Dog Slaughter Falls may have a disturbing name, but it’s a truly majestic, undiscovered place

On local legends, learning to love hiking, and the funniest thing our writer has ever seen

Ryan Reed

Feb 6, 2025

By Ryan Reed

February 6, 2025

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Photo credit: Dog Slaughter Falls Photo: Craig Mack, Trail Sign: Screenshot from Kentucky State Parks video – Dog Slaughter Falls—near Corbin, Kentucky—is a majestic place with a disturbing name.

I have a theory that every person is constantly pulled—almost by some invisible magnetic force—to one particular place that feels safe and magical and misty with nostalgia. Maybe it’s the gazebo where you got married or the garage where you started your first band. It feels like, if you just get back there, the white noise will gently dim and life will briefly make sense again.

For me, that place is the flat part of a nondescript boulder positioned opposite a 15-foot waterfall with a very disturbing name.

I first visited Dog Slaughter Falls as a middle-schooler, and I was adamantly not stoked about the idea. At that time, I was a shy, somewhat artsy kid searching for meaning in the conservative Bible Belt town of Williamsburg, Kentucky. I was still a lump of unformed human clay—largely consumed by rock music and entirely disinterested in matters relating to the shoebox church my parents drug me to each Sunday. But I was also a Certified Strait-Laced Good Boy, so I entertained my mom’s pitch: an afternoon of hiking with a group of older folks, guided by the botanical knowledge of a nature-loving priest.

Turns out this was more of a demand than an invitation, so I invited my friend Tyler along for this frolic from hell—at least I could suffer alongside a kindred spirit. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy this foolishness, let alone have it alter my brain chemistry in a real, profound way. But life is strange.

Dog Slaughter Falls is located within Daniel Boone National Forest, which sprawls across 708,000 acres and 21 counties in Eastern Kentucky. But even if you’re not from the area, you still might be familiar with its star attraction: the massive and majestic Cumberland Falls, one of the only places on Earth where you can regularly see a “lunar rainbow”—a phenomenon created by moonlight rather than sunlight.

Visiting the so-called “Niagara of the South” was a staple of my formative years. Outside of buying scratch-off tickets and meandering around Wal Mart, there really wasn’t much to do in Williamsburg, so we frequently made the 20- or 30-minute trip up to Corbin, windows rolled down, cranking whatever new indie-rock album we were obsessed with. I vividly remember road-testing Modest Mouse’s Good News for People Who Love Bad News as we navigated those windy roads late at night, my senses heightened by the darkness and perpetual motion. One time, my friend Calep showed up with a burned copy of Brand New’s The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me—hearing “Jesus Christ” in that setting felt legitimately cinematic. During that era, my friend Rishi and I, having borrowed an unwieldy camcorder from a classmate, trekked down to the Falls’ beach area and, utilizing a form of forced perspective, staged a tragic suicide scene from our (still-unfinished) amateur film It’s Great to Be in Cincinnati.

I’ve always felt a restorative force at Cumberland Falls, and I know a lot of people who feel similarly. Also, as a restless kid with big-city dreams, I felt trapped in my hometown, but living near the Falls was a badge of honor—something I could name-drop to a stranger in conversation and feel vaguely proud. But…it was also a state park swarmed with tourists—it belonged to everyone. Dog Slaughter, on the other hand, felt like a secret.

Let’s talk about the name—or, more specifically, how little we know about it. According to Kentucky State Parks, the origin of the grisly “Dog Slaughter” moniker “remains a mystery,” despite regular questions from visitors. The Independent Herald, a newspaper located in nearby Oneida, Tennessee, has a couple theories: One, which I also heard as a kid, is that “unwanted pets were once killed there.” Yeah, pretty horrifying! Another: “that hunting dogs were once slain by a beast unknown at this site—maybe a wolf, maybe a bear … some even say Bigfoot.” (This also calls to mind the local legend: the Mulberry Black Thing, but we’ll save that one for another day.)

I reached out to some local experts, thinking maybe, just maybe, they knew a deeper truth obscured from the general public. The responses varied.

