Hoping to reverse state’s decline

DRY FORK, W.VA. >> There’s nobody here.

Well, almost nobody. This unincorporated community is in a magnificent corner of the world, garlanded by mountains, picturesque farms planted along the road, eight miles from not one but two ski areas and a state park that describes itself as a conference center and resort. Mostly the sounds here are of deep silences.

Some 1,085 people live here today. In 1900 — when loggers toiled amid the densely forested hills, a lumber mill sat on Red Creek, the community had its own railroad, and coal mines operated nearby — Dry Fork had a population of 3,224.

This is a fortunate part of the state, endowed with stunning beauty, a growing tourist industry and many advantages, including a median family income 10% higher than the rest of West Virginia and a rate of higher education double the state figure. And yet the population has fallen by two-thirds since the days when workers — the gandy dancers, as the men who worked the rails were called, or the pickand-shovel men who dug for coal, or the logging crews from Pennsylvania and Nova Scotia who employed skidding tongs and peaveys to harvest the trees — filled the silences with their grunts. They extracted wood and coal from the area and sent the profits to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Cleveland.

That is the West Virginia story.

That story’s latest chapter is of fresh decline. Newly released Census Bureau data show that West Virginia suffered the largest population decline in the country, a drop of nearly 60,000 people, or 3.2%, in the decade between 2010 and 2020. It is one of seven states that will lose a congressional seat in next year’s midterm elections.

There are several explanations, all of them partial, all plausible. Poverty is one (about one in seven West Virginians qualify for the national definition). Job loss is another (especially in coal, which has lost more than half its jobs in the past dozen years). The two, of course are related. So is drug addiction (West Virginia has by far the highest rate of opioid addiction — four times higher than Texas, almost certainly the result of the astonishing fact that seven in 10 West Virginians have been prescribed opioids).

Unemployment is especially severe in the coal-oriented southwestern counties of McDowell, Boone, Wyoming, Mingo and Logan, which have lost at least a quarter of their jobs over half a decade, the result of environmental regulation and the competitive cost of natural gas, a rival fuel source. In those places, as elsewhere, internet connections are pitiable, roads beyond the highways often are tortuous, and the refugees to brighter prospects out of state tend to be younger, better educated and better trained.

“The result is a vicious cycle where the losses make the area less attractive, and that drives away more businesses,” said John Deskins, who heads the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at West Virginia University. “It is very hard to halt that. All the tools government has are better at boosting development of areas that are on the upswing than in helping communities that are in decline. They are better at accelerating growth than reversing momentum.”

West Virginia is experiencing in the third decade of the 21st century what Iowa experienced in the last decade of the 20th century, when small towns shrank, a farm-credit crunch pinched many farmers, and broader economic changes squeezed the state’s economy. In those years, some farmers burned their barns rather than pay taxes on them.

West Virginia is determined to avoid the phenomenon that sends families fleeing. The state legislature passed a bill to make it easier for remote workers to operate out of the state, canceling sales and income taxes for the first 30 days of telecommuting, and lawmakers next year will consider a proposal to make the state more attractive to migrants by eliminating the income tax completely.

“This has been a big topic in the state and the driving force behind a lot of our politics,” said Sean O’Leary, a senior policy analyst at the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. “We can’t grow economically without people. As our population declines, the older and unhealthy members of our state still have growing needs.”

In the years between 2010 and 2018, 27,000 more people left West Virginia than moved in. It may be almost heaven, but the problem is that it is almost empty.