Land Beyond Coal: Virginia's Future from the Ground Up
For millions of years, extreme heat and pressure churned under the surface of Virginia’s land, compressing organic matter into inky black riches of coal. Beginning 300 years ago, we tore into Virginia’s veins of energy, and a century later, coal started to emerge as the lifeblood of vibrant towns and promising economies across the Southeast. Coal built new schools and bustling town centers. Coal powered Virginia, and Virginia’s coal helped power the nation.
A few months ago, severe flooding rocked Southwest Virginia on lands previously marked by extensive coal mining. A resident of Buchannon County had their house shift completely off its foundation. Nearby, a sinkhole formed in the ground, and a mine-related landslide forced residents of Russell County to evacuate.
Our relationship with coal has always been complicated. Heavy impacts from surface mining have destabilized and polluted the land upon which many have built their lives. As we burned coal, carbon gasses, aerosols, and methane blanketed our atmosphere, altering the climate system on whose stability we rely.
From the very first discovery of Virginian coal in 1701, to the footsteps of youth climate circling the state capitol building in Richmond, to the “Bring Back Coal” signs scattered around front yards, the land of Virginia has witnessed where our human history and our climate’s future collide. The same land has seen the collision of ideologies, it has seen economic boom and recession, and it has seen destruction and growth. In coming decades, our land and the communities who depend upon it will see large-scale environmental changes like never before.
How we choose to see Virginia’s land going forward will be essential in determining our future.
Virginia’s location in the American Southeast places it in an extremely vulnerable position to feel the impacts of climate change. The current climate facilitates every part of our way of being: from the way we grow and make our food, to our transportation, to our physical infrastructure. On our current track of ecosystem degradation and fossil fuel use, Virginia will see a very real increase in extreme heat, flooding, vector-borne diseases, drought, and other extreme events in coming decades. The cost of these changes will reach tens of billions of dollars for the Southeast alone.
In the lush woods of Southwest Virginia’s Clinch River Valley, vibrant sunsets tell a very different story of our relationship to our natural surroundings. Here, what used to be active coal mining sites have been transformed into hotspots for outdoor recreation after community members founded the Clinch River Valley Initiative to protect the thriving area and revitalize towns devastated by a loss of coal jobs. Kayakers, hikers, and campers visit forested lands and pristine waters previously contaminated by extraction, enjoying natural ecosystems once marred by mining disruptions. Plans are in motion to turn this area into a state park, which would mean even greater economic opportunities in growing an ecotourism industry.
A preserved natural ecosystem is good news for everyone, even those far from the valley itself. This point rings true throughout Project Drawdown, the synthesis of years of work from dozens of international researchers who propose a sweeping plan to reverse climate change. The text Drawdown describes the most comprehensive path ever plotted for humanity to respond appropriately, realistically, and equitably to the threat of a climate crisis. In this plan, protecting forests and natural ecosystems, which function as naturally occurring carbon capture, is essential in correcting our climate’s course. Reforesting temperate forests, like those surrounding the Clinch River, is the twelfth most effective climate solution in Project Drawdown’s framework.
Successes like these do more than realize the vision of Project Drawdown. They respond to an immediate need to clean up abandoned mines all throughout Appalachia.
The physical damages to land left behind after coal mining ceases can be catastrophic to environmental and human communities. In some areas, contamination from leached heavy metals in old mining sites have made drinking water unsafe for local residents, rendering soils too damaged to support agriculture.
As early as 1977, the United States government responded to a need to hold mining companies accountable for the damages they leave behind, passing the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) to designate requirements for mine cleanup. The Act’s intentions were to mitigate short term harm to land, yet its provisions, which included replanting and restoring natural ecosystems, recognized a small piece of the climate change reduction puzzle 23 years ago. Such restorative work, using the natural processes of our land to take greenhouse gasses out of the air, is by far the most efficient and cost-effective method of carbon capture currently available.
Beyond the potential for reclaimed natural systems to act as a natural carbon sink, our country’s degraded lands mark a huge opportunity to slow greenhouse gas emissions. Improperly restored coal mine sites can leak methane - a greenhouse gas 30 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Today, this climate impact from abandoned mines in the US is equivalent to the impact of driving 13 million cars. Addressing these forgotten lands may be a key in achieving the net reduction in greenhouse gasses necessary to right our climate course.
