Appalachia is a cultural area of the United States extending from the south of New York State, following the mountain ranges down to northern Alabama and Georgia.
This region is home to approximately 25 million people who live in relative poverty and poor conditions.
One of the most significant current issues facing the communities in the Appalachian region is the lack of consumable water.
Many communities have no access to water infrastructure, and those that do, have access only to very rudimentary and outdated systems.
Worse, coal and gas mining has contaminated much of the natural groundwater in the region.
Ohio Valley Resource reports:
“Many residents in affected communities feel there’s a special injustice to situations like these, where clean water hadn’t been a problem until extractive industries took a toll.
Melissa Easterling said that growing up in McDowell County, good water was plentiful. High tables of clear groundwater flowed from abundant springs and streams. Her family and neighbors didn’t need to worry about water infrastructure. She suspects that as the used-up mines were allowed to flood, the water table sank. And now, she fears, the residue of coal and gas extraction seems to have left the water contaminated.
The McDowell County water system has a line that runs up Bradshaw Mountain, and it reaches some of the families whose wells have dried up or been contaminated, but it stops a mile short of the Easterlings’ home. The family has been trying to get connected for eight years, but there’s still no money for the project, which would take years more to complete even once funding is found.
Much of the water infrastructure in McDowell County was installed by coal companies for their workers when the industry was booming. But coal production has been declining in McDowell County since the 1940s. Many water systems were abandoned as the mines closed, and were then neglected for decades.”
For rural communities such as those in McDowell County, the prospects of funding for water infrastructure are relatively slim.
How can these communities’ way of life and culture be preserved and treasured when significant degradation has caused the environment surrounding to suffer.
For many decades, the Appalachian communities have dealt with water contamination from industrial processes. And with so many coal companies who have mined the area, it is challenging to pinpoint who is responsible for their water degradation problems.
State environmental officials deny any links of bad water to mining or drilling nearby. In contrast, the community’s requests for connection to a nearby public water system for years have been denied due to a lack of money.
For decades the public water systems in the US have been consistently underfunded, which affects water quality and access. The article says that EPA data from 2012 to 2020 shows hundreds of thousands of violations in Kentucky, Ohio, and West Virginia alone. At least 2,000 water systems have tested positive for contaminants.
Communities that do not have access to the public water system draw their supply from wells contaminated with unsafe levels of arsenic and lead.
On August 10, 2021, the Senate passed the $1.2 Trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) to upgrade America’s infrastructure.
Does the new law include the Appalachian communities, especially those near abandoned coal mine sites left behind by the industry?
According to Appalachian Voices’ article “What the bipartisan infrastructure bill means for Appalachia“, it will cost $20 billion to clean up and remove all pollutants and toxins in the area.
Although coal companies have paid a small fee since 1977 for abandoned mines reclamation to clean up the country’s most hazardous sites, this money is not enough to cover cleaning up costs.
This fee mechanism expired in September 2021. Through the IIJA, the fee was extended for another 13 years, though at 20% less than the previous rate.
The proposal added $11.3 billion to fund the reclamation of abandoned sites in various states to make up for the difference. The fund will be distributed to the states based on the amount of coal produced before 1977.
The article explains further that the funding will resolve many issues of the RECLAIM Act, a bipartisan effort to clean up Appalachia’s abandoned coal mines to create jobs and a better future for communities living there.
However, the IIJA still does not fully incorporate many of the local community and economic development priorities found in the RECLAIM Act, which means that there is still more work to be done.
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