"In Coal Country, Environmental Regulations Are Creating Jobs"

"One reason President Trump gave for signing his order to dismantle climate policies was 'to cancel job-killing regulations.' But in places like coal country, environmental regulations are creating jobs, too.

Ed Watson is a hydrologist with Canaan Valley Institute and is in the business of fixing broken streams. From inside his truck, he points to a forested hillside towering behind a shopping center in Logan County, W.Va. The area was damaged by coal mining and took five years to restore.

So he studied old topographical maps and the land itself to figure out where streams used to flow.

'Our thought process was to try to re-hook up the plumbing of the watershed,' he says. 'So we put some streams back where streams haven't flowed for 50 or 60 years.'

Watson was hired by Ecosystems Investment Partners, a land restoration company that buys up properties across the country and then restores them in exchange for credit from state and federal agencies. It's a business model made possible by environmental regulation."

Glynis Board reports for NPR April 13, 2017.