Climate change has Kentucky flood victims weighing safety against tradition

Sherry and George Mullins were one of the first flood victims to settle a high ground community called “Blue Sky,” just next to a small public airport in Perry County. To the untrained eye you’d never know it was a former strip mine, but there are some clues.

“It's very windy up here and you can see by looking around that we don't have any trees,” Sherry Mullins said during a visit earlier this year. “The only way we even know the wind is blowing is if we come out.”

George said they don’t mind the wind though. They’re happy and it’s a good place to live. Judging by the amount of construction surrounding them, other people seem to think it will be a nice place to live, too.

“We’re getting quite a few houses up in here,” George said, looking from his front porch towards houses across the street in various stages of construction.

Before the flood, the Mullins estimate they lived within a quarter mile of many other family members. Now they’re about a 20-minute drive away.

“We'd gather and we would eat together and have picnics and that kind of thing,” Sherry Mullins said. “[Being away from] the family atmosphere — that is the hardest, especially the children. They don’t understand.”

The Blue Sky subdivision existed before the flood, but it will be on a landscape similar to the seven high ground communities the state is building on former strip mines. The need for safe housing is urgent as the climate warms and disproportionately affects lower-income areas , in many parts of the country, including eastern Kentucky.

For the state’s project to be a success, locals say the homes will need to be affordable and account for ways to create a close-knit culture in order to lure people out of flood plains.

There’s just shy of 600 homes planned and, two years after the flood, state officials say they know of about a dozen families committed to moving to the high ground sites.

A coalition of local nonprofits is working with many more families, but construction and navigating red tape on funding can be slow. Having to tell them to wait can be difficult.

For one, they’ll need to clearly communicate that these houses aren’t just a “government handout” or an Appalachian-version of a government housing project. For instance, Sherry said the attention from politicians and TV cameras gave some of their neighbors the impression that it was free.

“You would think that people would be happy for you, but not everybody's happy for you,” Sherry Mullins said. “[People said things] like ‘Well, I wish I could get a free house.’ Well, I hope you can too, but we had to buy our house.”

Scott McReynolds with the Housing Development Alliance — the nonprofit that built the home the Mullins live in — said there’s a tricky balance to making the new homes affordable. There are grants and buyout programs that can help with down payments, but officials and nonprofits have to be careful not to put a flood survivor in a financial situation they can’t handle.

The flood-impacted counties are among the poorest in the country according to the U.S. Census and it’s typical for families to live on inherited land in a house that was paid off generations ago.

“There are folks who you could give a brand new house to who don't have enough income to pay the taxes, pay insurance and pay the utilities,” McReynolds said. “How then, as a community, do we support those people?”

There are cultural challenges, too.

People in eastern Kentucky are used to living in a rural setting where there’s few rules and generous space between neighbors. The proposed high ground communities may feel more like a suburban cul-de-sac than hollers to some, McReynolds said.

“It's not going to work for everybody, we know that,” McReynolds said. “I still remember one of the first flood survivors I visited… she said, I'll move anywhere that I can have my pet rooster. You know, probably a rooster in a subdivision isn't going to work.”

With that slightly suburban setting, Mindy Miller with HDA says they have to battle misconceptions about the look of the houses themselves.

“[Some people think] we're building it like an old coal camp where you sandwich the houses together, and they're all the same size and look exactly alike,” Miller said. “But no, we give people options.”

Miller said officials also need to keep in mind the history of government-managed relocation in the region. Often it left a sour taste in the mouth of those who remember.

Miller has family who used to live in Bowlingtown in Perry County.

After frequent flooding there, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers forced families with generational ties to the land to move as they dammed the river in the early 1960s. It’s now the site of a state park with a resort.

“They would all say this is another situation where our family is going to end up separated by water,” Miller said. “For us it was a painful thing and it’s a wound that you carry. But at the same time, this is a little bit different.”

A tough conversation

At a press conference on high ground housing in the spring, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said he’s aware it’s a difficult decision for some people to move to higher ground. But if people in flood zones don’t move or don’t get insurance and get hit again, the government can’t help as much.

“People that are rebuilding in the floodplain, we have to have a long conversation with because FEMA won't be there the next time,” Beshear said. “That's a tough conversation…and people’s land is so important [to them].”

Sherry Mullins knows that tough conversation better than anyone. Although she’s happily in a brand new home, she’s never selling the land she left behind. That’s even though several feet of it was eroded away in the flood.

“That was land that was settled in the 1700s by my great, great, great, great grandfather,” Mullins said. “I told George, I didn't care if there were five feet of it left, I am not selling it out. We will keep it as it is.”

Sherry said for various reasons, she knows people who will probably never move to higher ground, no matter the risk.

“People that really need it: Will they go? Probably not,” Mullins said. “You know, they’re weighing the same decisions we did — can we stay?”

Still, McReynolds with HDA is hopeful.

“I do think we will see folks who have moved away who want to come back,” McReynolds said. “Not universal by any stretch of the imagination. That's still part of the unknown with all of the flood recovery work.”

Editor's note: George Mullins, who was quoted in this story, passed away before it was published. He was 78.

This is the second part of a three part series on high ground housing. Check back this week for more.