West Virginia Leads the Country in Population Loss

The population of West Virginia continues to decline. Thirty years ago there were about Three million people living in the Mountain State. Now less than two million folks call West Virginia home. As the Charleston Gazette explains, with more than 3000 residents leaving the state last year, West Virginia is losing folks faster than any other state.

            As one among the many who have left the hollows and the mountains, this is bittersweet for me. I dearly love West Virginia. I grew up eating pepperoni rolls, and I’ve drunk more than my share of sassafras tea. My mom would make cobbler from the blackberries that I picked in our fields. And I remember how black my hands would stain when we’d gather walnuts in the fall.

            More than anything, it was wanderlust that lead me away. And I never really had a reason to go back for longer than a visit. So I now live in southern California instead of West Virginia. Although I am one of the many former West Virginians, my story is not typical of how and why it is that so many thousands of folks have left. When it comes right down to it, there are fewer and fewer jobs. And the jobs that are there don’t pay as well as they may have in the past. Poverty plagues the state, one of the poorest in the union. With a 18.5 percent of West Virginians living in poverty, the Center For American Progress ranks the Mountain State 41st in its state poverty raking.

Below is a map indicating the counties that have seen population loss and the ones that have seen increases in their numbers. The eastern panhandle has seen an increase in numbers, largely because now the eastern panhandle now serves as a large bedroom community for the D.C. area. Monongalia County has seen the largest increase, almost seven percent. As well, it may be that this area of the state is becoming a bedroom community for Pittsburgh.

 GIS mapping by Paul Hormick. Source files: West Virginia Broadband Mapping http://www.wvgs.wvnet.edu/bb/data.html. Population information from West Virginia Public Broadcasting http://wvpublic.org/post/which-west-virginia-counties-have-seen-most-population-loss-recent-years

But of the 55 counties, only 15 have seen increases in their numbers. Forty counties have fewer folks than just a few years ago. Wyoming, Clay, Pendleton, and Mingo have seen population losses of over four percent each. If you take another look at the map, you’ll see that down in the southwestern section of the map are all counties that have lost folks. The one at the bottom, that’s McDowell County, which has lost almost seven percent of its population. Now take a look at the same map below that now shows where the great surface mines and mountaintop removal mines are.

 

GIS mapping by Paul Hormick. Source files: West Virginia Broadband Mappinghttp://www.wvgs.wvnet.edu/bb/data.html and I Love Mountains http://ilovemountains.org/maps: Population information from West Virginia Public Broadcasting http://wvpublic.org/post/which-west-virginia-counties-have-seen-most-population-loss-recent-years

For all of those who equate coal with jobs, this second map reveals the falsehood of that claim. At one time, before the giant machines came in to make the giant mines in the mountains, dozens of men might be employed at a mine. And those jobs were union jobs paying good wages. As with the mountains, those jobs and good wages are gone.

 

A closer view of the footprint that the mines make across West Virginia

This has nothing to do with a fantasy world in which president Obama has a “war on coal” and much more to do with the loss of labor rights, cheaper natural gas from fracking, a criminally negligent West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (and the same can be said of the federal EPA), and politicians who are beholden to and serve King Coal instead of the West Virginia citizens who cast their votes and send them into high office.

Super Committee to the Rescue!

As their due date for coming up with a budget deal looms in the coming days, the congressional super committee is once again in the news. If these six Democrats and six members of the GOP fail to hammer out $1.5 trillion in budget cuts and increased revenue, there will be automatic cuts, big cuts, to government budgets.

            For the sake of argument, let’s assume that setting up this super committee was the way to go, the answer to our deficit problem. There are other matters in which this Congress has proven itself incapable of making any progress. Perhaps it is time to set up other super committees. I offer a few suggestions on issues that deserve this sort of added attention.

            With global warming presenting itself as our greatest crisis, and Congress incapable of acting on this problem, we should have a climate change super committee: a dozen lawmakers tasked with reducing the CO2 output of the United States to pre1990 levels. If these lawmakers fail in their task, tax loopholes for the oil industry would automatically close and a carbon tax would be established. With this revenue billions would be used to create green and carbon neutral industries.

            We’ve had too many people out of work for too long. What about an employment super committee? These six Democrats and six members of the Grand Old Party would reduce our unemployment to under five percent. If this group of lawmakers failed in their duty, a jobs program to employ hundreds of thousands, financed by a tax on our wealthiest citizens, would automatically go into effect.

            I imagine that there could be an entire Justice League of America of Super Committees to come to the rescue for additional conundrums this country has that that are going unresolved, a Get Us Out of Iraq Super Committee, a super committee to stop mountaintop removal, maybe even a super committee to get big money out of politics.

            Though these things need to be done, Washington will not set up special task force committees to take care of these problems. Super committee or no super committee, the reason these things are not getting done in Washington is because there is no political will to get them done and much money and lobbying guaranteeing that they don’t get done.

            The super committee is a charade. It was not set up because of the deficit. It was set up because there is money and lobbying that wants to do away with many governmental programs and benefits. And there are members of the Grand Old Party who have always wanted to do away with beneficial governmental programs. Through legislative muscling and intimidation they may very well achieve their goal of returning America to the 1920s, poor houses and orphanages included.