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| Governor Patton presents
the Center for Appalachian Studies with a check to support
the Headwaters Project - 9/14/01 |
At the Headwaters: students
stand on the peak of Pine Mountain on the historic watershed
divide between Virginia and Kentucky - 9/16/01 |
(return to Projects homepage)
Headwaters
Report (PDF file) Useful
Links
Overview:
The purpose of the Letcher County Headwaters Project has been to
expand and improve Letcher County's civic capacity by developing
tools and promoting understanding that will help citizens and community
leaders better monitor how land use decisions--from straight-piping
household waste to large scale mining and timer activities--affect
water quality, and subsequently the county's public health, natural
environment, and stable economic future.
The principle mechanism to accomplish these goals is a participatory
research project in which students and faculty work closely with
a community advisory board to:
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Review the historical developments that have led to water
quality problems in the north fork of the Kentucky River; |
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Develop community-based tools to help citizens address their
concerns; |
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Develop an integrated GIS that community members can use
to visualize water quality data, identify problem areas, and
compare the potential impacts of different development options; |
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Develop additional tools such as easy to read graphs and/or
spreadsheets and community surveys that will help community
leaders, activists, and others better understand and use the
data that is regularly collected by various state agencies
and by Watershed Watch volunteers; |
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Identify and publicize residents' concerns about water quality,
public health and community sustainability. |
The Headwaters Project has evolved as a three semester teaching
and research partnership between EKU's Center for Appalachian Studies
and local citizens of Letcher County, which started during the fall
2001 semester and continued through the Fall 2002 semester. Several
students are still working with Dr. Anne Blakeney on thesis projects.
Fall 2001
In the Fall of 2001, a total of 16 students enrolled in the course
entitled Social Change in Appalachia, and engaged in participatory
research that introduced the research team to Letcher County, developed
relationships with county residents, and focused on the first four
goals listed above. Dr. Alan Banks team-taught the course with Dr.
Alice Jones who also served as the GIs coordinator.
In the first few weeks of class, students gained a sound understanding
of some of the crucial debates in Appalachian Studies and an appreciation
of different theoretical approaches used to explain regional disparities
in southeastern Kentucky and Appalachia in general. To help them
gain a better understanding of the political, economic, and cultural
context of water quality issues in Letcher County, the class took
two field trips early in the semester. During these trips, they:
Students also visited nearby Harlan County, where they:
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Toured the Kentucky Coal Mining museum and Mine Portal 31
with local resident and retired miner Bob Lunsford; |
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Visited the trout hatchery at the Lynch Tipple, an experimental
project, guided by Roy Silver of Southeast Community College,
to encourage entrepreneurial and business leadership and to
help broaden the county's economic base away from exclusive
dependence on coal. |
In November 2001, students presented some preliminary results of
their work at:
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A Geography Awareness week feature presentation attended by
more than eighty people on EKU's campus. |
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An Appalachian Regional Commission sponsored conference held
in Washington, D.C. This ARC conference was organized through
the Consortium of Appalachian Centers and Institutes. |
Spring 2002
Five students from the Fall Social Change in Appalachia class and
two additional students (Mia Fields and Dominic Green) signed up
to continue the Letcher County projects during the Spring 2002 semester.
As in the previous class, the first few weeks of class were devoted
to providing students with a sound understanding of some of the
crucial debates in Appalachian Studies and an appreciation of different
theoretical approaches used to explain regional disparities in southeastern
Kentucky and Appalachia in general. After considerable discussion
within our group and with our growing Citizen's Advisory Council,
we decided to resolve some of the contradictory information we were
finding regarding the connections between clean water and human
health. We also decided to establish a greater presence in the community.
Starting early in the Spring semester, students and faculty at the
Center:
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Designed a quantitative survey to be given to health care
practitioners in Letcher County (see survey attached in Appendix
One). |
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Visited Letcher County to talk with our citizens' advisory
council about the best way to proceed with the survey. |
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Notified administrators at local health care facilities about
our plan to bring the surveys to Letcher County and asked them
to help us deliver and collect them in a timely fashion. |
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Delivered surveys on the morning of Friday, February 8, 2002
and picked them up later in the afternoon. (Business reply envelopes
were provided for those who could not finish them in time.) |
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Analyzed the results of the survey using SPSS, a statistical
software package for the social sciences. |
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Continued technical work with GIs mapping and chart making. |
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Assembled a poster board and PowerPoint presentation to show
the results of the Headwaters Project to date, including historical
information, water quality data, maps & charts, and health
care survey results. |
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Presented the preliminary results of the Headwaters Project
at the annual meeting of the Appalachian Studies Association
at Unicoi State Park, near Helen, Georgia (March). A community
resident and member of the Letcher County Action Team accompanied
us on this trip |
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Presented the preliminary results of the Headwaters Project
on EKU's campus at a symposium-highlighting student/faculty
research projects across campus (April). |
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Held public hearings at the Cowan Community Center and two
other locations in Letcher County. (May). |
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Discussed several recommendations to promote sustainable economic
development along the Kentucky River watershed, and the State
as a whole. |
Fall 2002
In anticipation of further funding for Phase II of the Headwaters
Project, the staff at the Center for Appalachian Studies
at Eastern Kentucky was confronted with a decision of whether to
continue the project or wait until further support was available.
