Almost Heaven, West Virginia isn’t just coal mines and country roads. Called the Birthplace of Rivers, the state sits on the Eastern Continental Divide, where 40 rivers and 56,000 miles of streams provide drinking water for millions of people from the Chesapeake Bay out to the Gulf of Mexico. 

And yet, while West Virginia serves the country with her pristine headwater streams, there are entire counties in the state that have been on boil water alerts for years, with wells contaminated by coal mining and fracking, with no infrastructure for clean drinking water, with no funding, and no real plan. Compounding that are issues of food insecurity, poverty, and addiction. With limited access to well-paying jobs, education, and broadband, West Virginia’s population continues to dwindle, and it leads the nation in opioid deaths. 

Where is the hope for a place like West Virginia? It’s in the people, and it's in the water, according to Angie Rosser, West Virginia’s Headwaters WaterKeeper and executive director of West Virginia Rivers Coalition. As Angie says, “We're well-positioned geographically, resource-wise, to have this paradigm shift around what it means to develop natural resources [...] as something to preserve and hold up, as something we are the keepers of. You can experience this and it will make meaning for your life, your family, your connection to nature and the bigger world around us. So I'm excited about that and that’s why I'm not leaving. I'm staying here.”

Join us for a delightful conversation on rivers, resilience, and restoration born in the hills of Appalachia on this season finale episode of HOPE.

Learn more about Angie Rosser and West Virginia Rivers Coalition at https://wvrivers.org/

If you liked this episode, listen next to Tim and Beth Reese: Building Small Town Resilience in West Virginia on HOPE Is My Middle Name season 2, episode 3. 

Follow Kate’s adventures through West Virginia on Made In America, now streaming on YouTube.com/ConsensusDigitalMedia

Connect with Kate on YouTube.com/KateTucker and instagram.com/katetuckermusic and please follow, rate, and review the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, it means a lot to us! 

Hosted and executive produced by Kate Tucker, Hope Is My Middle Name is a podcast by Consensus Digital Media in collaboration with Reasonable Volume.