Jehan Abuzour, parks program services supervisor (previously park naturalist) at Cumberland Falls State Resort Park since September 2023, is aware of two stories. (Dog Slaughter is technically not located on park property, though there is a connecting trail.) “I’ve heard that [frontiersman] Daniel Boone wrote in his journal about how he brought his hunting dogs with him in the area and they chased a raccoon, and the raccoon went under the lip of the Dog Slaughter Falls waterfall,” she says. “The hunting dogs didn’t see the cliff, and they went over it and died. Daniel Boone supposedly named it Dog Slaughter Falls. The other story is pretty broad: Basically there was a group of early settlers of Kentucky, and they encountered a pack of wild dogs out there at the falls.“

Pamela Gibson, former trails maintenance supervisor and volunteer coordinator at Cumberland Falls State Park, calls Dog Slaughter a “local landmark”—but with a name that invites a lot of complaints. “According to what the Park had written, Dog Slaughter Falls was named for an incident that happened before the area was very populated,” she says. “Story goes, the locals were out hunting [raccoons] in the area using dogs. The dogs had the coons pinned in the creek, when the raccoon got one of the dogs in the water, drowning several dogs. Everyone knows dogs do not stand a chance with a raccoon in the water.”

Connie Howard has been hiking there for over four decades and lives in a cabin near the trailhead. (Speaking of which, she’s had “many hikers who have gotten lost knock on [her] door during the night.”) But she doesn’t think “anyone is sure” how Dog Slaughter got its name. “The old timers, long deceased, told me it was because of hunting dogs being killed by a mysterious beast that lived in the area,” she says. “Who knows?”

The whole “slaughter” branding may intimidate some people from venturing out there—notably, on the horror front, it even inspired a Creepypasta involving a camping trip, a little girl’s diary, and a mysterious creature. But the hike, at least in my travels, has been the opposite of unsettling. Then again, I’ve always been out there with at least one other person—or, in the case of my first time, with a large group of people I mostly wanted to avoid.

Tyler and I jostled in my family’s minivan as it slowly rumbled roughly three miles down a gravel road. I remember Shania Twain’s country-pop hit “Man! I Feel Like a Woman” playing on the radio, its signal shifting more to static with each bump—it felt like an omen, but I wasn’t sure what kind. We arrived at an unmarked pull-off area overseen by a huge rock, and all of the churchgoers piled out of their cars and onto the trail, with Tyler and I shuffling to the rear. Sensing our awkwardness, a rowdy (and, frankly, somewhat frightening) 50-something man we’ll call Jerry decided to become our unofficial tour guide.

As the rest of the hikers moseyed along the shady, ultra-green, 2.5-mile path, stopping periodically to gaze at flowers, our out-of-nowhere buddy countered that peacefulness with lots of antics. Multiple times, he shouted caveman gibberish with a cavernous roar; at one point, he frantically jumped on a downed tree that crossed along Dog Slaughter Creek, almost daring it not to break; and, in what remains the funniest thing I’ve ever seen, he tripped over a rock, his body soaring a Superman-like free-fall before smoothly skidding into fresh mud. He arose, wiped his eyes, and shouted manically. Jerry was having himself a day.

Meanwhile, I was falling in love—even if I was embarrassed to admit it at the time. Despite the chaos, I felt serene among the fizzy creek sounds and creeping moss and cold rocks. During a picnic lunch, we all gathered on that massive boulder, a short swim away from the base of the falls, and I was hypnotized by the unending rush of water. “This is always just…out here,” I thought. And I’ve dusted off that disbelief every time I’ve returned over the following two-plus decades, often joined by my wife (Jen) and our Brittany Spaniels (Tegan and the late Gabriel).

I’m an anxious, depressive person by nature—I have trouble slowing down, living in the now, savoring the good moments before they slip through my fingers. But I crave the zen-like tranquility I feel at Dog Slaughter. I always leave feeling blissfully still—as if I’ve stopped the flood, even momentarily, to gaze at one outside myself.

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Photo credit: Liz Hamrick/TVA – A healthy bat hangs in a cave, resting up to eat its weight in bugs at dusk.

Environment, Science

How much is a bat worth? Protecting these tiny insect‑eaters isn’t just good for farms – their deaths cost taxpayers and the wider economy

Tiny insect-eaters deliver big economic value.

Good Partner

5/15/2026

Dale Manning

Anya Nakhmurina

Eli Fenichel

Most Americans tend to think about bats only around Halloween, but the U.S. economy benefits from these furry flying mammals every day.

Bats pollinate plants, including many important food crops, when they stop by flowers to drink nectar. Their guano is mined from caves for fertilizer. And they eat a lot of bugs – the kinds that bother people (think mosquitoes) and others that destroy crops that humans depend on for food.

