Fighting to Save the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund

Citizens from six states traveled to Washington D.C. in late November 2018, to urge their legislators to uphold the fees supporting the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund, and to pass the Reclaim Act. One in 5 miners in our region have Black Lung, and that rate has doubled in the past decade. And yet, as […]

Save Black Lung Benefits

One in five veteran coal miners in Central Appalachia now has black lung disease. But the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund which provides critical support to miners and their families is at risk of disappearing. In this episode of WMMT’s Mountain Talk, retired miners Bethel Brock and Jimmy Moore, Patty Amburgey who lost her husband […]

Changing Course: KVEC Schools Aim To Remake East Kentucky

Many people would be surprised to hear that Bill and Melinda Gates and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerburg visited eastern Kentucky schools in 2017, but they came to learn about the innovative and wholistic educational approaches implemented at 22 school districts that are members of the Kentucky Valley Educational Cooperative.  KVEC schools emphasize personalized learning, team projects, […]

Mending Mining Communities

Despite a slight uptick in coal mining activity, most analysts do not forecast a large-scale reversal of the long, downward trend in coal production or employment. Many in the Appalachian coalfields believe we must continue efforts to diversify the region’s economy. The Ohio Valley Resource reports on three bipartisan proposals now before Congress that could […]