RockingChair

Front Porch Blog

Updates from Appalachia

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Southwest Virginia’s Solar Summit for Rural Appalachia

This year, the Solar Workgroup of Southwest Virginia…

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The former Cas Walker building during the 2025 flood.

Putting faces to the floodwaters: The need for disaster preparedness in one rural community

There is something particularly heartbreaking about pulling a…

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The NIOSH mobile testing unit provides free, confidential black lung screenings for miners. Photo courtesy Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Trump administration cutting vital health and safety services for miners

Coal miners, families and advocates were still trying to figure out what the termination of leases for dozens of Mine Safety and Health Administration offices by Elon Musk’s DOGE meant for the work of mine safety inspectors when even worse news came.

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Hunter Estep of E Luke Green Construction mans the excavator during the People's Bank demolition.

Community improvement projects proceed in Pound as some funding remains uncertain

Community projects in the town of Pound, Virginia are moving forward, as the federal funding that has helped to make some of them possible faces an uncertain future.

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EPA announces rollback of decades’ worth of regulations

On March 12, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced what it called the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history,” a rollback of dozens of important environmental health protections that will put communities across the nation at risk and let polluters go wild.

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