Sadly, bat populations are declining rapidly in North America. A driving force is a fungal disease known as white-nose syndrome, which has spread among bats throughout the United States. When a bat population crashes, fewer bats are around to eat bothersome insects. All those additional insects can do serious damage.

So, when bats disappear, farms become less productive, and that has broad implications for the agricultural economy, human health, rural governments and even financial markets.

Bats love to eat the bugs that bother people

First, consider how many insects bats eat.

A reproductive female big brown bat can eat its body weight in insects every night in the summer, precisely when farmers are growing food.

Mexican free-tailed bats head out of Bracken Bat Cave, near San Antonio, Texas, for an evening of feasting on insects. In summer, the cave is home to the largest bat colony in the world. Ann Froschauer/U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

One of those insects is the cucumber beetle, which matures from rootworm – a scourge of U.S. cornfields. Rootworm destroys more than 340 million bushels of corn across the U.S. Midwest and South each year, even as farmers spend US$1 billion annually on pesticides to control outbreaks.

A colony of 150 big brown bats can consume 600,000 cucumber beetles in a single year. If each female cucumber beetle – assuming half are female – had 110 rootworm larvae, the typical brown bat colony would prevent the production of 33 million rootworms.

Farmers experience economic damage when rootworm concentrations exceed about 0.5 per corn plant. Typical planting densities exceed 30,000 corn plants per acre in the Midwest. Therefore, the rootworms that would have hatched could damage more than 2,000 acres of corn – if bats weren’t around to eat the cucumber beetles first.

That is a significant amount of pest control provided by bats!

The disaster known as white-nose syndrome

In the winter of 2006, the fungus that causes white-nose syndrome, the aptly named Pseudogymnoascus destructans, was first detected in the U.S. near Albany, New York.

From there, it spread across the country, infecting 12 species of bats, three of which are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act. A 2010 study found white-nose syndrome had killed between 30% and 99% of the bats in infected colonies.

A little brown bat with the telltale signs of white-nose syndrome, a fungal infection that saps the bats’ energy. Ryan von Linden/New York Department of Environmental Conservation

As of March 2026, the fungus causing white-nose syndrome had been detected in 47 states, reaching as far west as California, Washington and Oregon. White-nose syndrome spreads primarily through bat-to-bat contact, though humans also contribute to the spread when cave explorers carry the fungus from one cave to another.

Despite coordinated efforts by state and federal wildlife agencies to limit access to caves where bats live and slow the transmission, white-nose syndrome continues to spread rapidly. When bats get infected, they wake up early from hibernation and use more energy over the winter. This depletes their fat reserves and causes them to die of starvation, leading to plummeting populations.

Bats’ role in food production

After white-nose syndrome arrives in an area, the loss of bats has significant consequences for farmers.

Yields fall as pests consume crops. To protect their crops, farmers purchase more chemical pesticides, so their costs rise as yields decline. The estimated agricultural losses from white-nose syndrome exceeded $420 million per year as of 2017.

A lesser long-nosed bat (Leptonycteris curasoae) feeding on an agave blossom in Arizona, spreading the flower’s pollen in the process. Rolf Nussbaumer/imageBROKER

Greater pesticide use is also associated with human health problems that can be avoided if bat populations remain healthy.

Losing bats hurts local governments financially

The story does not stop at the farm.

Counties in all U.S. states tax agricultural land based on its “use value” – in other words, based on how profitable the land is in agriculture. Without healthy bat populations, lower profits shrink the tax base, leaving county governments with less revenue.

Those governments must respond by reducing services, raising taxes or increasing how much money they borrow – often at a greater cost of borrowing. The effect is especially pronounced in rural counties, where agriculture makes up a large share of property tax revenue.

Our recent research finds that rural county governments lost almost $150 per person in annual revenue after the arrival of white-nose syndrome. For an average-size rural county, that is nearly $2.7 million in lost revenue each year.

How losing bats can hit the bond markets

The loss of county revenue makes municipal bond investors nervous. Buying a municipal bond is a bit like lending money to the county, and the interest rate is what the county pays you for taking on that risk.

When bats disappear, the risk goes up, and the county has to pay about 11.47 hundredths of a percentage point more in interest. That may sound small, but it is 27% larger than the typical risk premium investors already demand from county governments.

