Appalachia is not ready to be a climate haven

Men on a four wheeler pass a storm damaged house along Mill Creek in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene on Sept. 30, 2024 in Old Fort, North Carolina. (Sean Rayford | )

Appalachia is not ready to be a climate refuge. While I was at a luncheon on rural advocacy in Morgantown recently, the topic of climate change and clean drinking water access was brought up by one of the attendees. As many densely populated areas of the country along the Atlantic coast and the Gulf begin to witness directly the devastating impacts of climate change, the attendee stated, how will Appalachia be prepared to welcome this new influx of climate refugees?

"It isn't ready," I stated. How would it be? As someone who has lived in Appalachia my entire life, I couldn't realistically imagine how this mountainous region, with its history of man-made environmental catastrophes, could somehow become a haven for millions of displaced climate refugees in just a few short decades.

At that moment, my mind went to the 2014 Elk River chemical spill which disrupted the water supply of 300,000 residents across south-central West Virginia. I remembered friends and family who were living in Charleston at the time, whose stories about it still impact them today.

Or the 2016 floods, which killed more than 20 people and caused $1.1 billion worth of property damage, and whose memory remains scarred in the minds of those who lost everything.

Or the 2022 floods in eastern Kentucky, or the damage done to Asheville from Hurricane Helene recently. In fact, it was easier to think of any number of reasons why Appalachia as a whole — from our infrastructure to our poisoned and disrupted clean water supply — is not prepared to become this climate refuge that others think it is.

The argument that Appalachia is set to be the next "climate change haven" has been a topic of both speculation and investigation in recent years. A climate change haven is "an area where towns of 20,000 to 30,000 persons can be established in an environmentally safe location." Elizabeth Hirschman at the University of Virginia's Department of Business and Economics has extensively about the economic revitalization and marketing qualities of Appalachia, as the region can expect to be "the largest habitable area in the continental United States by the year 2050."

Both the Environmental Protextion Agency (2021)NASA (2022) have projected that the central Appalachian region is expected to experience the least devastating impacts of climate change in the coming years, thus making it a suitable region for increased human habitation.

For some, though, it took until Hurricane Helene devastated parts of western North Carolina and east Tennessee to recognize that these so-called climate change havens may, perhaps, not actually exist. Earlier in October, profiled this new wave of climate refugees who had moved to Asheville, North Carolina, seeking a milder climate with fewer risks of droughts, wildfires, and other natural disasters. A common theme emerged from these interviews; Asheville, and broadly speaking central Appalachia as a whole, is not the safe haven that new residents had been led to believe it was. Indeed, according to Jesse Keenan, a professor of sustainable real estate and urban planning, "There's no such thing as a climate haven."

There are several interconnected reasons why Appalachia is not prepared to be a climate haven: 1) the history of economic disinvestment/mono-economy, 2) the region will continue to be impacted by flooding disasters and many communities are not yet flood resilient and 3) the lack of affordable, quality housing stock.

First, let's start with the economic factors inhibiting the region's potential. Every fiscal year, the Appalachian Regional Commission provides a county economic status report comparing the region's three-year average unemployment rates, per capita market income, and poverty rates with national averages and assigning one of five statuses based on these performance criteria. According to the ARC's FY2025 county economic status report, of the 423 counties that make up Appalachia, 42.5% are distressed or at-risk, 53.4% are transitional, and only 4% are competitive or have met attainment. Examining this further, the majority of economically-distressed and at-risk counties are in Central and Southern West Virginia, Southeast Ohio, East Kentucky, East Tennessee and Mississippi.

If we compare economic data from FY2002, the earliest ARC county economic status is available, of the 121 counties listed as distressed in FY2002, only two have improved to become "transitional," while 50 counties that were once considered "transitional" in FY2002 became "at risk" or "distressed" by FY2025 (Note: ARC did not use the term "at-risk" in 2002, and was also comprised of 13 fewer counties than in 2024). While this is but one means of judging the economic performance of the counties within Appalachia, it does indicate that the economic strength of the region has only continued to decline when compared with national averages.

