Both of my grandfathers were coal miners in Westmoreland County, and my mother and father worked in factories in South Greensburg. They were like most Appalachians: They were hard workers who took care of their families and loved their communities.
Until I was in first grade, my family lived across the road from a creek that ran bright orange from mine acid drainage. As of last week, it still runs bright orange. Up the road, there was a huge amount of waste from coal, which we called a “slate dump.” The slate dump is still there.
For hundreds of years, Appalachian communities like ours had been used by companies that extracted our natural resources, fouled our air and water and left without remediating the mess they left behind. As a result, many residents in our region live near abandoned coal fields, shuttered coal plants or creeks that run orange with mine acid drainage.
I suppose that when people were earning family-sustaining incomes, they accepted degradation of the environment as inevitable. But now those jobs are gone, and many Appalachians have little hope for the future. Many believe their government and all of society have forgotten them.
Well, if Congress acts now, it doesn’t have to be like that anymore, and both the degradation of the environment and the job losses can be addressed.
President Biden’s American Jobs Plan and the Senate-passed infrastructure bill propose great investments in cleaning up and reclaiming abandoned mine lands, cleaning up and plugging abandoned oil and gas wells, modernizing the electric grid, creating universal broadband access, updating our transportation system, repairing dams, locks, tunnels and levees and more. With these investments, tens of thousands of Appalachians will get to work.
ReImagine Appalachia supports the president’s American Jobs Plan and the Senate-passed infrastructure bill. At the same time, the coalition wants to ensure Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky get their fair share of the resources proposed in them, and that those resources will create jobs with good wages and benefits.
To make that happen, Reimagine Appalachia supports project labor agreements for construction projects receiving more than $100,000 in federal funds and having a total project cost of $1 million or more, and bundling projects into aggregate contracts of at least $1 million. Those agreements will provide for family-sustaining wages and benefits.
For abandoned mine land remediation, reforestation and other work done through the Civilian Climate Corps, the coalition supports a $15 minimum wage and benefits. The coalition also supports targeting hiring programs and apprenticeship opportunities to workers left behind by the decline of the fossil fuel industry.
Congress must support the Senate-passed infrastructure bill and Biden’s American Jobs Plan, and the federal government must implement the investment in accord with the principles advocated by ReImagine Appalachia. We will then have “a new deal that works for us.”
Don Walko is a former Pennsylvania state representative and former Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas judge. He is a volunteer with the Local Government Outreach Initiative of ReImagine Appalachia.
