In EKy, people can’t live on high ground because it’s all owned by corporate interests
In the face of overwhelming tragedy, Kentuckians rallied together to help provide food, cleaning supplies and elbow grease to assist the victims of flooding in eastern Kentucky. The photos and videos of uprooted trees, homes, cars and trucks, and the knowledge that at least 39 people lost their lives in the flooding are shocking and truly sad. What has not been discussed is how the concentration of buildings, including houses, mobile homes, businesses, and schools along the banks of the region’s creeks and rivers contributed to the widespread suffering. Why do so many people choose to live, work, and go to school in the floodplains? Because they have been forced to do so over the past 120 years by concentrated corporate ownership of the “high ground.”
I was the Kentucky state coordinator for the Appalachian Land Ownership Study, completed in 1981, which documented absentee corporate ownership of land and minerals in six Appalachian states. The study looked at over 20 million acres of land in the six states and found that more than one-half was owned by large corporations and government agencies. The companies that own the land and minerals in Eastern Kentucky bought this land over the past 100 years to profit from timber and coal development. They have rarely allowed local residents to build on this land, all of which consists of mountainsides, thereby forcing housing and commercial development to the flood prone bottomland. In the intervening 41 years since publication of the study, little has changed to reduce the amount of concentrated corporate ownership of eastern Kentucky hillside land.
In addition to buying surface land, the landholding companies purchased mineral rights using “broadform” deeds. These deeds, purchased in the early 20th century, permitted the mining companies to use the surface of the land to build roads, railroads, impoundments, and other structures to support coal mining. At the time these broadform deeds were executed, only underground mining was common in Kentucky. However, beginning in the 1940’s, Kentucky’s courts interpreted these deeds to permit stripmining over the objection of the surface owner. It was not until 1988 that the people of Kentucky, by an 82% margin, changed the Kentucky Constitution to prevent this abuse.
Kentucky River Coal Corporation, now known as Kentucky River Properties, remains the largest corporate landowner in Letcher, Perry, Knott and Breathitt counties, all hit hard by recent flooding. Founded in 1915, the company is headquartered in Lexington and is owned primarily by the Catesby Clay family of Bourbon County. The study found that Kentucky River Coal Corporation was the second largest corporate landowner in the 12 eastern Kentucky counties reviewed, after N&W Railroad. According to the company website, “The purpose of KRCC was to be a land holding company. It neither mines coal nor carries on operations of any kind, but rather leases property to coal producing companies, oil & gas companies, and timber companies, on a royalty basis.” (krpky.com). This company has grown fat from leasing its coal and timber lands for over 100 years. What it and other corporate landholders have not seen fit to do is permit residential or commercial development of its hundreds of thousands of acres of hillsides.
Unlike in more affluent mountainous regions like western North Carolina, Colorado, and Vermont, it is very rare to see homes on the mountainsides of eastern Kentucky. The reason is people do not have access to this “high ground” where they could escape the ravages of torrential flooding. Many mountaintops in eastern Kentucky have been flattened by over 40 years of mountaintop removal mining. These sites could support large-scale residential and commercial development if they were made available. Although the cost of providing suitable infrastructure to support development on these mountaintop sites is high, I submit that the losses from catastrophic flooding, past and future, are even higher.
With the drastic reduction of coal mining in eastern Kentucky, it is time to challenge the corporate landowners, including Kentucky River Properties, to free up some of their vast holdings for residential and commercial development. The federal and state governments should assist with infrastructure development, including roads and water and sewer lines. President Biden recently visited eastern Kentucky to personally view the destruction from the flooding and pledged that the federal government would be with the people of eastern Kentucky through rebuilding. Federal and state dollars should be used to help secure the “high ground” for this rebuilding effort.
With climate change all but assuring future major flood events in eastern Kentucky, the time to act is now.
Joe F. Childers is a Pikeville native and Lexington attorney. He was formerly the state coordinator for the Appalachian Land Ownership Study.
