Disproportionality and Coal Waste in Appalachia

Pierce Greenberg

Coal mining operations in Appalachia generate massive quantities of sludge-like waste, often laced with unsafe levels of toxic chemicals. Coal companies primarily store this waste behind large dam structures—called coal impoundments—that can be hundreds of feet tall and store billions of gallons of sludge. Impoundment failures in Appalachia have accounted for some of the largest technological and environmental disasters in U.S. history. Further, residents have expressed concerns about coal waste contaminating local drinking water. Despite these environmental risks, little is known about the spatial distribution of coal impoundments—and whether the facilities disproportionately burden disadvantaged communities. This dissertation includes three articles that examine various questions about the distribution of coal impoundments across space and how residents perceive of the risks related to them. The first article, published in Rural Sociology, uses the methods of quantitative environmental inequality assessment to test whether neighborhood-level poverty and unemployment are significant predictors of impoundment proximity. The second paper, accepted for publication at Society and Natural Resources, tests whether impoundment proximity is associated with poverty changes from 1990 to 2000 in Central Appalachia. The third paper uses unique survey data to examine the public’s risk perceptions of coal impoundments in Southern West Virginia. Each of these papers draws on Bill Freudenburg’s disproportionality framework—which sets forth a middle-range theory that explains the uneven tradeoff between economic benefits and environmental costs of certain types of production. Freudenburg posits that privileged accounts about an industry’s economic necessity can help maintain those industries’ privileged access to natural resources through extraction or pollution. This framework helps explain how environmental costs—such as the creation of coal impoundments—can disproportionately burden low-income communities and how those communities may accept or become habituated to those hazards. Overall, these three articles each draw on Freudenburg’s framework in unique ways—advancing it as a viable theory for environmental inequality research. I conclude the dissertation by discussing elements of environmental justice related to coal impoundments—and how both academic research and policymaking can pursue work towards a just transition in Appalachia.

Disproportionality and Coal Waste in Appalachia

Files and links (1)

Abstract

Metrics

Details