Kentucky's climate migration: Turning old coal mines into housing

In late February, Mindy Miller and Julia Stanganelli wound along Knott County roads, curving around the streams and over mountain peaks.

All the while, they guessed at how many people had left in the two years since the floods came through.

“It’s really hard to wrap your head around,” Stanganelli said. “There are definitely people that have moved out and the goal is for it to be temporary. But there are probably also people who have moved out and just kind of said ‘Okay I didn’t have an option here so I had to move to Ohio or something like that.’”

Stanganelli brought up another point that seemed contradictory: a report she read recently that said Appalachia might see immigration from people fleeing the heatwaves and coastal disasters of climate change.

“You might think, oh, that doesn't make sense…and then you think, 'Oh, it actually actually kind of does make sense,'” she said.

They stopped on a mountain top surrounded by acres of mostly flat land and stepped onto a dirt path pocked with puddles from a late winter rain.

This much flat land is rare in Eastern Kentucky. This high up, the hills and mountains stretch toward the horizon. The Knott County Sportsplex stands like a monument in the middle distance.

“So we are looking at what, right now, is kind of an overgrown field, but soon [there] will be 57 homes on this part of the property and then even more homes up further,” Stanganelli said. “It is really pretty up here, the views of the mountains in the distance.”

This is “Chestnut Ridge.” It’s one of seven developments where Kentucky is using the lion’s share of nearly $300 million federal disaster recovery dollars to build new homes.

The Hazard-based nonprofit that Miller and Stanganelli work for, Housing Development Alliance, has been tapped to build homes here.

Like most of the sites, Chestnut Ridge will be put on land where mountain tops were destroyed to mine coal – an industry which contributes to a warming climate and, researchers say, increases the risk of flooding in the valleys below . It's windy, the soil is rocky and full of tall, brown grass stretching far off into the distance.

Stanganelli said Chestnut Ridge might get used for more than just houses, too.

“There’s a lot of other land that’s available for who knows, it could be residential, commercial… there’s a lot of opportunity on the land up here,” she said.

Climate change increases flood risks

Most people in Appalachia live along creeks inside mountain hollows — or “hollers” — because it’s flat. But that exposes them to flooding. These new sites are flat and, with the elevation, they’ll stay dry.

Kentucky still has a lot of progress to make before it achieves its plan to build nearly 600 brand new homes across Letcher, Perry, Knott and Floyd counties. It’s currently seeking people to show interest in these houses.

It also won’t be cheap.

Before houses can be built, the state estimates it’ll spend about $135 million dollars just to run roads, water, sewer and electricity up to places where none existed before. It’s nearly half of the flood recovery money they got from a federal grant. Not everyone has agreed on the specifics of the plan either.

During a gray early-morning thunderstorm in February, Kentucky announced the grand opening of a site they call “The Cottages at Thompson Branch.” Weeks of rain delayed progress.

At the time, just one trailer supplied by the Federal Emergency Management Agency had made it. State officials gathered to celebrate anyway.

“It’s hope isn’t it? And you can see it and you can feel it,” Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said, flanked by state and local government officials. “And the people who live here will never, ever have to deal with flooding — or that type of flooding ever again.”

Afterwards, he acknowledged the high ground housing developments are coming amid a changing climate.

“We are seeing more weather events here and around the country,” Beshear said. Even with steps that are being taken, we have to build more resilient and we gotta move people out of the flood plain. So we’re going to build everywhere we can and everywhere it’s safe.”

Another chapter in the centuries-long story of managed retreat

Kentucky is following a long history of climate migration in the U.S. says Nicholas Pinter at the University of California, Davis. He researches public policy following natural disasters and says migration, managed relocation — whatever label you want to use — is increasing thanks to climate change.

It also has everyone thinking more carefully about where they build.

“ Every one of these community relocations… is a past planning error,” Pinter said. “This is a house, a farm, a whole town, that maybe should have been located differently in the first place.”

Pinter has studied lots of examples of people relocating due to risks of disaster and many of the themes are repeated over and over again. Still, it’s pretty rare to see initiatives like Kentucky’s where the government is creating entirely new communities.

“You are doing a new experiment and it's different from the examples that we've looked at in the past,” Pinter said.

Usually after disasters people sell their risky land to the federal government, he said. Then, they’re on their own for where to go next. He also knows of cases where entire towns of people move together.

But Kentucky’s approach isn’t quite either of those. It’s trying to usher people who take a government buyout into becoming the first settlers of these high ground neighborhoods. People might have to change towns or even counties, but at least they can stay in eastern Kentucky.

Pinter said the new approach will also challenge the state’s ability to foster a sense of culture and social cohesion in the newly seeded sites.

“How do you unite those people in those new locations?” Pinter said. “I will be as interested as anyone to see how this experiment plays out.”

Despite the unique approach, Pinter said the overall theme — people moving due to an increasingly untenable climate — is a tale as old as time.

Editor's note: This is the first part of a three part series on high ground housing. Check back this week for more.

State government and politics reporting is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.