In the late 1980s, the Rev. Jeff Allen was appointed to serve as pastor over a United Methodist Church congregation in rural McDowell County. A few years into tending to his ministry, Philadelphia developers came offering a landfill for the county. The idea was simple. McDowell County shipped out coal on a daily basis back then, on the railroads. So instead of sending the train cars back empty, they’d fill them with trash and dump them in an old mine.