美国国家公共电台 NPR A Rural Colorado Coal County Was Struggling. Then A Tech Company Brought New Jobs

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STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

Let's head a thousand miles or so inland. What are rural Americans thinking as the election approaches? Some rural areas may feel poor or left out, but many people who live in rural areas say they are content with their lives and optimistic about their economic futures¹. That's what we found out in a new poll on rural life conducted by NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. NPR's Kirk Siegler visited Delta² County on the western slope of the Colorado Rockies.

KIRK SIEGLER, BYLINE³: To explain why folks in rural Delta County are feeling a lot less anxious than they were a couple years ago, meet Johnny Olivas.

JOHNNY OLIVAS: Tuesday, we put in almost 700 feet.

SIEGLER: He's a driller for a local telecom company called Lightworks, installing badly needed broadband to this remote valley of deserts and aspen-cloaked mesas.

(SOUNDBITE OF HEAVY MACHINERY⁴ RUNNING)

SIEGLER: He's digging a line down a steep dirt driveway, where he'll lay new fiber⁵ optic cable into a home.

OLIVAS: I didn't know anything about fiber optic, but you catch on pretty quick. I mean, it's a hell of a lot easier than coal mining, for sure.

SIEGLER: Like a lot of his family and old high school buddies⁶, Olivas used to be a coal miner, but he doesn't miss it.

OLIVAS: Because it's kind of like the oil fields, it's so up and down, you know. And I don't want to go through that experience again where I get laid off and trying to figure out what I'm going to do next.

SIEGLER: And what's happening right here in this driveway is the cap of a remarkable⁷ tale of transformation⁸ that began with a shock in 2015 and '16. Two of the county's remaining three coal mines shut down. Olivas and some 800 other miners lost their jobs. These tight-knit little towns with folksy names - Cedaredge, Paonia, Hotchkiss - faced the prospect⁹ of shuttered businesses and consolidating¹⁰ schools.

TERESA NEAL: When we heard they were laying off, we were like, we've got to do something. There's got to be something we can do.

SIEGLER: Teresa Neal and her husband saw an opportunity. The local electric company was looking for contracts to expand broadband to thousands of homes and businesses. And their then-fledgling company, Lightworks Fiber & Consulting - won some of those contracts. Now, coal was going away, and broadband was key. How does a small town compete in today's economy without good Internet?

NEAL: We took our barn, and we turned it into a training facility one weekend and just started teaching these guys about fiber - what it was, how it worked, how to splice¹¹ it.

SIEGLER: And they've retrained and hired on close to a hundred former miners so far. All of this was personal.

NEAL: I didn't want my girlfriends leaving, you know? I didn't want them moving away. My kids didn't want their friends to leave.

SIEGLER: That was a common theme in the NPR poll. One of the things people value most about small towns is having their close friends and family nearby. You know your neighbors. You don't lock your doors at night. And people want their kids to be able to stay and not have to move away for better opportunities. Maybe the new fiber optic jobs in Delta County don't pay as well as those old coal jobs, but there still are good jobs. Families are lining¹² Main Street in Hotchkiss one recent Friday for the high school homecoming parade.

(SOUNDBITE OF BRASS¹³ BAND PLAYING)

SIEGLER: Locals told me they were thrilled to see this crowd so much bigger than it's been. For the first time in years, Delta County's population isn't declining. People are moving in from cities, drawn¹⁴ by the small-town lifestyle. And they can work remotely now that the Internet is getting better. Stacey Voigt moved here from the Denver area last year.

STACEY VOIGT: I think there is the opportunity for people to try new things. There's a little bit more room to take risk in a rural community.

SIEGLER: For one, it's cheaper. Voigt runs a local business development nonprofit that is trying to learn more entrepreneurs here like Lightworks. They're also promoting the county's burgeoning¹⁵ organic farm and food industries. Voigt's husband is a wine seller, and they're even thinking about starting up a vineyard.

VOIGT: People are excited to talk about what's next. It's the moving on and being successful not because the coal mines closed but in spite of them closing.

SIEGLER: You hear this a lot in Delta County, which, make no mistake, is still solidly conservative. Folks are proud of their natural resource heritage. But you also see a big disconnect between what politicians are saying nationally about bringing coal jobs back to rural America and what's actually happening out here on the ground. People have known for a while that coal is probably not coming back to Delta County. All the easy and cheap stuff has been mined.

SIEGLER: Right up that valley, worked there for almost 30 years.

ROB CLEMENTS: One drizzly¹⁶ morning, retired¹⁷ miner Rob Clements stood with his daughter on the back porch at their place outside Hotchkiss. There's a stunning¹⁸ view being at the doorstep of the mountains. You can see how this would definitely be a selling point too for Delta County. Other rural areas aren't as lucky.

CLEMENTS: For the local people, like the miners and their kids, the fiber optics has pretty much saved the valley.

SIEGLER: Clements' 28-year-old daughter, Michelle, had been living in Salt Lake City, a five-hour drive from here. She had to move there to keep a job working in HR for a coal company. But this past spring, she landed a similar job at Lightworks. They are both thrilled she could move home.

MICHELLE: I think I have a lot of pride in where I grew up and the valley that I grew up in. And when I start a family, I want my family to have that same experience, too. I love it here. It's an awesome¹⁹ place to grow up.

SIEGLER: And her company has 40 more open positions right now. And there are for-hire signs around town. The Clements say that hasn't happened in years. Kirk Siegler, NPR News, Hotchkiss, Colo.