Burning coal itself is still the biggest player in surface mining’s contribution to climate change. Although policy surrounding mines at the local and national levels have come a long way since 1977, mining reclamation efforts seem to have first been promoted as a way to propagate continued coal mining in the United States. The original language of the SMCRA justifies mining reclamation as a way to uphold “ the national interest to ensure the existence of an expanding and economically healthy underground coal mining industry.”
Decades later, with the knowledge of what coal emissions will do to disrupt our future, continuing our patterns of greenhouse gas emissions is certainly not in the national interest. This is why environmental visions of change like Project Drawdown propose a way forward that drastically reduces coal consumption and replaces coal with renewable sources of energy. Ultimately, an end in coal production is both necessary and possible as we plan to keep climate change at manageable levels for a prosperous planet.
Austin Counts grew up in Dickenson county, at the heart of Virginia’s coal country, and he intimately understands the region’s long standing reliance on mining: “I saw people that I grew up with whose goal was essentially to get out and go to the coal mines because that is what their parents had done and they didn’t know what else to do. We were in a small school of less than 200 people that was specifically set up to be right near a coal pan, and a community that essentially just established because of the coal industry.” But that relationship has been changing significantly in recent years. Over the past decades, the economic vitality of the coal industry has crumbled. Mine layoffs and closures have become commonplace. As a result of the decline in American coal, the average income of places like Buchannon and Dickenson counties has fallen far below the national average.
Austin’s grandfathers were both coal miners. Today, Austin looks to the same land those men once mined to power his community to new heights and reverse years of economic decay. This time, he wants to use the land for something different.
Austin currently works for the nonprofit Appalachian Voices as the New Economy Field Coordinator. As a part of the organization’s mission to create an economically stimulating transition to efficient and renewable energy use, Appalachian Voices works with innovative mining reclamation projects across the region. The Clinch River Valley Initiative is one of the projects they work to sponsor, one aimed at stimulating responsible economic growth while protecting our environmental future.
William Schumann, writing for Journal of Appalachian Studies, underlines why equitable economic growth must go hand in hand with environmental progress. “Unless economic transition addresses the very real concerns of Appalachia’s working class,” he argues, “including those (majorities?) who disagree with our politics, then no amount of technocratic alterations to green the regional economy will render it sustainable.” The benefits from economic growth that emerge in the wake of coal’s collapse cannot be concentrated only in the hands of those fortunate enough to make massive investments in solar energy or new development. If we are to transition our economy away from carbon, the opportunities of our new economy must be made available to those left jobless when mines close.
Austin and Appalachian Voices see the necessity of answering Schumann’s call. The projects Appalachian Voices oversees exemplify a vision for what they describe as a “just transition” to environmentally sound energy practices. A just transition does not mean turning away from communities that have historically been dependent on coal revenue; these communities must act as the foundation of the transition itself. For decades, the energy industry has looked underground to power the nation and provide economic opportunities. Now, to facilitate a just transition, Austin and Appalachian Voices look to the sky.
Solar energy is the fastest growing source of energy in the world, and for good reason. With the ability to generate 94% less carbon to produce the same amount of energy as coal, solar energy’s different forms mark the twenty-fifth, tenth, and eighth best solutions to climate change in Project Drawdown’s global plan.
Thanks to the help of Appalachian Voices, The Southwest Virginia Solar Springboard was funded in 2019 to support a 3.5 megawatt solar system on reclaimed mining land. With more plans in the works that will replace coal energy generation with solar on old mining lands, Austin sees endless potential.
“Solar energy creates more jobs than any other energy industry out there,” he emphasizes. Solar energy is now one of the cheapest energy generation options available anywhere. When solar energy generation revitalizes areas historically dependent on coal, it simultaneously plays a key role in decarbonizing our economy and stabilizing our climate.
Solar energy also has a track record of success in repurposing devastatingly degraded land. In 2018, a solar farm was established on the same site as the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown, with the capacity to power 2,000 apartment units. Soon, the historical disaster zone may grow into one of the biggest solar farms in the world.
