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SCRANTON — The region’s history as a hub of anthracite coal mining is often the source of pride and a hearkening back to the glory days.
Some remnants of those glory days — namely, mine subsidence — still plague the region today.
Mine subsidence, when the ground caves in over 0ld mines, was the topic of discussion at an educational program at the Steamtown National Historical Site on Thursday.
Entitled “Mine Subsidence & Cut-Throat Waivers,” the program focused on underground mining in the Lackawanna and Wyoming valleys and its lasting effects in the form of land surface subsidence.
Cut-throat waivers were standard, legal language often found in residential deeds that provided mining companies the right to dig under properties.
A sizable audience gathered in the museum’s amphitheater for the presentation, which consisted largely of attorneys. The Lackawanna Bar Association and the Wilkes-Barre Law & Library Association and the Bar Association of Luzerne County were sponsors of the event, and provided continuing legal education credit to area attorneys who attend the program.
The program was also sponsored by the Pennsylvania Anthracite Heritage Museum & Iron Furnaces Associates and the Lackawanna Historical Society.
One of the presenters, attorney Roger Mattes Jr., has close ties to the legality issues that surrounded mine subsidence. His grandfather, Philip V. Mattes, wrote “Tales of Scranton,” a book which inspired the program.
“There came a time when many coal miners wanted to buy land to build a home on top of it,” Mattes Jr. said. He added, however, that coal companies owned all the land and “realized that they didn’t want the land on top of it (coal) — they needed the coal underneath the land.”
How waivers work
Cut-throat waivers, Mattes Jr. explained, relieved coal companies of any liability from digging underneath properties.
“Truth be told, this practice went well for many decades,” he said. “The problem came about when they started finishing their operations. They started off selling their remaining mineral interests to smaller, less responsible coal companies.”
Those coal companies would then dig in contrast to a common practice in underground mining at the time called “room and pillar” mining. Mattes Jr. explained that crews would create natural pillars out of coal to support the surface.
He added that the technique left a lot of coal behind, which those smaller coal companies would then come in and mine.
State investigations
Subsidences are still something that are dealt with today.
Bernard Walko, planning unit engineering manager at the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation, said investigators in his unit have an average of 313 investigations each year.
Of those, he estimated that 85 percent of them involved subsidences. Other investigations can include mine openings, mine gas problems and mine fires.
Walko explained that investigators will cross-reference surface maps with underground maps to determine if a mine subsidence is occurring.
One subsidence happened in Plymouth near Route 11 in August 2011. Walko showed a photo of a massive hole in the ground, and what appears to be the bed of a utility truck barely peeking out from the hole.
“It swallowed up a truck,” he said.
Paying for the past
The results of mine subsidence were often destructive throughout history.
Presenter Bill Conlogue, an English professor at Marywood University, told of several incidents over the years when mine subsidence claimed lives. Near Pittston in 1909, he said a train drove into a subsidence hole, killing two train workers.
Another cave-in that happened in Scranton in 1925. A cave-in cut a gas line in West Scranton and killed a family of six. Another cave-in in 1927 in the same neighborhood dislodged a slab of concrete that crushed a 4-year-old boy.
“Pennsylvania law, which affirmed the separation of surface and sub-surface rights, made subsidence damage perfectly legal,” Conlogue said.
R. Patrick Knight, a historian at the Steamtown National Historic Site, showed a painting from the 1850s that showed the Lackawanna Valley — several buildings were present, as well as a train carrying coal.
He described mines as “honeycombs” that were scattered underneath. He showed another old map that showed the collieries from Nanticoke up to Carbondale — in the early 1900s, he said that there were 186 collieries listed.
“When you’re talking about a colliery, you’re not talking about a hole in the ground,” he said. “You can’t even imagine how extensive these things were.”