The higher interest rate raises borrowing costs for county governments. For example, the borrowing costs on a typical 15-year, $1 million bond would increase by more than $33,000.

Bats snuggle up in a cave. Liz Hamrick/TVA

Higher yields also mean lower bond prices for investors, including retirement funds. For example, our research suggests that investors would discount a $1 million bond issued by a rural county by nearly $14,000 if that county’s bats have become infected by white-nose syndrome.

Economic benefits of saving bats

The good news is that the benefits from healthy bat populations create opportunities to make money from bat conservation.

Farmers can increase their incomes. Local governments can recover property tax revenue to fund public services, such as road maintenance, health infrastructure and public schools. Bond investors can earn financial returns from healthier bat populations.

No silver bullet exists for protecting or restoring bat populations affected by white-nose syndrome, but promising efforts are underway.

A fungal vaccine is being tested by the U.S. Geological Survey and partners. Designing artificial roosts and adding cave protections can also help preserve healthy bat populations. Researchers are also working to better understand bat resistance to the disease to explore whether improving resistance alone can stabilize bat populations.

As these solutions develop, opportunities will emerge for farmers, local governments and investors to earn financial returns through bat conservation. In other words, saving bats isn’t just good ecology – it’s good economics.

This article originally appeared on The Conversation. You can read it here.

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A pocket garden at Newark Beth Israel Medical Center in New Jersey.

Environment, Science

Pocket gardens: The tiny urban oases with surprisingly big benefits

Small green spaces can deliver big citywide gains.

Good Partner

5/4/2026

Matt Simon for Grist

It’s not just easy to miss, but often downright hard to notice. A simple patch of greenery in a city may seem like a blip in the concrete jungle, but it’s an extremely powerful way to solve a bunch of problems at once: Studies have shown that green spaces improve urbanites’ mental health, make summers more bearable, and prevent flooding by soaking up stormwater.

When these plots are planned — as opposed to letting vacant lots grow wild, which is valuable in its own right — they become extra powerful. You may have even enjoyed one without knowing it: the “pocket garden.” Tucked into spaces accessible to pedestrians, like sidewalks, hospital grounds, and campuses, they can be engineered to turn heat-absorbing concrete into air-cooling oases packed with vegetation and seating for people to escape the metropolitan bustle.

“This increasing prioritization of creating green spaces in unexpected spots and underutilized spaces in communities is not only going to be making our communities more resilient, it’s going to be making people healthier,” said Dan Lambe, chief executive of the nonprofit Arbor Day Foundation, which promotes urban forestry. “A little bit of green goes a long way.”

Pocket gardens aren’t gardens in the agriculturally productive sense, but ornamental grounds, Grist reports. (Though there’s nothing stopping a designer from adding a fruit tree or two.) Ideally, they’re host to native plant species, which bring several benefits. For one, they attract native pollinators like insects and birds, which get a source of food that powers them to go on and fertilize plants elsewhere, like crops in urban farms. And two, if the vegetation is adapted to a particular region or condition, it’s already used to the local climate — drought-tolerant varieties, for instance, won’t require as much water to survive. Furthermore, choosing native grasses that don’t need mowing can cut down on maintenance costs. And picking trees with big canopies will increase the amount of shade for people to use as refuge from the heat. (Sorry, palm trees, that means you’re disqualified.)

Biodiversity — mixing tree species as opposed to planting 10 of the same kind — is key here. That attracts a broader range of pollinating animals, and builds resiliency into the system: If you only plant one variety of tree and a disease shows up, it can spread rapidly.

And speaking of disease, trees have an additional superpower in their ability to scrub urban air of the pollutants that contribute to respiratory problems. In addition, the vegetation of a pocket park releases water vapor, bringing down air temperatures. This mitigates what’s called the urban heat island effect, in which cities absorb the sun’s energy all day and slowly release it into the night. Combined, reduced air pollution and temperatures improve public health.

There’s also the harder-to-quantify bonus of people getting out of their cars and gathering in public spaces, no matter how diminutive. “It’s actually a transition toward the pedestrian — toward the person — and away from the vehicle,” said Eric Galipo, director of campus planning and urban design at the architecture firm FCA, which has integrated pocket gardens in its projects. “We may not spend as much time together as a society as we used to, and so these are great opportunities for that sort of connection to happen.”

