United States Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Administrator Andrew Berke visited communities in eastern Kentucky last week. It was a chance for locals involved in the flood recovery process to talk about their continued needs.
“We are very concerned about the recovery from the disasters of last year's floods and the flood before that,” Berke said. “We want to make sure that we're supporting Eastern Kentucky in every way possible to bring, bring it back and hopefully to flourish even more.”
Berke spoke with local stakeholders, visiting places like Jackson in Breathitt County, the Knott County Sportsplex and communities along Troublesome Creek.
“They're telling me, ‘Here's what our hopes are, here's what we want to see,’" Berke said. “And so all of that helps inform the decision making so that we provide the best support possible for local officials.”
Among those joining Berke was Scott McReynolds, the executive director of the Housing Development Alliance. The nonprofit is working to solve the region’s housing crisis, which he says was a problem even before the 2022 disaster.
“That's what we'd spent the last 29 years doing, or the previous 29 years before the flood, is addressing that,” McReynolds said. “So when we left the office, the evening the flood hit, we were working with 500 households that needed a housing solution.”
Earlier this year, $300 million in federal disaster recovery grant money was announced to be going to five high-ground communities in four eastern Kentucky counties.
Kristin Walker Collins is Chief Operating Officer at the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky, which helps secure funding and resources for such projects in the region.
“We are several years off, we're still waiting on getting approval from the state to start building an access road,” Collins said. “And so all of this work will be taking place over the next several months. But we're really excited to see how this unfolds.”
A concern for those involved is getting the infrastructure for those housing developments.
That includes securing funding for utilities like water, sewer and power. One significant concern is broadband Internet connection.
“We know how important broadband is, we learned that during the pandemic, and so we’re making sure that we have access to all of those things, so that people do want to live in these new neighborhoods,” Collins said.
McReynolds is glad the money is coming in to provide these utilities, but he’s concerned about affordability.
“It's one thing to have fiber running across your front yard on the power pole, but if you can't afford the payment to access it, then it really doesn't do you any good,” McReynolds said.
Some residents simply prefer to stay in their current homes. Collins says those people deserve proper infrastructure, too.
“It's hard to move from family property in a holler with big open land to a neighborhood where you have neighbors and rules and different things like that,” Collins said.
McReynolds says he’s doing his best to help folks stay close to their communities whenever possible. He calls it a holistic approach.
“For example, just outside of Jackson, we were able to purchase a piece of property that's going to hold seven houses,” McReynolds said. “And it will allow people who lived in that area to stay close to home.”
Collins is grateful for the federal help. But she also says the people that get things done are the ones living there.
“I’ve talked a lot about local solutions and local ideas, that's really going to push us,” Collins said. “You know, money is power. But money can only take you so far, we need capacity. And sometimes we don't have the capacity.”
That echoes a wider sentiment: that the hollers of eastern Kentucky belong to a people who love the region and want to see it succeed.
“I don't want to live anywhere else,” Collins said. “I've lived in Cincinnati and Louisville and Lexington. And I don't want to be there, I want to be here. And I want other people to want to be here.”
