Timeline

This legislation includes an unprecedented $11.3 billion in Abandoned Mine Land (AML) funding and also reauthorizes the Abandoned Mine Reclamation Fee for 13 years at 80% of its current level. The AML funding represents a massive increase compared to the current annual distribution for AML reclamation and restoration. It nearly doubles the amount to be distributed in just 15 years and would roughly equal the reclamation costs currently in the federal database. This is one of the largest investments in our communities in decades!

Alliances from across the country, including the Alliance for Appalachia, participated in a year-long Environmental Justice Working Group with the House Committee on Natural Resources to establish guiding principles that would inform the Environmental Justice for All Act. Read more here. 

Several of our members and a staff member participated in a Catalyst-led fellowship opportunity called the Braden Program, a 4-month long political education and leadership development program that is designed to support white activists in becoming accountable, principled anti-racist organizers to build multi-racial movements for justice.

In September 2018, 36 Appalachian leaders from 6 states (AL, KY, PA, TN, VA, WV) joined the Alliance to lobby for Black Lung benefits, the RECLAIM Act, and miners’ pensions. We had 43 + visits with Senators and Representatives, identified a potential Senate author for the Black Lung extension bill, and laid the groundwork for co-sponsors in the House and Senate.

Released Revitalizing Appalachia: a toolkit for cleanup and community development was released in the Fall. Our Economic Transition team promoted the toolkit at the Central Appalachia Brownfields Conference, in meetings with local officials, and in a workshop in East Tennessee with partners from the Clearfork Community Institute, Woodland Community Land Trust, the STAY Project, and Sierra Club. The workshop was inspired by Highlander’s economics and governance curriculum, and designed for local leaders to explore both the assets and needs of their communities.

• In May 2013 we launched the Appalachian Citizens Enforcement (ACE) Project–a collaboration of citizen water tester from across the region, taking monitoring into their own hands. Member groups across Appalachia joined together for a regional Big Dip Day where citizens across the mountains of Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky took water quality samples of their local streams. Together we are increasing water quality data collection and increasing awareness of water quality issues in the region. More than this, citizens also mailed in test results to the US EPA, showing the need for a strong conductivity rule-making to keep our water safe.
• In the summer of 2013 The Alliance for Appalachia hosted an Organizing Training for new organizers, rooted in the century-old legacy of Appalachian Organizing–bringing together organizers of today, as well as those from the days of the Black Lung Movement and the Pittston Stike–to share support, stories and skills.
• Held an Economic transition tour across the region culminating in a gathering in December. There was such an overwhelming swell of enthusiasm for the Regional Economic Transition Summit that our 30-person meet up morphed into a conference of nearly 60 attendees.

• 6th Annual End Mountaintop Removal Week Washington, D.C. April 4-6, 2011
• Summer of 2011 was the March on Blair Mountain. Organized by Appalachia Rising, the March had four demands: preserve Blair Mountain, abolish mountaintop removal, strengthen labor rights, and invest in sustainable job creation for all Appalachian communities. Blair Mountain is where 10,000 coal miners fought in 1921 against the coal operators and their supporters who were severely repressing them as the miners attempted to organize. Over the course of a week, hundreds of people marched from Marmet, WV to Blair Mountain where more than 1000 people gathered for a rally and march to the top of Blair.
• In November 2011, the Alliance hosted a Visioning Summit at the Benham School House Inn in Eastern Kentucky. Over 70 participants from roughly 18 Appalachian organizations (as well as unaffiliated individuals) joined us for this three-day event.
• Conductivity guidelines first draft.

The first years of our Alliance were spent building trust across organizations and across state lines with groups who brought different strategies, perspectives, relationships, and histories to the table. From 2007-2010 we took on a federal-level campaign to pass the Clean Water Protection Act which would ban the dumping of mining waste into our valleys and streams and significantly curtail mountaintop removal.

The Appalachian region boasts a long, proud history of resistance by individuals, organizations, and alliances working to stop strip mining abuses in the region, beginning in the 1960s.

The Appalachian Coalition Against Strip Mining formalized some of these efforts in the 1970s by working with a national coalition of groups from coalfields across the country for federal legislation to ban the destructive practice. Groups fought against the inclusion of a mountaintop removal variance in the federal law and also worked for steep slope limits to mining and other protections for communities. Despite those efforts, the final bill that passed, the Surface Mining Regulation and Enforcement Act (SMCRA) of 1977, included a mountaintop removal variance and did not include other provisions like a steep slope limit.