County Executive John Pelham has returned from a trip to Washington, D.C. where he attended two conferences designed to help rural development districts attract business and industry.As a board member with Upper Cumberland Development District, Pelham is able to attend the conferences at no cost to county taxpayers. One of the conferences was sponsored by the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC).The Appalachian area, as defined by ARC, is a 205,000-square-mile region that follows the spine of the Appalachian Mountains from southern New York to northern Mississippi. It includes all of West Virginia and parts of 12 other states: Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.