We are beginning to understand the similarly massive potential for restoring and revitalizing Virginia’s 71,000 acres of land impacted by coal mining. With a combination of governmental, nonprofit, and community work, we are beginning to see the reciprocal benefits these lands could harness for communities, ecosystems, and our climate. The Abandoned Mine Lands (AML) fund supports $5.7 billion worth of reclamation projects nationwide- many of which fall under the category of a “pilot project”. After years of designating these cleanup projects as test-runs, it is time to implement this kind of restoration on a much larger scale. $10.6 billion worth of mining reclamation remains unfunded nationally, $400 million of which are found in Virginia. Many mines remain hazardous to communities, leaching toxic chemicals and methane, because mining companies declare bankruptcy before fulfilling their obligation to restore mining land, or the land was abandoned before regulations were in place mandating their cleanup. Current funding is simply inadequate to cover what is left behind after mining activity, and even more inadequate in fully unlocking the potential of repurposing these lands. Pilot programs are encouraging efforts that dip our toes in the water of land reclamation’s role in joint economic and environmental revitalization. Now, we must dive in head first.
The RECLAIM act is a proposed piece of federal legislation supported by Appalachian Voices which would make funding for mining cleanup more available for community reclamation efforts. Legislation like this would ensure that struggling communities across the region could experience the benefits of projects like the Clinch River Valley Initiative. At the current rate of funding and construction, it will take an estimated 55 years to restore Virginia’s degraded sites. The RECLAIM act could significantly shorten this timeline, bringing important change to communities that cannot wait for decades to ensure the safety of their surroundings and their economic futures.
“There is a ton of abandoned mine land out there out there,” Austin confirms. “Whether that be a hole in the side of the mountain still leaking out acidic waters, or whether that be an entire mountain side removed that still needs to be reclaimed... I can tell you, the potential is huge, especially when you're looking at what you can use those lands for. A lot of those lands are being held by landowning companies simply because they don't know what to do with them.”
Instead of waiting for federal legislation to respond to the potential of Virginia’s lands, Appalachian Voices looks to create partnerships between local stakeholders, organizations, and landowners. Models of creative ways to facilitate environmentally and economically focused reclamation through community partnerships are beginning to gain traction all over the Appalachian corridor. Appalachian Voices is a member of the Reclaiming Appalachia Coalition, a collection of several environmental nonprofits, that has released a series of three reports detailing dozens of plans for innovative reclamation projects across the region. The coalition operates a grant fund, allowing community-based projects to apply for funding and help in realizing their reclamation goals, and already oversees many of their proposed projects in varying stages of completion.
One of the coalition’s projects in West Virginia works to transform old surface mines into sustainable agricultural land, allowing ex-coal miners to pivot to producing local foods as a source of income. In Ohio, as toxic acid mining drainage is removed from the area, collected materials are being repurposed to create vibrant paint pigments. In Kentucky, a cleanup project involves establishing a recreational outdoor trail, and refurbishing a community building for use as a collaborative educational and artistic space.
Beyond organizations like Appalachian Voices, individuals and nonprofits are realizing what can be achieved with the thousands of acres of abandoned mine lands across the areas. Green Forests Work is an organization that reforests bond-released surface mine sites which have been neglected by regulatory provisions. The Southern Appalachian Mountain Stewards is a grassroots organization which advocates for conservation and restorative environmental policy in the face of contamination due to extractivist activities.
All across Appalachia, we are beginning to see what can happen when we look to our land and see beyond coal. Every plan from the Reclaiming Appalachia Coalition reflects the vision of Project Drawdown Protecting forests, planting trees where there were none before, rebuilding soil, and protecting peatlands, wetlands and agricultural lands will play a huge role in the reversal of climate change. Building a community center to mitigate degradation and economic decline has the additional benefit of catalyzing many important climate solutions, such as educating women and girls, creating green rooftops, or implementing efficient building technologies. While solar energy seems to be leading as a way to create energy on old mining lands, other sources of renewable energy like wind, geothermal, and biomass fuel could find a home in Virginia’s repurposed lands. Due to the endless creativity of communities and organizations in the Reclaiming Appalachia coalition, all of these solutions can also have a part to play in revitalizing Appalachia’s economy and cleaning up decades of contamination.
“I realized,” says Austin, reflecting on his work with Appalachian Voices, “that if I really want to make a difference in communities and really want to make a difference in the environment, even possibly climate change, there's no better place to do it than in the former coalfields of Southwest Virginia.”
What do we see when we look beyond coal, and see our land for everything it can be? We can see a single thimble full of earth host billions of microorganisms, many with exciting and unlocked potential to impact how we farm and use our land. We can see the grandchildren of coal miners going to work, harnessing the energy of the sun to propel their communities towards a better future. We can see the Clinch River Valley on a cool autumn evening, where the waters reflect the orange sky and the canopy of trees, and visitors pack up from a day of adventure to take in the sunset.
