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OSAGE — Rising up in Sixties Osage, Mary Jane Coulter remembers when her city had its personal retailers, faculties and eating places. At this time, Coulter oversees a small museum in her hometown, commemorating the 13-community-long Scotts Run space that begins lower than 5 miles from Morgantown.
It’s not the identical neighborhood because the one within the black-and-white photos hanging on the museum’s partitions. Most of the houses pictured have been demolished and the households pushed out within the late Sixties for the development of Interstate 79, and the mines that used to make use of Osage residents have shuttered.
Land that had belonged to the neighborhood till the Nineteen Nineties, when the city council voted to dissolve itself, was offered to close by native governments to repay neighborhood money owed, in keeping with what locals informed Goldenseal Magazine in 2011. At this time, there are only about 80 people residing within the unincorporated neighborhood, which is mere minutes from newer purchasing facilities just like the College City Centre in Granville, Westridge in Morgantown, and the Monongalia County Ballpark that opened in Granville in 2015.
Solely a handful of Osage companies, together with a shoe restore store, some music studios and a metal drum studio, proceed to function amongst a small downtown of principally deserted buildings that West Virginia College college students painted vivid colours a number of years in the past.
“I by no means dreamt that it could find yourself like this,” mentioned Coulter, who contributed to a book on the neighborhood. “I feel quite a lot of the change was pressured on us, as a result of business now not being right here — the coal business.”
The underground coal mines displayed in outdated images all through the museum now not exist within the area like they as soon as did. One among Monongalia County’s final energetic mines, about 16 miles west of Osage in Blacksville, closed earlier this fall.
Osage’s troubles aren’t that totally different from different communities in western Monongalia County, and even these all through the state. Residents have the identical wants as most West Virginians — reasonably priced, working utilities, assist with deserted properties, new employers and roadway repairs. But regardless of present within the shadow of Morgantown, one of many state’s largest metro areas, and having had many years to transition its financial system away from coal, the neighborhood nonetheless struggles.
“Lots of people don’t consider Monongalia County as being a coal neighborhood, however actually, it was,” mentioned native store proprietor Ron Justice. Justice helps run the Mannette metal drum store and studio throughout the road from Coulter’s museum. He additionally works for WVU and was a former mayor of Morgantown.
“In right now’s world, if somebody mentions Monongalia County and hyperlinks it to a coal neighborhood, there’s a notion that they produce other issues, they’ve the college or they’ve Mylan Prescription drugs. … but when the financial system in Osage was the identical because it was years and years in the past, you wouldn’t have any empty storefronts,” he mentioned.
And although Monongalia County has quite a few good-paying jobs outdoors of the coal business, in contrast to some areas of the extra remoted southern coalfields, one sentiment is similar in each areas: residents are cautious {that a} new inflow of cash and guarantees from elected officers will flip issues round.
‘Kicking the can’
There are nonetheless coal mines in each West Virginia’s northern and southern coalfields, however employment is just a fraction of what it as soon as was: the variety of jobs within the business have declined 80% over the previous decade.
Locations like Osage appear significantly well-situated for an financial transition: there’s quick access to non-coal employment — in industries like well being care, greater schooling and hospitality — because of the proximity to Morgantown and WVU.
However Al Anderson, who grew up in Osage and has lived there most his life minus his 20 years away within the music business, says even in Monongalia County, different main employers like WVU are because of the county’s profitable many years of coal mining within the early twentieth century.
“All these issues have been constructed up extra due to right here,” mentioned Anderson, who owns a shoe restore store subsequent to the Mannette drum studio. “All the cash — you bought 40 mines, you bought some huge cash that comes out of those hills. And all our fathers labored in these mines, again within the day.”
And now communities the place coal staff lived, like Osage, are dealing with decline regardless of neighboring one of many state’s largest cities. Residents introduced an inventory of requests to handle their crumbling infrastructure — street work, sewer system updates, assist with redeveloping outdated buildings and attracting employers — to a bipartisan group of state lawmakers earlier this month.
The group has been internet hosting conferences across the state in coal communities. According to House Speaker Roger Hanshaw, they’re charged with “actually determin[ing] what our coal communities must succeed to allow them to come again to us with strong suggestions after which drive these options dwelling to the complete Legislature once we come again subsequent session.”
The Monongalia County assembly within the Scotts Run space was the bipartisan group’s fourth thus far, following two conferences within the southern coalfields and one in Marshall County. Others are deliberate later this month.
“This isn’t simply one other kicking of the can down the street,” co-chair of the working group, Delegate Mark Dean, R-Mingo, informed neighborhood members. “Your concepts, your enter, will probably be laws.”
Whereas the committee was set as much as “assist discover options to the issues dealing with coal communities,” lawmakers appear, maybe understandably, targeted on billions of federal dollars available specifically for coal communities, in addition to cash from the recently-signed $1 trillion infrastructure bill.
“The challenges of coal communities are actual, and there are in all probability going to be increasingly more challenges within the close to future,” mentioned Delegate Evan Hansen, D-Monongalia. “However, we now have an enormous quantity of federal assets which might be directed into coal communities, and billions of {dollars} that will probably be coming to West Virginia, or at the very least be obtainable to West Virginia, if we all know what we wish to do with these funds.”
However Osage neighborhood members are not sure when or whether or not any of their requests will probably be addressed.
“We’ve individuals come from Charleston each different 12 months,” Anderson mentioned. “They arrive to talk at our avenue honest, after which we by no means see them once more.”
And of the roughly 50 individuals who confirmed up on the Monongalia County assembly to share their priorities with the lawmakers, few recognized themselves as residing within the former Scotts Run coal communities. Many lived and labored in Morgantown and suburbs like Star Metropolis. Some have been related to WVU, or working as advocates for the environmental and vitality sectors. There have been additionally congressional staffers and representatives of teams just like the United Mine Staff of America.
A number of the cash lawmakers are speaking about, together with $38 billion from federal businesses for coal communities and billions extra in federal coronavirus assist, have already got been recognized and allotted. Different pots have lately been permitted, together with $1 trillion nationally by way of the brand new federal infrastructure invoice. And a few are nonetheless up within the air, like the cash hooked up to the Construct Again Higher Act.
County commissioner Tom Bloom, who serves the western and southern a part of Monongalia County, mentioned he can see a big chunk of that new funding going to broadband.
“Individuals are asking me to carry factories and companies on the market, however the lack of infrastructure doesn’t are likely to carry these companies,” Bloom mentioned.
However in Osage, Coulter says the issues are worse than no web.
“I do know it’ll by no means look the way in which it did earlier than,” Coulter mentioned. “However the county might purchase these [properties], or the state, and promote them to the entrepreneurs who don’t wish to depart Mon County.”
Coulter says they want avenue drains cleaned to forestall flooding. They want potholes crammed and sidewalks constructed, so individuals aren’t strolling alongside the street. They want public officers to assist with shuttered companies which might be falling aside, which might simply be redeveloped or demolished and changed.
These issues — just like the decades-long decline of West Virginia’s coal business — didn’t occur in a single day. And time is brief for lawmakers to show concepts from their neighborhood conferences into precise laws that could possibly be thought of when lawmakers return to Charleston in early January.
Attain reporter Emily Allen at emilyallen@mountainstatespotlight.org
