McDowell County, West Virginia, birthplace of food stamps, faces a disappearing safety net

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Already the nonprofit operates at a loss. In its 2023 tax filing, the most recent available, SHED’s $663,000 in expenses outstripped its revenue by nearly $200,000.

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“We’re in a quandary here — all nonprofits are,” Gentry said. “Are we going to exist? Will we have to dissolve?”

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Health care and internet access

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Since 2015, Heidi Binko and her team at the Just Transition Fund have worked with economic development agencies and nonprofits in areas where the coal industry once flourished. That can mean helping a local organization identify or write a grant or provide a matching grant.

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The fund was created by the Rockefeller Family Foundation and Appalachian Funders Network to help coal towns capture some of the dollars provided in the 2015 Clean Power Plan, or POWER Act, passed during the Obama administration. Since then, the fund says it has helped coal communities in West Virginia and throughout the nation secure more than $2 billion in federal grants.

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Binko hopes the fund can continue to attract federal resources to towns with high poverty rates.

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“There are still federal dollars available,” she said. “They haven’t all been zeroed out.”

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The recently passed domestic policy bill, for instance, contains $50 billion in health care grants over 10 years for rural providers, though it is unclear whether that money will keep hospitals and clinics that rely on Medicaid dollars afloat.

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Two hallmarks of the Biden administration’s infrastructure and stimulus acts — transitioning away from a carbon-based economy and providing federal resources among different populations equitably — are not a focus of the Trump plan. As a result, Binko fears recent progress will be dimmed.

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For instance, Generation West Virginia, a Just Transition Fund grantee worked with McDowell County to apply for funds from the Biden administration’s Digital Equity Act to run an elementary and middle school digital literacy program. Programs under the act were terminated in May.

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The cancellation of the Digital Equity Act is a setback for McDowell, where 20 percent of households don’t have a broadband internet connection, according to a Generation West Virginia report.

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Clean water

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Other, more basic infrastructure is lacking in the county. According to DigDeep, a nonprofit that assists with clean water access and wastewater systems and is primarily funded by private institutions, corporate partners and grassroots donations, there may be hundreds of people in the county without a dependable water supply. The exact number is unknown because information on whether existing water systems provide safe drinking water is not gathered by the U.S. Census.

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DigDeep works with the McDowell Public Service District utility provider to identify residents who need a water hookup and helps secure grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s rural development program to extend water trunk lines to hard-to-reach areas. In some cases, the nonprofit helps pay to connect the federally supported water lines directly to people’s homes. It is also helping to install wastewater treatment facilities to more than 400 residents who either have inadequate systems or flush waste into nearby creeks.

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The water supply throughout the county is unreliable because of the area’s close historical ties to the rise and fall of the coal economy, said George McGraw, DigDeep’s chief executive.

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When coal operations came to McDowell, businesses operated in a “closed loop” environment. Coal companies paid workers to build and work in the mines, they owned the houses where miners lived, and they built the water lines that served those houses, McGraw said.

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When the coal industry began to peter out, companies exited the county, leaving behind an aging system of pipes and drains.