Letcher County prison proposal still alive, though obstacles remain

Since the proposed federal prison near Roxana was first announced, it has faced opposition from some local residents. Photo by Willie Dodson

A $605 million proposal for a federal prison on a former strip mine site in Letcher County, Kentucky, championed by U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, refuses to die, despite local opposition, a lack of support from the executive branch and numerous other obstacles. Rogers, who chairs the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science and Related Agencies, is pushing for another $100 million in funding for the project, on top of $505 million already appropriated.

Not only is Rogers asking for more money, but the committee report calls for withholding money for all other Bureau of Prisons new construction or acquisition projects until the Letcher County facility is built.

In an Aug. 20 press release, Rogers said, “I am receiving monthly updates from the Bureau of Prisons about progress on the proposed construction site, including the Army Corps’ geotechnical study, and we are moving forward.”

Rogers also touted completion of a water project in Roxana that put more than 70 homes on municipal water.

“The work to prepare for the prison has already improved this county,” Rogers said in the release.

Artie Ann Bates, secretary of Concerned Letcher Countians, doesn’t understand Rogers’ optimism for the project, and she’s frustrated that the water project — paid for with money from the Abandoned Mine Land Economic Revitalization program — remains associated with the prison.

“He forever seems to tie the water project with the prison,” Bates says. “People deserve water whether or not there’s a prison.”

Bates has seen no sign that work on the project is actually progressing.

“How can the project be moving forward?” she asks. “They haven’t bought any property yet.”

Rogers has been trying to get a prison built in Letcher County since 2006. The first Trump administration killed a plan championed by Rogers to build a high-security prison there, calling the prison “unneeded” and the then-$505 million appropriated for it “wasteful spending.”

In 2022, the Bureau of Prisons brought the plan back as a medium-security prison — even though the Biden administration had also urged Congress to cancel the funding and use the money for maintenance for older prisons.

The second Trump administration has also tried to rescind the funding.

The long-stalled effort was further complicated after the Appalachian Rekindling Project, an Indigenous woman-led community building and land restoration group, purchased a key 63-acre parcel of land that is part of the proposed site. ARP plans to restore the land using traditional Indigenous ecological practices and reintroduce bison to the area.

Appalachian Rekindling Project Co-Executive Directors, Tiffany Pyette and Taysha DeVaughn, stand on their Eastern Kentucky property with Jane Branham, who donated some family land to ARP. Photo by Anna Mullins — Appalachian Rekindling Project Co-Executive Directors, Pyette and Taysha DeVaughn, stand on their Eastern Kentucky property with Jane Branham, who donated some family land to ARP. Photo by Anna Mullins

The purchase was supported by a number of organizations opposed to the prison, including the Building Community Not Prisons coalition and the Institute to End Mass Incarceration.

“We have no intent to ever sell,” says Tiffany Pyette, co-executive director of ARP. “I believe that previously mined land isn’t worth giving up on, and the sentiment that a prison is the only thing that can be there is just something we know isn’t true. This is an opportunity to restore a keystone species and to prevent something that we know would be ecologically devastating and devastating to human rights.”

Pyette was not surprised that Rogers is asking for more money for the project.

“The new appropriation request is just really indicative of the fact that the $505 million that was already appropriated is not enough to do what they want to do,” Pyette says. “We knew that, but hopefully this can inform the community that there will continue to be more and more requests for more money to make the prison happen, if it’s going to happen.”

A 2023 study by the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy found that opening federal prisons had failed to improve the economies of three other Southeastern Kentucky counties. Poverty rates remained high and median income remained flat in Clay, Martin and McCreary counties despite the opening of prisons.

“The opposition to this prison has held off construction for nearly 20 years,” Bates says. “Letcher County already has a lot of issues — flooding, lack of fire and EMS services, and more. Having a prison would only make those issues more complicated.”