“And we’re still finding new ones, so the total number keeps growing.” He estimates that more than 850,000 acres of abandoned mine land still need to be reclaimed. “We’ve only taken care of about 27% of the AMLs,” says Eric Dixon, a researcher with the Ohio River Valley Research Institute, a non-profit think tank focused on economic development and clean energy. And in the 40-plus years since the government imposed regulations and taxes to help with cleanup, only a fraction of those abandoned mines have been reclaimed. Today, abandoned mine lands exist throughout the U.S.: 5.5 million people live within a mile of one. culm pile from the front yard of a Swoyersville resident Bob Quarteroni / Penn Live Mine fires have started in culm piles and mine caverns deep underground, in some cases burning for decades on the endless supply of oxygen and fuel, sometimes even forcing the removal of entire townships.
When the coal seams ran out, before federal regulations took effect in 1977, operators would often simply abandon their mines, leaving behind piles of waste and contaminated runoff or dangerous open pits and high walls at risk of collapsing. And Swoyersville is far from alone: Since the 1700s, when coal mining began in the United States, companies have been digging deep beneath the earth, clear-cutting forests, and blowing the tops off mountains to extract the stuff. Colliery operation shut down in the 1970s. The small mountain that splits Swoyersville is made of culm - a by-product of coal mining - left behind when the Harry E. Teenagers and children ride bicycles and ATVs along the sooty flanks of the 55-acre waste heap, and older locals see it as the unsightly legacy of an industry that once provided jobs and stability but has long since disappeared. When the wind kicks up, black dust drifts across the town. For decades, Swoyersville, Pennsylvania, population 5,000, has been split in half by a mountain of nearly half a million tons of coal mining waste.