OSAGE — Rising up in Nineteen Sixties Osage, Mary Jane Coulter remembers when her city had its personal retailers, colleges and eating places. Right now, 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 footage hanging on the museum’s partitions. Lots of the houses pictured have been demolished and the households pushed out within the late Nineteen 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 Nineties, when the city council voted to dissolve itself, was bought to close by native governments to repay neighborhood money owed, based on what locals instructed Goldenseal Magazine in 2011. Right now, there are only about 80 people dwelling 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 largely 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 will find yourself like this,” stated Coulter, who contributed to a book on the neighborhood. “I believe plenty of the change was compelled on us, because of the business not being right here — the coal business.”
The underground coal mines displayed in previous photographs all through the museum not exist within the area like they as soon as did. One in all 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 current within the shadow of Morgantown, one of many state’s largest metro areas, and having had many years to transition its economic 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,” stated 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 immediately’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 economic system in Osage was the identical because it was years and years in the past, you wouldn’t have any empty storefronts,” he stated.
And although Monongalia County has quite a few good-paying jobs exterior of the coal business, not like some areas of the extra remoted southern coalfields, one sentiment is identical 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 barely 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, larger training 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,” stated 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 employees lived, like Osage, are going through decline regardless of neighboring one of many state’s largest cities. Residents offered an inventory of requests to handle their crumbling infrastructure — highway work, sewer system updates, assist with redeveloping previous 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 have to succeed to allow them to come again to us with stable suggestions after which drive these options residence to the total Legislature after 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 highway,” co-chair of the working group, Delegate Mark Dean, R-Mingo, instructed neighborhood members. “Your concepts, your enter, can be laws.”
Whereas the committee was set as much as “assist discover options to the issues going through 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 challenges within the close to future,” stated Delegate Evan Hansen, D-Monongalia. “However, we now have an enormous quantity of federal sources which are directed into coal communities, and billions of {dollars} that can be coming to West Virginia, or at the very least be out there 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 can be addressed.
“We now have individuals come from Charleston each different 12 months,” Anderson stated. “They arrive to talk at our road 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 dwelling 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 power sectors. There have been additionally congressional staffers and representatives of teams just like the United Mine Staff of America.
Among the cash lawmakers are speaking about, together with $38 billion from federal companies for coal communities and billions extra in federal coronavirus support, have already got been recognized and allotted. Different pots have just lately been accredited, 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 connected to the Construct Again Higher Act.
County commissioner Tom Bloom, who serves the western and southern a part of Monongalia County, stated he can see a big chunk of that new funding going to broadband.
“Individuals are asking me to convey factories and companies on the market, however the lack of infrastructure doesn’t are inclined to convey these companies,” Bloom stated.
However in Osage, Coulter says the issues are worse than no web.
“I do know it’ll by no means look the best way it did earlier than,” Coulter stated. “However the county may purchase these [properties], or the state, and promote them to the entrepreneurs who don’t wish to depart Mon County.”
Coulter says they want road drains cleaned to stop flooding. They want potholes crammed and sidewalks constructed, so individuals aren’t strolling alongside the highway. They want public officers to assist with shuttered companies which are falling aside, which may 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.
