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Front Porch Blog

Updates from Appalachia

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Communities identify priorities during first listening sessions of multi-year project 

In late April, Appalachian Voices started our first round of Community Strong listening sessions, part of a multi-year project to plan, design and implement community-driven projects.

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Miners and advocates travel to Washington to ask legislators to strengthen black lung benefits

Recognizing the difficulty countless households have with these decisions, members of the West Virginia, Virginia, and Kentucky Black Lung Associations traveled in early May to Washington, D.C., to meet with legislators about the need to increase miners’ benefits, which have failed to keep pace with inflation.

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Layers of injustice: Community concerns ignored as federal regulators allow Mountain Valley Pipeline to begin operation

Community members have fought this pipeline for 10 years — pointing out its many flaws and dangers and winning court battles by proving developers and regulators were ignoring laws meant to protect communities and the environment. Now, those regulators allow the pipeline to go into service.

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Photo taken December 2023 of a mine in Pike County that has not produced coal since 2019.

A week of action to stop zombie coal mines

This week, Appalachian Voices and 12 partner organizations are on Capitol Hill to tell Congress to protect our communities by making coal companies clean up their functionally abandoned coal mines, known as zombie mines.

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Congressional hearing highlights issues with black lung benefits program

On Wednesday, senators on a Health, Education, Labor and Pensions subcommittee led by Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colorado, held a hearing and listened to testimony from miner advocates and experts on mine safety and the black lung benefits program.

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