The Work of Restoration
Dwight Hicks, Retired Director of Reclamation and Environmental Compliance at Drummond Company, receives one of mining industry’s highest honors.
Words by Justin Hunter | Images by Al Blanton
Dwight Hicks is a conservationist at heart. The now-retired Director of Reclamation and Environmental Compliance at Drummond Company spent 48 years as a reclamationist, discovering effective ways to restore the Earth to a productive state once mined of its natural resources.
The process involves restoring the topsoil, creating proper drainage, and cultivating vegetation to plant new grass and timber. By federal regulations, Hicks and his teams had a minimum of five years to restore the land, regardless of the size of the mine, which is no small feat.
“As a conservationist, I am looking after the soil and the water resources to make sure that the generations to come will be able to use them,” Hicks says. “If you read the Bible, you know all of this was put here on this good Earth for us to utilize, but we are also supposed to take care of it. I believe in that very strongly, and that has been a part of our motto and mantra at Drummond all this time.”
On Monday, November 16th, Hicks was among 18 Alabama Mining Association (AMA) Inaugural Safety & Sustainability Awards recipients. He received the Lifetime Commitment to Stewardship Award to commemorate his nearly five decades in land reclamation. The awards ceremony and dinner were held at The Club overlooking the downtown Birmingham skyline. Hicks accepted his award, accompanied by his beloved wife, Debbie, and nearly two dozen close co-workers.
“Over the years, Drummond Company has won several national reclamation awards for the innovative work we have done over the years. This one was different,” says Hicks. “It was truly a career highlight. It was one of those moments when I sat back and said, ‘wow.’ It’s just hard to believe that I have been involved this long and have seen all of the changes that have come down the road in the way of mining and reclamation, and I’ve been a part of it.”
Hicks was born in El Campo, Texas, a small town halfway between Houston and Corpus Christi. The town’s motto, “Small City, Deep Roots,” points to its rich agricultural heritage which reaches back to 1853 when rice came to Texas.
Hicks was raised on a rural rice farm outside of Bay City. The lessons his father instilled in him at an early age shaped his views on generational land use. He attributes his success in the coal industry to his father’s forward-thinking approach to agriculture. His dad understood that plants could not develop a healthy root system in poor ecosystems stripped of all nutrients. Long-term productivity should be the goal of every faithful steward of Creation.
“My dad was an innovator when it came to organic farming and early conservation. He wanted to care for the farm so that the soil would remain productive, not for him, but for the generations to come,” Hicks says.
Hicks graduated from Tidehaven High School in 1967 and attended Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas. He chose forest management as his course of study at SFA because it was agriculture-related, earning his bachelor’s in 1971 and master’s degree in 1973.
His first job out of college was at Auburn University’s School of Forestry and Wildlife Sciences, which brought him from the plains of Texas to the plains of Alabama. Hicks worked as an assistant to Dr. Sam Lyle in a new field of research—coal mine reclamation. The AMA had awarded Dr. Lyle’s predecessor a ten-year grant to study the best ways to do reclamation work and make recommendations to the coal mines. Hicks found himself at the forefront of innovation within the industry as Alabama was in its infancy of developing laws and regulations for coal mining.
Hicks left academia in 1974 to work for Drummond Company. He retired in July 2020.
“The coal mining industry today is a lot smaller, not just in Walker County, but in all of Alabama and nationwide,” Hicks says. “It’s certainly smaller than it was 20, 30, and 40 years ago. Surface and underground mining used to demand a lot more manpower. Today the coal industry is highly mechanized, which means mines can produce a lot more tonnage with less manpower than they did years ago when there were more coal reserves.”
Even though Hicks has retired from the coal industry, he still does consulting work in his spare time to keep the juices flowing and to keep himself in the ever-evolving field of reclamation. Retirement allows him more time with his wife, three adult children and their spouses, and three grandchildren.
His AMA award, a marble sculpture of the state of Alabama mined from a quarry in Sylacauga, sits in his home office. It is a beautifully symbolic memento of his career in land reclamation and the deep roots he has planted here in the Yellowhammer State. 78