RUSSELL COUNTY, Va. — A new industrial site is ready to go in Russell County that could have a lot of potential for new business.

It is rare to find hundreds of acres of flat land in the coalfield communities of southwest Virginia, but we found and toured a clearing in the Carbo community.

“This site in particular has a lot of potential because of the infrastructure here, the railroad, the natural gas assets, and the amount of land that can be repurposed for economic development,” Daniel Kestner told News 5. Kestner is the economic development manager for Virginia Energy.

The Carbo project at the site of the former Moss Number 3 Coal Preparation Plant is one of many economic development projects Virginia Energy is working on to restore and repurpose abandoned mine land through economic revitalization projects.

We’ve actually had over 20 projects in the five years that we have been working on this program,” Virginia Energy Deputy Director Will Clear said. “It’s a program that’s actually funded through the Office of Surface Mining through federal dollars, and there’s lots of opportunities all over the coalfields to repurpose these types of properties. We’re looking to get a lot of projects completed in the next five years.”

Clear says the agency has been responsible for regulating and permitting many of the properties for decades, including staff members who once worked on the sites as employees. He added this gives the agency expertise and manpower to oversee the economic development opportunities.

This five-year initiative is the first finished product with nearly $5 million in investment. Agency officials say there are about 100,000 acres that have been impacted by mining that could be repurposed for industrial, commercial, agricultural, and energy purposes.

“The topography is real difficult here to manage. We deal with that a lot, but that’s the good news about the 100,000 acres that we have available. A lot of it is going to be left in a certain way that would be conducive for this type of development,” Clear said.

Leaders across the region talk about the need to have ready-to-go sites to incentivize new business, but what does it take to get to get a site like this prepared?

“The site we’re looking at here was actually an old coal waste pile, about 30 acres. All of that material had to be removed, regraded, and revegetated as you see it now,” Kestner said. “What used to be here was an old coal preparation plant, one of the largest in the Appalachian coal basin. All that is gone now, and now you see a site that’s ready for redevelopment.”

The company responsible for the mine reclamation, Russell County Reclamation, removed the 32 acres of coal waste, removed the old preparation plant, and closed ten portals left behind from coal mining. Many of these operations had been on site since the 1950s.

Russell County leaders now say they have active prospects looking at the site.

“When you look at the amount of flat property, which is very unique for southwest Virginia, it really is an asset for a large industrial client who needs rail access and needs an expansion amount of power and water availability. All of those are assets for us to market,” Russell County Industrial Development Authority executive director Ernie McFadden said.

Leaders on this project say a company, or companies, who move to this site will still have to make some infrastructure improvements, but expect public assistance will be available for those updates as well.