State & Local Government Policy, Business and Technology

In Life After Coal, Appalachia Attempts to Reinvent Itself

Governing: Dan Mosley’s father was a coal miner in Harlan County, in the hills of Eastern Kentucky. So were his grandfathers, his uncles -- all his people. Mosley went a different route, though. He became a successful banker, with a comfortable life. But he wasn’t blind to the fact that most of his family and friends who had once worked in the mines were now unemployed. Given the decline in coal production, there are thousands of former miners in his part of the state.

Mosley decided he had to try to do something about that. Last year, he ran successfully for the job of county judge-executive. “The downturn of the coal industry has had an absolutely devastating impact on this economy,” he says. “We weren’t going to have anything left for my kids and maybe my grandkids if we didn’t get to work having a diversified economic development effort.”

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