When the rains come, these verdant plots take on another role as an infrastructural asset. As the planet heats up, rainfall increases because a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture. In response, cities like Los Angeles and Pittsburgh are getting rid of concrete to open up more green spaces, which absorb rainfall, allowing it to seep underground. This reduces pressure on sewer systems that are struggling to handle increasingly heavy deluges. These systems, after all, were designed long ago for a different climate than we’re dealing with today.

When a city prioritizes green spaces, you can actually hear the difference. Barcelona, for instance, has been developing superblocks, which aim to improve city life by transforming car infrastructure into walkable spaces. That includes the development of “green axes” (the plural of “axis,” not the tool for chopping), full of vegetation and paths for strolling. A recent study found that after these spaces were pedestrianized and vehicles disappeared, average noise levels fell by 3.1 decibels. (For context, hearing a car traveling at 65 mph from 25 feet away would be 77 decibels.)

While 3.1 may not seem like much, each increase of 10 decibels means a tenfold rise in loudness. And we have to consider not just the decibels but how the kind of noise changed as Barcelona developed green axes: Revving engines, honking horns, and even the occasional cacophony of a car accident were replaced with voices. As the built environment dramatically changed, so too did the way that folks on foot experienced their surroundings. “If people see green in general, the noise perception tends to change,” said Samuel Nello-Deakin, a postdoctoral researcher at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and lead author of the study. “You think that things are not as noisy as they actually are. So there’s also this interesting interaction, right, between sort of what you hear and what you see.” In addition, green spaces absorb city racket, keeping it from bouncing off of and between buildings and pavement, insulating residents from the din.

With less commotion comes still more gains to public health. Noise pollution is an invisible crisis worldwide, as studies link the stress it causes not just to struggles with mental health, but physical problems like hypertension and heart disease. By contrast, pocket parks and other green spaces encourage people to ditch their cars and move their bodies. “There are also physical health benefits from walking, biking, and being outside that over a lifetime tend to have a cumulative positive effect on what our society spends in health care,” Galipo said.

So as cities increasingly realize and utilize the power of greenery, the environmental, auditory, and social fabric of the urban landscape transforms. “There’s a gravity to this green space that brings people out,” Lambe said. “And all of a sudden, neighbors are connecting, generations are connecting, cultures are connecting. Trees are about the one thing that everybody can agree on.”

This story was produced by Grist and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.

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Photo credit: Jake C/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA – Acid mine waste turns rocks orange along Shamokin Creek in Pennsylvania.

Environment, Science

America’s next big critical minerals source could be coal mine pollution – if we can agree on who owns it

Mine waste could power clean energy.

Good Partner

4/27/2026

Hélène Nguemgaing

Alan Collins

Across Appalachia, rust-colored water seeps from abandoned coal mines, staining rocks orange and coating stream beds with metals. These acidic discharges, known as acid mine drainage, are among the region’s most persistent environmental problems. They disrupt aquatic life, corrode pipes and can contaminate drinking water for decades.

However, hidden in that orange drainage are valuable metals known as rare earth elements that are vital for many technologies the U.S. relies on, including smartphones, wind turbines and military jets. In fact, studies have found that the concentrations of rare earths in acid mine waste can be comparable to the amount in ores mined to extract rare earths.

Scientists estimate that more than 13,700 miles (22,000 kilometers) of U.S. streams, predominantly in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, are contaminated with acid mine discharge.

We and our colleagues at West Virginia University have been working on ways to turn the acid waste in those bright orange creeks into a reliable domestic source for rare earths while also cleaning the water.

Experiments show extraction can work. If states can also sort out who owns that mine waste, the environmental cost of mining might help power a clean energy future.

Rare earths face a supply chain risk

Rare earth elements are a group of 17 metals, also classified as critical minerals, that are considered vital to the nation’s economy or security.

Despite their name, rare earth elements are not all that rare. They occur in many places around the planet, but in small quantities mixed with other minerals, which makes them costly and complex to separate and refine.

MP Materials’ Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine and Processing Facility, in California near the Nevada border, is one of the few rare earth mines in the U.S. Tmy350/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

China controls about 70% of global rare earth production and nearly all refining capacity. This near monopoly gives the Chinese government the power to influence prices, export policies and access to rare earth elements. China has used that power in trade disputes as recently as 2025.

The United States, which currently imports about 80% of the rare earth elements it uses, sees China’s control over these critical minerals as a risk and has made locating domestic sources a national priority.

