At the turn of the 20th century, young America needed energy. Our nation’s factories, railroads, and steam engines were hungrier than ever. When two world wars arrived one after another, the country also needed materials for battle. America turned to West Virginia for coal, and West Virginia gladly provided. Mining required labor, and new towns and communities emerged in the rolling hills that powered our industrializing nation. Every hardy job in coal spun off seven jobs in retail, services, and manufacturing and for a moment West Virginia embodied the American middle-class dream.
Today’s West Virginia is different. In the early 2000s, our nation’s affection for natural gas and renewables intensified, leading coal and its workers into decline. The state’s robust coal industry that employed over 130,000 in 1940 and that enjoyed 180 million tons in production as recently as 1997 is struggling. Fewer than 11,000 workers remain in coal in West Virginia as of 2020, and less than 52 percent of the adult population is employed. In McDowell County, 35 percent of households live under the poverty line. Neighboring counties don’t fare much better.
Unfortunately, economic vulnerability is not far from physical vulnerability. West Virginia has the lowest state-level U.S. employment rate and places last in 2021 life expectancy at 74.4 years. That number is decreasing, no thanks to an opioid crisis carving into a community struggling as much with hope as with economics. To allow a state that carried our nation through growth and the Great Depression to fall into dire straits is hardly fair.
It’s time for our country to give back the infrastructure that West Virginia gave us. We must provide building blocks that enable the state’s economy and its communities to reinvent themselves as we reinvent our nation’s energy future. Our investments should target those areas of infrastructure raised as pressing needs by West Virginians themselves.
Let’s begin with internet. As we learned painfully during the pandemic, adequate connectivity is a prerequisite to education, business creation, and employment. Yet, according to the Federal Communications Commission, as of 2021, 18 percent of all West Virginians and 30 percent of rural residents lack access to broadband internet. Cellular service is equally scarce, with expansive urban and suburban regions unserved by even 3G services.
“Many students are forced to only be able to do work while at school,” says Dave Gilpin, a West Virginia native and Field Representative for the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office. “Off hours, they have to leave their home and drive miles to a local McDonald’s or library.”
It is hard to imagine a path to economic recovery on which students and workers remain at a digital disadvantage. The West Virginia Broadband Enhancement Council was formed in 2016 to guide cable internet and cellular tower expansion, but its efforts must be supported by federal-level funding and private investment.
Physical connectivity is just as critical as digital connectivity. Thirty-one percent of West Virginia’s roads are in poor condition according to the 2021 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure. A drive through West Virginia involves navigating a network of two-lane roads marked with potholes on which a single vehicle breakdown can trigger a transportation stoppage. Passable roads are not only core to a decent quality of life for residents, but also economic conduits for the state. The launch of the “Coalfields Expressway,” the first four-lane highway to pass through Wyoming County, prompted a slew of business openings in the historic town of Mullens located at the road’s terminus. For a state gifted with natural beauty and notable destinations such as the Hatfield-McCoy Trails and the newly minted New River Gorge National Park, roads are essential for realizing potential income from tourism, a promising sector that generated $4.3 billion in visitor spending in 2018.
Unmet necessities for many West Virginians are even more basic than roads and internet. The 2020 Needs Assessment conducted by the West Virginia Infrastructure and Jobs Development Council estimated that only 63 percent of the state’s structures are linked to a public water supply and only 47% to public sewage. It seems rightly out of place in the United States to rely on filling jugs and containers from pipes running off mountain springs for clean water, something “seen every day happening right along U.S. Route 52,” says Lee Dean, another Field Representative for the West Virginia Secretary of State’s Office. Funding requirements to extend water and sewage systems to unserved West Virginian households is $18 billion, a daunting number in the face of competing needs. Our country laudably supports efforts to provide reliable water and sanitation to international rural communities. It’s about time we foot the bill for America’s citizens, too.
Economic revitalization is a complicated endeavor, and infrastructure alone is not enough to build a stable economy. Solutions that diversify industries, attract entrepreneurs, and retrain workers are equally necessary. These rebuilding efforts can only be successful, however, if basic infrastructure is present to sustain the new economy.
For a state that has been delivered more promises than outcomes by both sides of the political aisle, investments can’t arrive fast enough. Let’s begin rebuilding with the fundamentals.
Lisa Yao is a joint degree candidate at the Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School. She previously worked in sustainable urban development at the World Bank.
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