After considerable discussion, a decision was made to continue our
interdisciplinary teaching and research partnership with local citizens
and officials in Letcher County during the Fall 2002 semester.
Fourteen students enrolled in a a graduate/undergraduate course
entitled Providing Health Services in Appalachia. This
course was offered through our College of Health Science's Occupational
Therapy program. Of the fourteen students, eight were graduate students,
including six from our Master's in Public Administration program,
and two from our College of Health Sciences. The undergraduates
(all seniors) are from Psychology (1), Sociology (2), English (1),
and Pre-Med (1). It was a diverse class with excellent students
form a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. The majority of students
were from eastern Kentucky counties, but two are from other countries
(Brazil and Cameroon). Dr. Anne Blakeney (Occupational Therapy with
a Ph.D. in Anthropology) and Dr. Alan Banks (Sociology and director,
Center for Appalachian Studies) team-taught the course.
Based upon input from the community advisory committee, the research
focus in this class involved a qualitative assessment of citizen's
impressions of the state of water quality and its implications for
human health and quality of life.1 This "listening
project" was designed to complement our more quantitative assessments
from last year with the firsthand stories and real life experiences
of local residents. It was also designed to generate discussions
among EKU students/faculty, local residents and their elected representatives
that address realistic and constructive strategies to address water
quality issues and promote sustainable economic policies in Letcher
County, Kentucky. Put simply, we believe that this "listening
project" built upon an ongoing effort to expand citizens' capacity
in one community by linking our more quantitative assessments of
water quality issues with an investigation of the daily life consequences
that water-based contamination has for human health, and sustainable
economic development opportunities.
As in the previous classes, students spent their first three weeks
of class attending lectures on competing theoretical models for
understanding social problems in Appalachia and the many approaches
that have been used by governmental and non-governmental agencies
to address these problems. They also participated in a special session
designed to train them in the area of participatory action research
methods, including qualitative data collection and analysis. Starting
in September, students and faculty spent three weekends in Letcher
County interviewing local residents. At all times, the following
guidelines were followed:
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Students were involved in participatory research. They listened,
cooperated and were part of the community partnership, |
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Research addressed one or more of the ARC Strategic plan's
goals--education, leadership and civic-capacity development,
physical infrastructure, and health (including water resources
for personal use and recreational development), |
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Students became familiar with the structure and work of the
Appalachian Regional Commission and its approach toward remediation
of regional disparities, |
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Students presented the results of their work in several
public forums, including:
- Local presentations in Letcher County during the 2002-3
academic year (with additional support from EKU's Center
for Appalachian Studies);
- A student/faculty regional research presentation at a
conference sponsored by the Consortium of Appalachian Centers
and Institutes (ARC funded) in Washington DC in November
2002, and again in November 2003.
- A Shaped by Water Conference in February 2003;
- An EKU campus wide forum as part of Geography Awareness
week in November 2002;
- The Appalachian Studies Conference to be held on Eastern
Kentucky University's campus in March 2003;
- Eastern Kentucky University's Earth Days in the Cumberland,
April 2003.
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From its inception, the primary goal of the Headwaters Project
has been to build an ongoing partnership between EKU's Center for
Appalachian Studies and the citizens of Letcher County. This is
no simple task given the structure of the academic year at institutions
of higher education and the long term needs of communities. Too
often, students come into an area, do their thing and are gone with
their grades before a long-lasting relationship can be established.
To overcome this structural dilemma, we have tried to visualize
this project as a continuous semester by semester relationship with
changing students and, at times, new faculty involvement. If we
can maintain this effort, we believe it will lead to a mutually
beneficial partnership long into the future. On the one hand, our
students received some of the best fieldwork experience available
anywhere. They also developed a better understanding of the region,
their home, the importance of citizenship and leadership development
in Appalachia. On the other, residents of Letcher County gained
a sense of confidence in the capacity building potential that comes
with a partnership that ties the human and technical resources of
the university with their long term desire for sustainable futures
for themselves and their children.
Ultimately, the community advisory committee's investment in the
project moved beyond the occasional discussions at the Court House
Cafe' to a partnership in writing the project descriptions and syllabi
for our courses. And, we believe, it has made a real difference
for residents of the county. With EPA funds, they now have a full-time
water basin coordinator and additional funds have been secured to
expand water-lines, improve sewage treatment capacity and develop/implement
alternative water disposal technologies--an important step toward
eliminating the nearly 1,800 straight pipes in the county. Local
resident, advisory board member and Appalshop filmmaker Herb E.
Smith put it this way:
Over the past 12 years, the people of Letcher County
have been working to solve problems related to the lack of good
water. The legacy of bad or non-existent water, sewage systems and
the problems with current coal mining practices have left us facing
a large mess that has overwhelmed previous efforts. EKU's Headwater
Project came at just the right time. The documentation in the project
report has provided an important tool for building the case for
making systematic change. We are laying new water lines now. Thanks
for all of your good work. You have shown the way for a university
to be a partner with county government and with local citizens.
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1 A draft of the interview schedule can be found in the online document cited above.
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