Longwall mining is a full-extraction, deep-mining technique that causes almost immediate surface subsidence of 4 feet or more over wide swaths of land. Act 54, a sweeping amendment of the state mining laws in 1994, allowed longwall mining to undermine houses and other structures as long as the mining company repaired the structures and replaced water supplies.

Coal companies should not be allowed to collapse the surface of the land over their mines, a federal district court has ruled. The decision overturns an Interior Department regulation that citizen groups have been battling since it was enacted in 1999.

Pennsylvania wetlands are being destroyed by the high-extraction (longwall) mining of bituminous coal underground. Quietly. Inexorably. Without regulation.