Scranton is a city in and the county seat of Lackawanna County, Pennsylvania, United States. With a population of 76,328 as of the 2020 U.S. census, Scranton is the most populous city in Northeastern Pennsylvania and the Wyoming Valley metropolitan area, which has a population of 562,037 as of 2020. It is the sixth-most populous city in Pennsylvania.
In United States constitutional law, a regulatory taking occurs when governmental regulations limit the use of private property to such a degree that the landowner is effectively deprived of all economically reasonable use or value of their property. Under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution governments are required to pay just compensation for such takings. The amendment is incorporated to the states via the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United Kingdom and South Africa, a coal mine and its structures are a colliery, a coal mine is called a "pit", and above-ground mining structures are referred to as a "pit head". In Australia, "colliery" generally refers to an underground coal mine.
The United Mine Workers of America is a North American labor union best known for representing coal miners. Today, the Union also represents health care workers, truck drivers, manufacturing workers and public employees in the United States and Canada. Although its main focus has always been on workers and their rights, the UMW of today also advocates for better roads, schools, and universal health care. By 2014, coal mining had largely shifted to open pit mines in Wyoming, and there were only 60,000 active coal miners. The UMW was left with 35,000 members, of whom 20,000 were coal miners, chiefly in underground mines in Kentucky and West Virginia. However it was responsible for pensions and medical benefits for 40,000 retired miners, and for 50,000 spouses and dependents.
DynCorp, formally DynCorp International, was an American private military contractor. Started as an aviation company, the company also provided flight operations support, training and mentoring, international development, intelligence training and support, contingency operations, security, and operations and maintenance of land vehicles. DynCorp received more than 96% of its more than $3 billion in annual revenue from the U.S. federal government. The corporate headquarters were in an unincorporated part of Fairfax County near Falls Church, Virginia, while the company's contracts were managed from its office at Alliance Airport in Fort Worth, Texas. DynCorp provided services for the U.S. military in several theaters, including Bolivia, Bosnia, Somalia, Angola, Haiti, Colombia, Kosovo and Kuwait. It also provided much of the security for Afghan president Hamid Karzai's presidential guard and trained much of the police forces of Iraq and Afghanistan. DynCorp was also hired to assist recovery in Louisiana and neighboring areas after Hurricane Katrina. The company held one contract on every round of competition since receiving the first Contract Field Teams contract in 1951.
Frederick James Kimball was a civil engineer. He was an early president of the Norfolk and Western Railway and helped develop the Pocahontas coalfields in Virginia and West Virginia.
Mine reclamation is the process of modifying land that has been mined to ecologically functional or economically usable state. Although the process of mine reclamation occurs once mining is completed, the planning of mine reclamation activities occurs prior to a mine being permitted or started. Mine reclamation creates useful landscapes that meet a variety of goals ranging from the restoration of productive ecosystems to the creation of industrial and municipal resources. In the United States, mine reclamation is a regular part of modern mining practices. Modern mine reclamation reduces the environmental effects of mining.
The history of coal mining goes back thousands of years, with early mines documented in ancient China, the Roman Empire and other early historical economies. It became important in the Industrial Revolution of the 19th and 20th centuries, when it was primarily used to power steam engines, heat buildings and generate electricity. Coal mining continues as an important economic activity today, but has begun to decline due to the strong contribution coal plays in global warming and environmental issues, which result in decreasing demand and in some geographies, peak coal.
Franklin Benjamin Gowen served as president of the Philadelphia and Reading Railroad, commonly referred to as the Reading Railroad, in the 1870s and 1880s. He is identified with the undercover infiltration and subsequent court prosecutions of Molly Maguires, mine workers, saloonkeepers and low-level local political figures who were tried for multiple acts of violence, including murder and attempted murder of coal mine operators, foremen, workers, and peace officers.
