The decline of coal production in Appalachia has been ongoing for decades. We thought it would be useful to develop a way to visualize these trends across the region. Using data compiled by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration and an algorithm we developed to process that data, we created an interactive map showing what is happening with coal production in Appalachia.

On Aug. 3, 1977, President Jimmy Carter — flanked by 200 coal community advocates from across the country — signed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act into law in the White House Rose Garden.

SMCRA’s passage came after a six-year campaign driven by those same concerned citizens from Appalachia, the Midwest and Mountain West, and energized by the 1972 Buffalo Creek disaster in Logan County, West Virginia, where 125 people were killed by 130 million gallons of coal slurry that burst through an earthen retention dam. People were tired of coal companies leaving their messes behind, dumping deadly pollution into their communities and putting them at risk for catastrophic disasters. 

In Appalachian Tennessee, mines shut down and couldn't pay their debts. Now a new one is opening under the guise of an "energy emergency."

A&G Coal Corporation, the coal company majority-owned by U.S. Senator Jim Justice and managed by his son Jay Justice, is under renewed legal scrutiny — this time for failing to comply with a federal consent decree that was supposed to ensure the long-overdue cleanup of three major surface mines in Wise County, Virginia.

Read more at: https://www.kentucky.com/news/state/kentucky/article299907679.html#storylink=cpy

Hundreds of coal surface mine permits are lagging in reclamation progress in Kentucky according to a review of state data by Appalachian Citizens’ Law Center. 

As the risk of extreme flooding increases with climate change, an effort is underway to relocate hundreds of flood survivors to unique higher ground.

On a plot of land once home to Kentucky coal’s gritty past in Pilgrim, Martin County Solar Project (MCSP) has officially flipped the switch on a 111-megawatt electricity-generating plant.

Owner Savion LLC announced Tuesday that the solar plant on the former Martiki coal mine site will generate enough electricity over the next 40 years to power roughly 18,500 homes annually.

Kentucky’s newest solar farm is up and running in Martin County. The Martin County Solar Project is an 850-acre plot built on the old Martiki coal mine. With over 214,000 double-sided solar panels, the facility can produce 111 megawatts of energy.

On Dec. 10, 2024, the U.S. Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement sent a damning letter to the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection over the state’s failure to rein in operations on a wildly non-compliant coal strip mine in Wyoming County, West Virginia. 

Zombie mines are an escalating issue in Tennessee. These are abandoned or inactive coal mining sites where coal companies have failed to meet their obligation to clean up their mine sites. 

A coal company once headed by the governor of West Virginia has failed to fully reclaim a surface mine visible from the highest peak in Kentucky, leaving a large scar in view of a planned tourist attraction on the mountain.

A Scripps News investigation found as many as 1,300 of these coal mining facilities across Appalachia shuttered for at least a decade without operators finishing cleanup.

For some who live in Claiborne County, Tennessee, talking about coal is like talking about politics or religion. You just don’t do it. Generations made a decent living from it. America was built using it. But whether it’s coming back — and most of all, whether it should — is a matter of opinion.

A report released yesterday through a state records request shows that funds available to clean up coal mines in Tennessee fall tens of millions of dollars short of the amount necessary to complete the work.
The annual report by Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation is the first required by state law to determine if there is sufficient funding to address actual and potential liabilities at coal mines, and to determine whether the coal mining industry is fiscally self-sufficient enough to support the state taking over the permitting program from the federal government.

Abandoned zombie coal mines are former mining sites that were not properly shut down and now contaminate water and destroy natural habitats. In this week’s Stay Tuned, we’ll catch up with local environmentalists who are on a mission to stop this destruction.

Over a week in July 2022, more than a foot of rainfall came down on Eastern Kentucky bringing a deluge of flood waters that displaced thousands of people and killed more than 40. A recent study published by Kentucky’s former top geologist suggests environmental damage from surface coal mining worsened the deadly disaster, perhaps significantly. Excerpt from Kentucky Lantern Article by Liam Niemeyer

New legislation in Congress would hold coal producers accountable for cleaning up the mine sites they have abandoned, including tens of thousands of acres in Illinois.

West Virginia and other Appalachian states are littered with hundreds of "zombie mines," abandoned mines neither producing coal nor undergoing reclamation.

Research shows idle mines can trigger landslides, pollute groundwater and cause economic harm to communities.

Though the coal industry has been in decline for over a decade, the industry continues to have an outsized impact in coal-bearing regions around the country. The communities within Appalachia value their region’s culture — including a long history of coal mining — and they also value the environment and beauty that the mountains provide. But the mining industry has put a severe financial and environmental burden on the people of Appalachia and their home.

In late summer of 2022, Appalachian Voices discovered selenium, a common pollutant associated with coal mining, in high concentrations in certain streams in the Big Sandy River watershed in Pike County, Kentucky. These waterways receive runoff from the S-1 Hunts Branch Surface Mine, a nearly 2,000-acre mountaintop removal coal mine operated by Lexington Coal Company.