Second, the region is not flood resilient. Climate-related disasters, particularly floods, have wreaked havoc on the region even before Helene barreled through here. Between 2013-2023, there were nearly 20 federally-declared flooding disasters across Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia, with FEMA spending totaling nearly $1 billion. The American Communities Project has stated that "Appalachia is ground zero for rainfall," while new precipitation frequency modeling from First Street Foundation found that extreme flooding events (e.g., 1-in-100 year floods) are likely to occur much more frequently than every 100 years.

Despite flood risks posing an increasingly greater risk to rural communities here, investments in flood mitigation infrastructure has been slow in a region where many small towns simply do not have the staffing capable of responding to these impending crises. With the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), competitive FEMA disaster mitigation programs such as the Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) and the Federal Mitigation Assistance (FMA) programs saw a budget increase of $1.295 billion and $640 million, respectively. However, these programs are expected to return to their pre-BIL funding levels without significant pressure on Congress to continue to act. Additionally, between FY 2020-2023, of the $6.270 billion made available for BRIC and FMA projects, only around six percent went to the Appalachian region, despite the region comprising around eight percent of the total U.S. population.

With increased flood risks and a lack of new mitigation measures, Appalachian households are also seeing an average increase in their flood insurance premiums. Since the introduction of Risk Rating 2.0 — FEMA's new pricing approach which calculates premiums within an individual property's specific flood risk rather than the general risk to the property — average national premiums rose from $888 to $1,808. West Virginia, however, saw an average increase from $1,133 to $3,074 with Risk Rating 2.0. Between July 2023 and July 2024, the U.S. saw a 1.4% reduction in the number of active flood insurance policies; West Virginia, however, saw an 8.9% reduction in flood insurance policies in that same period of time.

Some communities can participate in the Community Rating System (CRS), a volunteer incentive program run through FEMA, which provides premium reductions for floodplain management practices that reduce flood risks. Participating communities can see a reduction in premiums from anywhere between 5% and 45% depending on what CRS Class they fall under. Of the 1,753 CRS participating communities in the U.S. as of April 2024, however, just 5% are in Appalachia. Furthermore, the cumbersome bureaucratic processes within CRS recertification makes it a challenging program to maintain for local officials, many of whom are already too busy with other responsibilities to join the program at all. Thus, while the CRS program provides significant benefits to participating communities through flood insurance premium reductions, there are not enough CRS participating communities in Appalachia to make a difference in property owners' premiums as a whole.

Third, the housing stock across Appalachian states is not growing at the rate needed to welcome this new wave of climate refugees. Since the 2008 housing market bubble, new residential construction in the U.S. has slowed behind the pre-2008 average of 1.5 million new homes added annually. It wasn't until the beginning of 2020 that new housing construction rates rose back to the pre-2008 average, only for that number to drop again during the height of COVID-19. Appalachian states such as West Virginia (-2.4%), Ohio (+3.2%), Pennsylvania (+4.4%), and Kentucky (+4.5%) are all in the bottom ten states with the lowest growth in new housing units between 2012-2022, while Utah (+23.3%) and Texas (19.5%) have seen the highest growth nationally. Only two states within Appalachia — North Carolina (+11.8%) and Tennessee (+10.9%) — are ranked in the top 15 states for new housing construction, yet broken down by region, most of the new housing stock that has been built is outside of the ARC-defined Appalachian region for North Carolina and Tennessee.

Appalachia isn't prepared to be a climate haven. Maybe such havens don't actually exist, but as the region is projected to be one of the more livable regions of the country as climate change continues, there are much-needed investments that must occur in order to help this new wave of projected residents thrive here. We must prepare ourselves — as residents, elected officials, or voters — for the reality of the coming challenges posed by a sudden influx of new residents fleeing climate-related disasters. Perhaps with a renewed spotlight now, Appalachians will no longer be classified as a "throwaway people," to quote Coal River Mountain Watch's co-founder Janice Nease. Maybe, instead, politicians will take note of the need to redouble our efforts to ensure that Appalachians have quality jobs, climate resilient infrastructure, and affordable housing.

We're already living through the impacts of man-made climate change now. We don't have the luxury of time anymore.