“The whole of the Pennsylvania anthracite coalfields were trashed,” says Barney Corrigan.

“There was no requirement to reclaim anywhere until 1972, and the combination of extensive underground mining from the early nineteenth century and opencast mining from the beginning of the last century resulted in large areas being laid waste.”

Mining unrestrained by environmental legislation can wreak a terrible cost, and more than forty years after the first environmental legislation was enacted the clean-up operation in Pennsylvania is still continuing.

Barney’s own company, Atlantic Coal, although small, is playing a significant role in rehabilitating the land.

Its Stockton mine sits right in the heart of Pennsylvania’s Eastern Middle anthracite field and is gradually helping to repair decades of damage done by earlier generations of miners.

And there’s a certain symmetry to Atlantic’s efforts, since Stockton is actually an old mine now being reworked with new techniques.

So whereas once it made money at the cost of the environment, now it’s making money and helping to fund the rehabilitation as it goes.

The precedent was set right at the start.

Before Atlantic was to dig up its first ton of coal it had to lay down an environmental bond to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

That bond guarantees that money is in place to pay for complete rehabilitation once mining operations have ceased.

But the real work is done in tandem with the mining.

To mine the coal the company first has to remove the material that’s on top of it – termed the overburden. This is material is then transported to a previously mined area and used in restoration work.

It’s a process that’s known as backfilling, and it ensures that the overall environmental footprint of the anthracite mining operations remains relatively small.

It also allows for a reasonable amount of landscaping.

“We advance through these areas”, says Barney, “and we fill in behind us. We have to re-grade. We recreatewater courses. We seedthe restored surface with various grasses and local plants and trees and we create cycle and walking trails.”

Sometimes the landscaping work can be quite an undertaking, as the company proceeds through decades of mining-related topographical damage.

“We reclaim all sorts of areas”, says Barry. “Some of it will be old culm banks , waste heaps full of stone and rejects. Then there’s big hollows and holes, some of them very deep. It’s a very degraded and despoiled landscape.”

But the rewards speak for themselves.

To date at Stockton, Atlantic has been responsible for the rehabilitation over 100 acres of land, with the restitution of grasslands, trees, ponds and wetlands.

At Gowen, a mine the company previously worked, it reclaimed over 500 acres of mining dereliction.

“We’ve fully reclaimed that now”, says Barney.

And Atlantic also contributes to efforts at rehabilitation across the wider area via the donation to a federal fund of a percentage of the sales price of each ton of anthracite sold.

The fund aims to rehabilitate old abandoned mines and pit areas that aren’t being reworked and reclaimed by companies like Atlantic.

So, although there’s plenty of work still to be done, progress is being made and the devastated countryside of Pennsylvania is gradually being restored to its former glory.