Mountaintop removal mining (MTR), also known as mountaintop mining (MTM), is a form of surface mining at the summit or summit ridge of a mountain. Coal seams are extracted from a mountain by removing the land, or overburden, above the seams. This process is considered to be safer compared to underground mining because the coal seams are accessed from above instead of underground. In the United States, this method of coal mining is conducted in the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States. Explosives are used to remove up to 400 vertical feet of mountain to expose underlying coal seams. Excess rock and soil is dumped into nearby valleys, in what are called "holler fills" or "valley fills".
Surface mining, including strip mining, open-pit mining and mountaintop removal mining, is a broad category of mining in which soil and rock overlying the mineral deposit are removed, in contrast to underground mining, in which the overlying rock is left in place, and the mineral is removed through shafts or tunnels.
Georges Creek Valley is located in Allegany County, Maryland along the Georges Creek. The valley is rich in wide veins of coal, known historically as "The Big Vein." Coal was once extracted by deep mines but is only mined today through surface mining. The Georges Creek Valley was once a major center for the US coal industry.
Consol Energy Inc. is an American energy company with interests in coal headquartered in the suburb of Cecil Township, in the Southpointe complex, just outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 2017, Consol formed two separate entities: CNX Resources Corporation and CONSOL Energy Inc. While CNX Resources Corp. focuses on natural gas, spin-off Consol Mining Corporation, now Consol Energy Inc. focuses on coal. In 2010, Consol was the leading producer of high-BTU bituminous coal in the United States and the U.S.'s largest underground coal mining company. The company employs more than 1,600 people.
Pennsylvania Coal Co. v. Mahon, 260 U.S. 393 (1922), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that whether a regulatory act constitutes a taking requiring compensation depends on the extent of diminution in the value of the property.
Lear Siegler Incorporated (LSI) is a diverse American corporation established in 1962. Its products range from car seats and brakes to weapons control systems for military fighter planes. The company's more than $2 billion-a-year annual sales comes from three major areas: aerospace-technology, automotive parts, and industrial-commercial. The company, however, is basically anonymous, since its products are either unmarked or bear only the label "LSI". Lear Siegler went private in 1987.
PD Ports is a Middlesbrough, UK headquartered port, shipping and logistics company; owner of Teesport, and ports at Hartlepool, Howden and Keadby; with additional operations at the Port of Felixstowe, Port of Immingham, and Port of Hull.
Joy Global Inc. was a company that manufactured and serviced heavy equipment used in the extraction and haulage of coal and minerals in both underground and surface mining. The company had manufacturing facilities in Alabama, Pennsylvania, Texas, Wisconsin, Australia, Canada, China, France, South Africa, Poland and the United Kingdom. In 2017, Joy Global was acquired by Komatsu Limited and was renamed Komatsu Mining Corp.
The Jefferson County Airpark is a full-service general aviation public airport near Steubenville, Ohio, U.S., part of the Pittsburgh Combined Statistical Area that serves small and mid-sized private, corporate and commercial traffic. The airport serves transients traveling to and from Eastern Ohio, the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia, and Western Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh). The airport founded in January 1948 by R. G. and Pauline Pier as Pier Airport.
The 1927 Indiana bituminous strike was a strike by members of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) against local bituminous coal companies. Although the struggle raged throughout most of the nation's coal fields, its most serious impact was in western Pennsylvania, including Indiana County. The strike began on April 1, 1927, when almost 200,000 coal miners struck the coal mining companies operating in the Central Competitive Field, after the two sides could not reach an agreement on pay rates. The UMWA was attempting to retain pay raises gained in the contracts it had negotiated in 1922 and 1924, while management, stating that it was under economic pressure from competition with the West Virginia coal mines, was seeking wage reductions. The strike proved to be a disaster for the union, as by 1929, there were only 84,000 paying members of the union, down from 400,000 which belonged to the union in 1920.
Surface Mining is done all over the United States and this causes growing concerns about the impact on the environment. West Virginia is one of the leading coal mining states in the USA and the environmental debate has never been stronger. There have been battles fought and protest marches to raise awareness for environmental impacts of coal mining. The US government took action and put in place guidelines and restrictions for mining as well as laws to protect the land after mining is completed. This was done with the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act. The impact of this act on the reclaimed land and its uses have made a positive impact, nowhere more so than in West Virginia.
