Category: Environment
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Coalfield Gentrification Brings New Challenges and Hope
Gentrification can make life harder for locals already facing adversity in Appalachia’s coalfields. It could also bring new hope.
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TECO Coal
Chances are, if you live in the coal producing counties of East Kentucky and Southwest Virginia, you’ve heard of TECO Coal. Most folks around here pronounce it Teek-Oh. TECO stands for Tampa Electric Company, a major utility/electrical supplier to the Tampa Bay area and central Florida. TECO operated in the region since the the 1970s…
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Thoughts of a Coal Miner Returns
Some folks may have noticed I took the blog down last year. Given the site stats, I’m guessing not many did. Site analytics showed that it was averaging one or two visits per week. The same was true with social media with Facebook posts averaging only five or six interactions at most. It appeared, for…
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The Only Way Out for Appalachia’s Coalfields
The boom and bust cycles of coal markets have always worked to the advantage of coal companies more than Appalachian communities. In some of Central Appalachia’s coal-producing counties, over 90% of the mineral rights are owned by absentee owners—owners who manipulate local and state governments to keep property taxes low on their holdings. When markets…
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A Few Thoughts on Climate Change
Let’s face it…climate change has become so heavily politicized in coal country that it’s nearly impossible to have an intelligent conversation about it. If people even get so much as a whiff that someone is an “environmentalist” they might as well save their breath. I myself have been accused of being a liberal environmentalist, a…