelsonville, OH April 25: RENEW OH-18 Healthcare Working Group Meeting, Chillicothe, OH May 23: RENEW OH-18 Summit, Zanesville, OH “Advanced Energy – A New Opportunity for Appalachian Business Growth,” Another effort in Ohio–TechGROWTH and the Consortium for Energy, Economics and the Environment (CE3) will host a series of seminars to connect entrepreneurs and small business owners with resources, opportunities and...

Making Broadband Universal

If you want high-speed internet access, and you happen to live in certain areas on and around Eastern Kentucky’s Pine Mountain–currently there’s only one thing to do: Move. So begins the story of Pine Mountain Residents for Broadband, a local group in eastern Kentucky organizing around the issue of access to high-speed internet in rural areas like Central Appalachia. Living in a house that hangs onto the edge of Letcher County, whenever Samantha Sparkman, 21, pops open her Compaq laptop to try to surf the Internet, she has to deal with a plodding and unreliable dial-up connection.”It took me three days to download 15 songs” she says of the time she purchased music from iTunes. Studying to become a Physical Therapy Assistant, Sparkman’s Internet frustrations aren’t just about not being able to snag her favorite tunes. She needs to download online tests and lectures for her classes, classes that’ll be hard to complete if she doesn’t find a speedier way to link to the Internet. Over in Harlan County– in another area that borders Pine Mountain– that’s sort of what happened to James Boggs. Though he stopped taking online college courses for a variety of reasons, one of them was definitely his appallingly slow dial-up connection: “Beyond a doubt it’s impossible to do the work,” says Boggs. The 26-year-old recalls how once, it took him nearly an hour to download an article that consisted of a single page.Their story is collected as part of a new national effort called...

Rural Blog Covers Tazewell, VA Ridgetop Wind Ban

Our friends at the Rural Blog are covering the story of Tazewell County, Virginia’s Board of Supervisors’ 3-2 decision to ban a ridgetop wind project recently proposed by BP Wind and Dominion Resources. Slated to be built on East River Mountain, the project would be just southwest of Bluefield, a town that straddles the VA/WV border, and in the vicinity of Mercer County Airport. This case demonstrates the challenges developers face in gaining support from rural communities for wind projects. See the full story here. About Kristin TraczKristin Tracz served MACED’s Research and Policy team from 2009-2012 working on clean energy policy, energy efficiency programs and the Appalachian Transition Initiative. She joined MACED after finishing her Master of Environmental Management degree at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. She now lives and works in Washington,...

How Central Appalachian State Policies Measure Up: 2009 Report on the Most Successful State Renewable Energy Policies...

The National Renewable Energy Laboratories issues a report once a year to evaluate the effectiveness of state policies that encourage renewable energy development and production. The success of the policies is measured by various tests to determine how much renewable energy grew in that state as a result of having a particular policy in place. The 2009 report found that for each policy a state put in place to support renewable energy production, the total number of megawatt hours produced by renewable energy in that state also increased. In other words, state-based policies aimed at supporting renewable energy growth proved successful. What have proven to be the most effective state renewable energy policies in use? The report found that implementing a statewide mandated Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard, which requires utilities to generate a certain portion of their electricity from clean energy sources, yielded the largest growth in the renewable energy sector. None of the Central Appalachian states have implemented such a standard. West Virginia has set renewable energy portfolio goals (which are not required) and Kentucky is considering such a standard. Further, the report showed that implementing a combination of market-based, educational, and access-enhancing policies also effectively fostered large growth in the renewable energy sector. How do Central Appalachian states’ policies measure up? The Central Appalachian states of KY, TN, WV and VA have a mix of policies in place to support renewable energy development and production. Yet, according to the report, the region lags behind national policy trends....