BOP Fails to Address Significant Concerns with Proposed Prison: Citizen Action Needed
On March 28, 2024, residents and former prisoners of the region, including Damon Donaldson of Free Minds, submitted public comments on the Bureau of Prisons’ Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for FCI Letcher.
by Idris Irihamye, Robin Kunkel, Julia Finch
On July 12th, the Federal Bureau of Prisons released its Final Environmental Impact statement for Federal Correctional Institution Letcher. FCI Letcher is proposed for a 500 acre former strip mining site in Letcher County, KY. The BOP must participate in the environmental review process required under the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) and the release of the FEIS signals that the BOP is seriously considering building the prison. Building Community Not Prisons (BCNP), a coalition of environmentalists, criminal justice reform organizations, and Letcher County residents, opposes FCI Letcher and is calling for people to submit comments to the BOP before August 12th to document their opposition.
FCI Letcher is the brainchild of U.S. Rep. Hal Rogers, who represents the fifth congressional district of Kentucky. If built, FCI Letcher would be the fourth federal prison Rogers has brought to Eastern Kentucky under the banner of rural job creation, despite no evidence of this as a successful economic development strategy. At over half a billion dollars, FCI Letcher would also be the most expensive federal prison ever built, due to the need for significant site remediation and infrastructure development at its proposed location on a remote former mountaintop removal site. Building FCI Letcher would require the clear cutting of at least 110 acres of forest, and the degradation of another 2 acres of wetlands. This would eliminate habitats for endangered species and exacerbate vulnerability to catastrophic flooding and other climate disasters. Moreover, people who build, work in, and are incarcerated in the prison will likely face a range of negative health impacts, including from arsenic exposure, unclean drinking water, and silica rock dust that can cause serious respiratory harm.
Nevertheless, the BOP is moving forward. In its efforts to build the prison, the BOP first released a Draft EIS in February 2024, followed by an open public comment period. BCNP organized people from around the country to write comments to the BOP, pointing out flaws, inconsistencies, and other problems in the report. In the Final EIS, the BOP is supposed to have addressed every public comment and the substantive issues addressed therein; BCNP members have read the FEIS and discovered that the BOP has failed to address very real concerns expressed by residents and various experts. Below, we detail just some of the omissions and obfuscations in the FEIS.
First, there are numerous environmental concerns that the BOP has ignored, including:
1. Comments made by biologists concerning several endangered bat populations that rely on the ecologically sensitive area near the proposed site;
2. Comments from engineers and others regarding stormwater runoff and flooding and the BOP’s reliance on outdated data, including a 2011 geological survey as well as FEMA flood maps drawn decades ago, long before the 2022 floods;
3. The proximity of a coal slurry impoundment two miles upstream from the prison site, despite the agency’s declaration that there are no mining waste storage sites within two miles;
4. The adverse impacts to air quality produced by the commutes of prison staff and the long distances traveled by visitors to the prison.
In addition, the BOP has ignored concerns about the prison’s negative impacts on the health and wellness of workers, incarcerated people, and their families, including its failure to address:
1. Comments pointing to the environmental health risks to prisoners themselves;
2. The public health consequences of construction on the site, including the release of toxic crystalline quartz silica and the omission of plans by the BOP for continuous radon monitoring and mitigation efforts;
3. Data provided regarding the harms to individuals produced by family separation across hundreds of miles.
In 2019, an earlier iteration of our coalition defeated an earlier proposal for a prison in Letcher County, citing many of the same concerns regarding environment, health, labor, and criminal justice. The federal prison population has declined by 26% over the last dozen years and the BOP itself has requested “rescission of new construction funds,” indicating its own reluctance to build FCI Letcher. The BOP’s renewed efforts reflect the priorities of a single congressman; everyone from geologists and biologists to environmentalists to former heads of the BOP to Letcher County residents to the White House under both Trump and Biden Administrations opposes the construction of FCI Letcher. The open comment period closes on August 12th. Please add your name to the chorus of voices to help defeat the proposal and demand better for people in Eastern Kentucky and people in prison.
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Idris Irihamye, an environmental justice organizer and agroecologist, is a staff member at Kentucky Student Environmental Coalition and a member of Building Community Not Prisons.
Robin Kunkel is an organizer with Fight Toxic Prisons based in Winchester, KY.
Julia Finch is the Director of the Kentucky Chapter of the Sierra Club.
