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The federal government has granted approval of a new federal prison in Letcher County, Kentucky, per an announcement Monday. The House Appropriations Committee has earmarked $500 million for construction of the facility.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons said it will acquire approximately 500 acres of land in Roxana, Kentucky, to build and operate the federal correctional institution and camp, designed to hold 1,408 adults. It will take about a year for design work and property acquisitions before construction can begin, per the announcement from Republican Rep. Hal Rogers.
Construction itself will take about three years, per the Lexington Herald Leader. No contractors have been publicly announced for the project.
The decision by the BOP cites the need for a modern facility as its existing ones grow aged and obsolete and “are no longer cost-effective or sustainable to operate and maintain.”
The BOP initially approved the construction of a new prison in 2018, but withdrew approval in 2019 following a lawsuit filed by the Abolitionist Law Center, which argued that the facility would damage the environment and expose inmates to toxic pollutants on the former coal mining site, the Herald Leader reported.
Kentucky’s chapter of the Sierra Club, an environmental protection group, claims that building on the site would severely endanger the surrounding area, including destroying 120 acres of forest habitat and 2 acres of wetlands.
Rogers said the new facility will bring 325 permanent jobs with $43 million in annual wages and salaries to the region, according to the Herald Leader. But those numbers have been refuted.
In a July op-ed by Attica Scott, a Louisville Democrat who served six years in the state’s House of Representatives; Artie Ann Bates, a Letcher County psychiatrist and writer; and Judah Schept, author of “Coal, Cages Crisis: the Rise of the Prison Economy in Central Appalachia,” the authors say that the claim that jobs would be created by this would-be fourth federal prison in Eastern Kentucky were unfounded.
In addition, the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy published a study asserting that three previous federal prisons did not pay off for the region. Opponents also say that another prison isn’t necessary, due to the fact that at least seven prisons have opened in Eastern Kentucky since 1990.