Narrator: Coal mining has ruined millions of acres
of land across the US.
And it can pollute the surrounding areas
for decades after the coal is gone.
Now, these farmers are restoring coal-mining land
with lavender.
Can this farm be a model for lands destroyed by coal mining
across the country?
We went to Ashford, West Virginia, to find out.
Aaron: When I signed up and I found out it was a lavender farm,
And I said, ain't no way.
I never heard of a lavender farm.
I kind of like it.
It's my new home.
Narrator: Aaron Morgan worked as a coal miner
for a decade.
Aaron: I'm not the only ex-miner here.
There's a lot of ex-coal miners here.
Narrator: He never imagined he would be picking flowers
on coal-mining land.
Aaron: It's strange to me that it's being farmed now,
because it's really just all rock.
It's a wasteland, really.
Narrator: Appalachian Botanical Company,
or ABCo, is on a retired part of a larger coal mine.
Marina: Let's go over and meet some of the guys.
Frank: My name's Frank.
I've had an assortment of jobs.
I like this one the best.
I don't even work here, I'm just kind of here.
Marina: We do turn a good section of this mountain purple
during the blooming season.
Narrator: The business is part of a reclaiming process
that rebuilds the landscape with new vegetation.
But it's complicated and costly.
Imagine blasting the top off of a mountain
and then trying to rebuild it piece by piece.
Growing plants in the soil on mines is tough,
but luckily ...
Lavender loves poor soils.
Narrator: And the sweet-smelling herb
can actually reduce toxic heavy metals in the soil.
Marina: We make sure the soil tests come back
so that there's no heavy metals, no toxins of any kind.
Narrator: The team harvests the lavender
throughout the summer and early fall.
ABCo uses every part of the flower,
so nothing goes to waste.
Marina: I need 35 pounds of these buds cut off by tomorrow.
Narrator: They spread the lavender on the floor
to cut the buds and bundle the stems to sell for cooking.
Marina: We strip the bottom two leaves off,
and we'll dip that in water and rooting hormone.
Narrator: They save small leaf clippings
and plant them to go more lavender.
Matt: This is the 40-gallon pot.
That's a 26-gallon.
Narrator: Matt Carter boils water
to steam-distill about 40 pounds of lavender
to make essential oil.
Everybody knows that is oil is lighter than water.
The oil floats to the top. Just drain the water off of it,
which, we keep the water too.
Narrator: They filter the oil three times
before bottling it up.
They also use the flowers to make creams,
honey, salt, and hand sanitizer.
Finally, the leftover plant biomass
is transformed into compost.
Coal companies are legally required
to restore the land they have mined.
Narrator: After a company drills and blasts
a deep pit, it piles all the top soil and broken rock
back into it to reshape the landscape.
All that earth gets compacted down
to prevent erosion and runoff.
They plant some sort of vegetation
and clean the water if need be.
An old mine can become any number of things,
like a grassland, a home, or in the case of ABCo, a farm.
But does the land actually go back
to what it was like before?
It's still fairly rare, I think,
for reclamation to be done well.
Narrator: Mike is reforesting a 2,500-acre surface mine
that has already been reclaimed,
but he says growing trees in the rocky, compacted soil
is really challenging.
They have to rip the soil sometimes 3 or 4 feet
to plant anything here.
When you stop the mining,
it doesn't mean that the pollution stops.
Narrator: Layers of rock that have been deep in the earth
for millennia are now exposed.
Mike: And so they become very active chemically
when they're exposed to water.
Pollutants leech off of those materials for decades,
if not hundreds of years.
Narrator: Hundreds of thousands of acres of mining land
across the US coalfields haven't been reclaimed yet.
Mike: If the mine is stopped and reclamation activity stops,
these mines just sort of sit,
often as wastelands of bare soil and rock.
Narrator: And there's a fear that as the coal industry
continues to decline, more land could go to waste.
ABCo hopes to expand its farm
onto this patch of partially reclaimed land
on the mine.
But for now, it sits idle.
Jackie: You can look out there and see all the nasty water
just sitting out there and laying.
It's awful, man.
We ain't even allowed out there.
I'm assuming that's the reason we're not allowed out there.
Mike: What is most likely is that these mining companies
will end up going bankrupt,
leaving this partially or unreclaimed land
without following through on the reclamation obligations.
Narrator: Unreclaimed mining land
can lead to more flooding and landslides.
The coal companies stopped working,
which meant they also stopped fixing any of the problems
that they had created.
Narrator: Companies only became responsible
for cleaning up old mines in 1977.
Before that, they simply abandoned them.
There are over 6 million acres of abandoned coal mines
across the country,
and they're releasing heavy metals and other toxins
into the water and air.
Marina: You can come in and take some of these off.
Narrator: Businesses like ABCo are working
to both restore the land and provide jobs
here in Boone County, as coal is on its way out.
The farm has doubled in size since it broke ground in 2019.
Well, that's a lot of flowers.
That's a lot of lavender. It's lot of work.
That's a lot of employment.
Narrator: Along with employing former coal miners,
ABCo also hires people in long-term drug recovery.
I like working here because they gave me the opportunity
to show that my past is in the past.
They were still willing to work with me,
and it was great that somebody gave me a chance
to show that I can do this.
Marina: And so when we reclaim, we don't just reclaim land.
We reclaim land, people, communities, everything.
Narrator: Reclaiming mine land is one step
toward a post-coal future.
The Biden administration has committed
to investing $260 million in reclamation efforts
for states and tribes.
And ABCo hopes to use some of that money
to expand the business to more of West Virginia.
If that is funded, it will enable us to set up
a new farm location in a neighboring county
and set up a regional community hub there.
Narrator: But the US government is still adding one more hurdle
to cleaning up abandoned mine land.
The proposed infrastructure bill would reduce the tax
on coal production that funds these reclamation projects.
Erin: The Appalachian region, they've sacrificed a lot
for energy that has really built this country.
We as a nation owe it to this region
to fix some of these inadequacies.
Narrator: Appalachia has a long way to go
to clean up the mess created by generations of mining.
But these flowers give hope for a blossoming future.
Marina: A lot of times you get a ripple effect in the water, right?
We don't make a ripple, we make a wave.