Opponents of proposed Eastern Kentucky prison buy land at site to try to block project
Opponents of a proposed federal prison in Eastern Kentucky have bought land at the site planned for the facility to try to block it.
The Appalachian Rekindling Project bought 63 acres of land for $160,000 inside the boundary of the site the Federal Bureau of Prisons identified for the prison in Letcher County.
Mitch Whitaker, who owns land adjacent to the site proposed for the prison and opposes development of the facility, said he doesn’t think the BOP could build it as planned without that parcel.
“I just really can’t see them being able to skirt this piece of property,” he said.
Asked whether the land purchase would affect development of the project, a spokesman for the Bureau of Prisons said the agency “is moving forward with the land acquisition process,” though it hasn’t yet begun contacting landowners about buying property.
U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, a Republican who represents Southern and Eastern Kentucky and has pushed for the prison project, said he asked the BOP for a report on how the land purchase would affect construction plans.
Rogers said the land purchase was no surprise “from a group led by Kentucky outsiders and liberal extremists.”
Rogers said the goal of the purchase is clearly to block the prison, but he said if the BOP doesn’t build a prison in Letcher County, it will be built somewhere else.
“This land purchase will not stop construction of BOP’s next prison,” he said in a statement.
Joan Steffen, an attorney with the Institute to End Mass Incarceration, which facilitated the sale, said opponents of the prison don’t know how buying the 63 acres will affect plans by the Bureau of Prisons.
Prison opponents said it is possible the government could go to court to try to acquire the 63-acre tract through eminent domain.
That is a process that allows the government to take private land for a public use in return for compensating the owner.
The group that bought the parcel says it has an attorney lined up in case the Bureau of Prisons goes that route.
The prison is planned on a site at Roxana, about 10 miles from Whitesburg, that was surface-mined decades ago, leaving a flat spot atop a steep hill.
The Bureau of Prisons wants to buy about 500 acres.
The price tag to develop it is estimated at more than $500 million, in part because extensive excavation and compacting would be needed to get the ground ready to support heavy structures.
It would hold more than 1,100 prisoners in the main medium-security section and about 250 others in an adjacent minimum-security camp, according to an environmental assessment by the BOP.
The prison would employ 300 to 350 people, though in the early years many of those employees would transfer in from other facilities.
Those jobs are the key reason many people support construction of the facility.
Freddie Coleman, who submitted a comment to the BOP in support of the prison, said it represents an opportunity “that’s just going to keep on giving Letcher County young people jobs over the next 100 years.”
Coal dominated the economy in Letcher County for generations, but jobs in the industry declined sharply beginning in 2012.
There were 1,191 mining jobs in the county in 2009, for instance, but that dropped to just 27 in late 2019, according to the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet.
There has been a modest recovery since, but there are still far fewer coal jobs than before 2012, and the mountainous county has lost population, in part because of people moving away for work.
However, there also has been determined opposition to the facility, both locally and from groups based elsewhere that oppose high incarceration rates in the U.S.
Opponents have raised a number of arguments, including that it would perpetuate high rates of incarceration; that it is not needed because the federal inmate population has dropped; that it could hinder efforts to attract other kinds of jobs to the county; and that it would be environmentally damaging.
“What we need is sustainable jobs, clean water, and investments that heal our land and uplift our people — not a prison that perpetuates harm and injustice,” Dee Parker, a member of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and Building Community Not Prisons, which supported acquisition of the land, said in a news release.
Appalachian Kentucky is already home to four other other federal prisons and several state-run prisons.
A local planning commission began pushing for the prison in Letcher County two decades ago as a way to try to boost the economy.
Rogers got money included in the federal budget in 2006 to begin studying the project and has been a strong backer since.
The administration of President Donald Trump tried to rescind Congress’ appropriation for the facility in his first term, and the administration of President Joe Biden also wanted the project canceled, but Rogers helped lead the way in preserving funding for it.
The Appalachian Rekindling Project, which operates under the non-profit status of the Appalachian Community Fund, says it wants to develop its 63-acre site as an alternative to the prison, restoring it through “Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge practices,” according to a news release.
The organization is looking at various ideas for the property, but one is to put bison on the site. The project could provide jobs and contribute to tourism, supporters said.
The future of the site could be “one that is rooted in human and ecological flourishing, not incarceration,” Steffen said.
