LEXINGTON, Ky. — When Elaine Tanner, Letcher County resident and program director at environmental advocacy group Friends for Environmental Justice, testified before the United States House Committee on Natural Resources earlier this year, she made a prediction. 

Tanner was giving testimony about the lack of coal mine reclamation efforts in Eastern Kentucky and touting her support for the recently introduced Restore Employment in Natural and Environmental Work Conservation Corps Act, or RENEW Act, which addresses the crisis in the mine reclamation system established by the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, or SMCRA. The RENEW Act, sponsored by Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Pa., is an effort to ensure the burden of cleanup is not shifted to taxpayers and local communities.

“The need to support this bipartisan bill is the way to continue collecting just a part of the funds needed to protect our communities from this legacy mining as these old mines continue to fill up with water and dump havoc on our people and these mountains we call home,” she said.

Tanner said the “havoc” she referenced in her testimony arrived in late July when 14 inches of rain over four days caused flash floods that decimated many parts of eastern Kentucky and killed nearly 40 people. The National Weather Service reports there is a less than 1-in-1,000 chance of that amount of rain falling in any year over a four-day period.

It may not seem as if proper coal mine reclamation would have mattered much during such a historic period of rain, but two former state and federal mining regulators told James Bruggers of Inside Climate News that authorities should investigate the role strip mining played in the flooding. 

“If you get an area that has been strip mined, and the soil has been stripped off, and the upper layers of the soil and rock have been dumped into a valley fill, you have a surface that is not fully vegetated and you get no water retention, and that causes these flash floods,” Jack Spadaro, a former top federal mine-safety engineer who works as a consultant for coalfield residents, workers and their lawyers told Inside Climate News. 

That Kentucky has allowed financially unstable or bankrupt mining companies to fall far behind on reclamation requirements makes matters even worse, Spadaro said. Reclamation should stabilize these highly disturbed mined areas with backfilling, regrading, the removal of so-called “high walls” left behind by blasting, and managing and treating runoff water, which can be toxic.

Without reclamation, he said, “it means they don’t even have any grass planted.”

“This is exactly what I told the House of Representatives two months ago when I testified,” Tanner said. “They know and they knew.”

Tanner said now, the struggle is rebuilding and recovery, and local, regional and statewide efforts to aid affected residents are plentiful, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has been slow to respond. 

“I got off the phone with FEMA and asked them to sit at a table in my most remote and heavily affected areas in this flood and they want to give me phone numbers,” she said. “Early on, University of Kentucky students came in and helped. Then a place was set up in the Neon community. We are over the mountain and some people have not crossed the mountain for years. We have a distribution center where I live in Deane. We sent the UK students up these hollers without bridges to give tetanus shots and boosters. We set up Appalachia Kentucky, a nonprofit to offer food money, but they have already left the area.”

Tanner is working at the Hemphill Community Center servicing the communities of Neon, Colson, Deane and Isom. 

“Many lost family and friends across our region. We are slowly pulling things back together here,” Tanner said. “Power is back on for many, as are internet and phone services. Our greatest challenge now is water, as it could be two to three weeks for services to be back on.”

Tanner said she and her partner of 30 years, Jimmy Hall Sr., are fortunate to live at a higher elevation. She has been delivering water, cleaning supplies and food to those in the area.

“The Hemphill Community Center is a hub for the elderly where a meal is provided every Tuesday,” she said. “For the past few days, the Black Sheep Bakery here at the center has provided meals for over 500 people daily. We could do more. A group came to take over the kitchen and prepared a community chili supper. One day it was pulled pork sandwiches. We need funds to purchase the kind of bulk foods needed to help support this community as we rebuild. Our center is the furthest distribution spot, 20 miles north of Whitesburg, where the main distribution center is located. We need shovels, buckets and bleach. Until our water is restored, we will need more paper plates, bowls and cups. Many Appalachian families lost their homes and vehicles. Many lost it all. We are resilient people and everyone is accounted for as we access the devastation. We are one of the hardest hit communities in the area.”

Tanner said FEMA is now going door-to-door in Letcher County to help with registration. 

In his latest update on the recovery effort, Letcher County Judge-Executive Terry Adams said even if one’s home is not damaged, but one’s culvert or bridge was to make FEMA officials aware because there may be options. Adams also told residents even if they have received a denial from FEMA or approval for an amount they feel is too low, it is worth appealing in-person at the FEMA office at Letcher County Recreation Center. There is a group of local attorneys that have been meeting at the Pine Mountain Grill to help with the appeal process.

Rep. Angie Hatton (D-Whitesburg), said the lack of flood insurance was an immense challenge as her region picks up the pieces and turns to charity. 

“We are facing every Appalachian person’s nightmare in that we hate to ask for help, especially from outsiders,” she said.

She said her fear is that some of her neighbors who are not getting an insurance check to rebuild their damaged homes, businesses or both, will leave.

“Sometimes the family home was the thing that was keeping them here,” she said. “If that home can’t be rebuilt, they might not be coming back.”