A coal mine was the first to wreck the land. Now activists want to keep another extractive industry from taking root there: prisons.

Nearly five years ago, the United States Department of Energy, or DOE, began an unusual partnership with the country’s largest lobbying group for the plastics industry.

Saket Soni, founder of Resilience Force, says skilled restoration workers are doing the arduous task of repairing US cities affected by disasters.