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Gayle Manchin tours Coalfield Developments' West Edge Factory and receives updates on grant funded projects.

For generations, hundreds of thousands of West Virginia coal miners earned a good living. The money they made supported local economies in towns across Appalachia. And their labor down in deep mines brought light to the rest of the world. But this prosperity came at a high price. Mountains were blown to pieces, rivers ran […]

Excerpted with permission from " " by Gregory Schwartz Phd and Trevor Decker Cohen. Copyright 2021. All rights reserved. For generations, hundreds of thousands of West Virginia coal miners earned a good living. The money they made supported local economies in towns across Appalachia. And their labor down in deep mines brought light to the rest of the world. But this prosperity came at a high price. Mountains were blown to pieces, rivers ran orange with mine tailings and generations of miners suffered from black-lung disease. For over a century, the coal industry dominated the region’s econo...

Colt Brogan and his co-worker Crystal Snyder. Communities throughout Appalachia struggle with shrinking populations. As a region, Appalachia is losing people in the prime working years (ages 25 to 64) even as the rest of the country is seeing growth in that demographic, according to a 2018 report from the Appalachian Regional Commission. The latest census figures indicate West Virginia alone lost approximately 10,000 people in the last year and has lost nearly 65,000 people in the last seven. Each year, thousands of Appalachians move away from their hometowns to find opportunities elsewhere. ...