The U.S. Geological Survey has been mapping locations for potential rare earth mining, shown in pink. But it takes years to explore a locations and then get a mine up and running. USGS

Although the U.S. Geological Survey has been mapping potential locations for extracting rare earth elements, getting from exploration to production takes years. That’s why unconventional sources, like extracting rare earth elements from acid mine waste, are drawing interest.

Turning a mine waste problem into a solution

Acid mine drainage forms when sulfide minerals, such as pyrite, are exposed to air during mining. This creates sulfuric acid, which then dissolves heavy metals such as copper, lead and mercury from surrounding rock. The metals end up in groundwater and creeks, where iron in the mix gives the water an orange color.

Expensive treatment systems can neutralize the acid, with the dissolved metals settling into an orange sludge in treatment ponds.

For decades, that sludge was treated as hazardous waste and hauled to landfills. But scientists at West Virginia University and the National Energy Technology Laboratory have found that it contains concentrations of rare earth elements comparable to those found in mined ores. These elements are also easier to extract from acid mine waste because the acidic water has already released them from the surrounding rock.

Acid mine drainage flowing into Decker’s Creek in Morgantown, West Virginia, in 2024. Helene Nguemgaing

Experiments have shown how the metals can be extracted: Researchers collected sludge, separated out rare earth elements using water-safe chemistry, and then returned the cleaner water to nearby streams.

It is like mining without digging, turning something harmful into a useful resource. If scaled up, this process could lower cleanup costs, create local jobs and strengthen America’s supply of materials needed for renewable energy and high-tech manufacturing.

But there’s a problem: Who owns the recovered minerals?

The ownership question

Traditional mining law covers minerals underground, not those extracted from water naturally running off abandoned mine sites.

Nonprofit watershed groups that treat mine waste to clean up the water often receive public funding meant solely for environmental cleanup. If these groups start selling recovered rare earth elements, they could generate revenue for more stream cleanup projects, but they might also risk violating grant terms or nonprofit rules.

To better understand the policy challenges, we surveyed mine water treatment operators across Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The majority of treatment systems were under landowner agreements in which the operators had no permanent property rights. Most operators said “ownership uncertainty” was one of the biggest barriers to investment in the recovery of rare earth elements, projects that can cost millions of dollars.

Not surprisingly, water treatment operators who owned the land where treatment was taking place were much more likely to be interested in rare earth element extraction.

Map of acid mine drainage sites in West Virginia. Created by Helene Nguemgaing, based on data from West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, West Virginia Office of GIS Coordination, and U.S. Geological Survey

West Virginia took steps in 2022 to boost rare earth recovery, innovation and cleanup of acid mine drainage. A new law gives ownership of recovered rare earth elements to whoever extracts them. So far, the law has not been applied to large-scale projects.

Across the border, Pennsylvania’s Environmental Good Samaritan Act protects volunteers who treat mine water from liability but says nothing about ownership.

Map of acid mine drainage sites in Pennsylvania. Created by Helene Nguemgaing, based on data from Pennsylvania Spatial Data Access

This difference matters. Clear rules like West Virginia’s provide greater certainty, while the lack of guidance in Pennsylvania can leave companies and nonprofits hesitant about undertaking expensive recovery projects. Among the treatment operators we surveyed, interest in rare earth element extraction was twice as high in West Virginia than in Pennsylvania.

The economics of waste to value

Recovering rare earth elements from mine water won’t replace conventional mining. The quantities available at drainage sites are far smaller than those produced by large mines, even though the concentration can be just as high, and the technology to extract them from mine waste is still developing.

Still, the use of mine waste offers a promising way to supplement the supply of rare earth elements with a domestic source and help offset environmental costs while cleaning up polluted streams.

Early studies suggest that recovering rare earth elements using technologies being developed today could be profitable, particularly when the projects also recover additional critical materials, such as cobalt and manganese, which are used in industrial processes and batteries. Extraction methods are improving, too, making the process safer, cleaner and cheaper.

Government incentives, research funding and public-private partnerships could speed this progress, much as subsidies support fossil fuel extraction and have helped solar and wind power scale up in providing electricity.

Treating acid mine drainage and extracting its valuable rare earth elements offers a way to transform pollution into prosperity. Creating policies that clarify ownership, investing in research and supporting responsible recovery could ensure that Appalachian communities benefit from this new chapter, one in which cleanup and clean energy advance together.

This article originally appeared on The Conversation. You can read it here.

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