I’m reading a long but interesting essay on the negative environmental, economic, and social justice impacts of coal mining in communities of West Virginia. Here’s a snippet from Professor McGinley’s “From pick and shovel to mountaintop removal: environmental injustice in the Appalachian coalfields” (footnotes omitted and emphasis added):

The Essay identifies a troubling paradox: Highly efficient new mining technologies, including so-called “mountaintop removal” strip mining, have resulted in the loss of tens of thousands of well paying jobs while coal production has reached record levels and many coalfield communities remain mired in economic stagnation and poverty.

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The Essay exposes the plan and motive of some coal companies to target for extinction some communities located near modern large-scale mining operations. The plan was simple–conduct high intensity mining operations in close proximity to remote communities. When the nuisance conditions created by the mining became difficult to bear, the belief was that those affected would choose to sell out to the coal companies and move away from communities that had been family homeplaces for decades. In at least one area, a major national coal company conditioned its purchase of such homes on the sellers’ agreement to move away and never return to the area for the rest of their lives.

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Travelers entering Williamson, the county seat of Mingo County, West Virginia, pass a faded roadsign that reads: “Welcome to the Billion Dollar Coalfields.” The irony of the greeting is hard to escape. Driving into the town which lies in the heart of central Appalachia’s coal-producing region, one sees boarded-up stores and vacant and dilapidated buildings. Discouraging economic data and high unemployment in Mingo and other coal counties of southern West Virginia confirm what the eye sees: The billions of dollars of coal reserves mined from the region have only marginally benefited local people. After a century of mining in the “billion dollar coalfields,” local communities lack funds to upgrade aging schools; tens of thousands live below the federal “poverty line”; and public services such as fire, police, sewage treatment, and libraries struggle to survive on “bare-bones” budgets.

While the economic stagnation of coalfield communities continues, highly efficient coal mines have revolutionized coal mining in Appalachia. Coal production largely from giant “mountaintop removal” strip mines and highly mechanized underground “longwall” mines approaches record levels. How does one account for the pervasive dismal economic condition in a region which could aptly be called the “Saudi Arabia of coal” ?

The answer lies in an understanding of the various forces that have shaped the history of the region. For better or worse, those forces–the coal industry and those who directly profit from mining, state and local politicians, and the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA)–led the coalfields to its present condition. Those same players continue to exert enormous influence, which promises to extend the economic status quo. The paucity of attention given by historians and legal scholars to the legal regime that provided the framework for economic development in the “billion dollar coalfields” provided the im-petus for this Essay. The hope is that the following will initiate a scholarly discussion of environmental, economic, and social justice in a region that for a century has given much more to the nation than its citizens have received in return.

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