Southeastern Ky. is 'Climate Zero,' forest hydrologist says

The forks of Troublesome Creek gather at Hindman, Ky. It flows into the North Fork of the Kentucky River near Haddix and Lost Creek. Google Maps image shows much surface mining; the Mine Made Adventure Park is a reclaimed mine. 

America has eight creeks named Troublesome, none as troublesome lately as the one that flows into the North Fork of the Kentucky River. Those two streams and many others rose far out of their banks last month, killing 39 people and leaving thousands homeless. The catastrophe has often defied description, and now journalism must look forward, to what can and should be done. Austin Horn does both today in the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Trouble along Troublesome Creek (Herald-Leader photo)

He starts in Fisty, where Clear Creek flows into Troublesome and the only business on Google Maps is Smith's Scrap Yard, one of several businesses owned by Kelly Smith “I’ve lost 50 years here,” Smith, 67, told Horn. “The flood destroyed everything I got.” Horn sums it up: "A little kingdom in Fisty, mostly gone because of a flood that far exceeded any he’d ever seen. Smith had no insurance. . . . You’ll see dozens more patches of bottomland like Smith’s. Little communities cut off from the road because a bridge washed out, a baseball field whose fences are completely caked."

And the cause? Torrential rains (Including four inches in five hours), likely fueled by climate change; hillsides that couldn't absorb any more water; surface mining and inadequate reclamation, which abound in the watershed; and streams filled with silt and debris from earlier floods. It's too early to quantify each of those, which will take study, but Nicolas Zegre, an associate professor of forest hydrology at the University of West Virginia, points to climate change, in two ways.

"Zegre called Appalachia 'climate zero,' like Patient Zero, or the first person to get a disease in a pandemic," Horn reports. "The region is among the first to face the consequences of a carbon-extractive economy, he said, and that economy fueled by coal in this region fed many families and lined many wallets before suffering a downturn in recent decades." Zegre said, “It’s climate zero because we’re not only the source of part of the carbon, but we’re also disproportionately vulnerable to the impacts of more carbon in the atmosphere because our people live in mountainous watersheds. Our entire built environment is within reach of a stream.”

Zegre and Chris Barton, a professor of forest hydrology and watershed management at the University of Kentucky, said the impact of surface mining is uncertain because it leaves flat land that can absorb water instead of flowing down a slope, but reclamation usually compacts rock and soil, limiting absorption. Barton is part of a project that is trying to reforest the Star Fire mine site, midway along the length of Troublesome. Residents of one community in the area have sued a coal company "for the alleged failure of its silt ponds, which they claim led to mass destruction in their community and contamination of their drinking water," Horn reports.

Some officials have called for dredging to clear the streams, "but rules around when groups can dredge are stringent" and the two hydrologists are skeptical, Horn reports: "Natural streams in general have a way of regulating themselves more efficiently than humans, they said. Barton said that it simply isn’t an option in many creeks like Troublesome. Very often, the bottom of those streams aren’t far from bedrock as is. 'The streams are going to naturally cut in floods. When they cut down and get to bedrock, then they start to widen, and that means you’re losing even more of that precious floodplain,' Barton said. 'In a system like this – a mountainous stream system – that wouldn’t be an option. Nature’s taking care of that one.' Zegre said that in certain instances, dredging could be beneficial, but the larger problem is land use – surface mining, road building, tree removal and farming – that changes the natural equilibrium of the watershed."