2/19/2015
Life in the Sickest Town in America - The Atlantic
Residents of Grundy and surrounding areas wait to be seen at the Remote Area Medical free clinic. (Olga Khazan)
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s I drove around Buchanan, trailer homes seemed to be the predominant form of housing. I passed a Dairy Queen, a Long John Silvers, a Pizza Hut, and not much else. Locals blame the town’s economic slump on the decline of coal, which they in turn blame on the Environmental Protection Agency’s regulations. Several yards were
dotted with campaign signs urging passers-by to “Stop Obama/Vote Gillespie.” (Sixty percent of Buchanan county voted for Ed Gillespie, the Republican candidate for Senate, though he lost in the state overall.) The place had its boom years. Coal first came in the 1930s, displacing poor farmers who tilled the tough mountain dirt. In the 1970s, United Coal expanded rapidly by snapping up cheap land all across Buchanan county. A 1978 New York Times article describes a “never-ending rush hour” on Grundy’s lone highway as convoys of coal trucks with names like “The Lord Is My Leader” roared through town. The Island Creek Coal Company made plans for a development of 1,600 Swiss-chalet-style houses on a nearby hilltop. The population of the county has shrunk by about 15,000 people since that year. In May alone, 188 workers were laid off in a mine near Grundy. The industry has been slammed by the newfound natural gas reserves and is expected to contract further by 2020. Still, coal remains the largest private employer in Buchanan, and its heavy impact continues to be felt even by those who no longer work in the mines. Though we sometimes associate the dangers of coal with big, splashy incidents like 2010’s http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/01/life-in-the-sickest-town-in-america/384718/
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