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 "The peppers they sell at the stores don't taste anything like
this," says Perry, a retired coal worker. His grandfather brought
over the original batch of seeds in the early 1900s when he arrived
from Hungary to work in southern West Virginia's mines.
The coal industry that sustained those generations is on life
support in Williamson and surrounding Mingo County, battered by
exhausted mines and competition from natural gas. Williamson's faded
sign welcoming drivers to "the heart of the billion dollar coal
field" now competes with billboards for weight loss and pain
clinics, and the main street is lined with empty storefronts and
pawn shops.
Unlike their neighbors in Kentucky, where there have been
state-sponsored economic transition efforts, West Virginians have
been largely left on their own to respond to coal's decline. The
state's politicians have focused on fighting federal emissions
regulations in Congress and in court, blaming the Obama
administration for imposing what they say are crippling costs on the
industry.
But many people here argue that hope rides less on the outcome of
court challenges and more on things as humble as Margie Perry’s
peppers. She sells her produce at a locally funded farmers' market
in this town of 3,000, part of a community movement called
"Sustainable Williamson."
The project is the brainchild of Dr. Dino Beckett, a Williamson
native who left home to attend medical school but returned a dozen
years ago. Now 45, with two children of his own, Beckett is
determined to help restore the town to the thriving place his
parents knew.
"Our approach to the transition away from coal is holistic community
development," says Beckett, sitting in the Williamson Health and
Wellness Center that serves as headquarters of Sustainable
Williamson. He sees a local-foods movement as a way to help some of
the least-fit people in America get healthier, while laying the
foundation for eventual large-scale agriculture and economic
development on coalfields once flattened for mining.
"A lot of people don't associate health with entrepreneurship,"
Beckett said. "But if we help people get healthy, the workforce is
going to get healthy and they are going to want to work and
participate in activities that help their families."
A FOOD ECONOMY
Mingo County is located in what the U.S. Agriculture Department
labels a food desert: an area lacking access to affordable, healthy
food. The county places near the top of almost every
poverty-associated ranking – number 3 of West Virginia's 55 counties
in drug overdoses; second in chronic pulmonary disease - and has one
of the worst life expectancy rates in the country, according to the
National Center for Health Statistics.
Leasha Johnson, head of the Mingo County Economic Development
Authority, said Mingo’s land use plan envisions converting former
mine sites into a variety of uses, from cattle grazing to hog and
chicken farms, air transportation and wood products.
One small company - Freedom Seed and Feed - is piloting a project on
a reclaimed mountaintop coal mine in Williamson to grow industrial
hemp. The company has been promoting the use of hemp in fibers,
milk, and building materials like cement and concrete.
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Shelley Moore Capito, West Virginia's Republican senator, echoed
that need to remake old mine sites for farming and small
manufacturing. But Capito, a leading voice against the Obama
administration's regulations limiting carbon emissions from coal
plants, has been reluctant to match Kentucky's interventionist
approach.
"My solution would be to bridge the skills gap, such as coal to gas
training," she says, referring to opportunities in the state's new
lucrative extractive industry - natural gas drilling. "You have to
give people a sense of hope that they have the tools to be able to
diversify and stay in the community where they wish to live."
NOT KENTUCKY
Williamson is separated from eastern Kentucky by a narrow stretch of
the Tug Fork River. Across the state line, Kentucky has embarked on
a top-down political effort to kick-start economic diversification.
But similar efforts have foundered in West Virginia.
"People are afraid of being seen as anti-coal because it is such a
dominant political force," says Democratic state senator and
gubernatorial candidate Jeff Kessler, who tried - but failed - last
year to get support for a publicly funded jobs initiative similar to
one being pushed by political leaders in Kentucky.
That's why so much rides on what Beckett and others like him are
doing.
In 2011, the doctor found himself dealing with increasing numbers of
patients who were either unemployed or had no insurance, and opened
a free clinic alongside his own practice. With federal funding, his
clinic now has a diabetes center and a dental practice.
He later hired half a dozen former coal miners to expand his office
space and convert it to high energy efficiency standards, adding a
"health innovation hub" in the city gym that helps business
start-ups.
And this fall, Williamson will mark the fourth running of the
5-kilometer Coal Dust Run. Along the route, participants are sprayed
with fake coal dust, honoring the area's heritage as well as
promoting better health.
"We are not giving up on the fact that our history is in coal
mining," says Mingo County's Johnson. But she is working with
students from the local community college to come up with a new sign
for Williamson to help position the town - and county - for a future
that is not completely reliant on coal.
"We want people to know we are capable of diversifying," she says.
"We can do that."
(Reporting By Valerie Volcovici; Editing by Bruce Wallace and
Frances Kerry)
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