Undermined by Big Coal

In Pennsylvania's coal country, some people's homes are literally sinking into the ground -- because big mining companies own the earth under them.

By Kris B. Mamula

Mar 1, 2004 | Like a ghost, he moves among rooms of an empty house where he lives and doesn't live anymore.

"You do so much work around the house, you become part of it," the man says softly.

Sturdy house, the man says. Built in 1950. All oak joists, plaster walls. Insulated.

Outside, the gray sky grows dark. A fall wind carries the first breath of winter.

They've given him until the end of the month to be out. Instead, Ed Burnette, a compact man who wears aviator-style glasses with thick lenses, says he'll turn over the key next week.

Rising demand for electricity is bringing boom times to coal country Pennsylvania, the nation's fourth-largest coal producer. But with prosperity, the boom is creating havoc for some people who make their homes in rural Greene County.

Burnette, 71, says he and his wife, Kay, 61, are among at least a dozen families here who have been forced to move in recent years because of mining damage.

They are all victims of improving technology. High-efficiency deep mining equipment removes nearly every last clump of coal from seams far below their homes, causing the ground above to fall almost as fast as the mineral is removed. Houses twist, windows crack, ceramic tile crumbles like crackers.

And there's nothing that people like the Burnettes can do about it.

The problem began generations ago. Companies bought up coal rights all around Greene County. That allowed one person to own what's underground and another person to own the surface of the same piece of land.

For years, dual ownership of mineral and surface property rights wasn't a worry. Then the owner of the coal decided to claim what belonged to him.

State law requires companies to restore water and fix structural problems caused by deep mining, but it hasn't always worked the way it was presumably intended. Prodded by a federal mandate that found numerous deficiencies in state law, Pennsylvania is coming up with new protections for homeowners from mining damage. For many homeowners in Greene County, the new safeguards are coming a little late; they won't be available for at least another year.

In the meantime, settling damage claims with coal companies can be a high-wire act.

"Let's face it," says Thomas Hoffman, spokesman for Pittsburgh-based Consol Energy, which mines coal in Greene County. "There are a lot of people living in rural areas who would want to sell their place."

"What we do is balance our rights against the understandable concerns of homeowners."

But critics say the law gives mining companies the upper hand in dealing with residents while the environment is being spoiled.

"Greene County is ruined," says Dick Patterson, 67, a beef farmer who lost his wells, and has lain awake nights listening to the rafters of his house groan and split after his farm near Waynesburg was deep-mined three years ago. "The water will not come back."

Deep mining often disturbs rock formations that pool and filter drinking water, says Wyona Coleman of the Pennsylvania chapter of the Sierra Club. "The mining industry claims the water will return," says Coleman, who chairs the chapter's mining committee, "but we haven't seen it."

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