GIRARD BREAKER
STANDARD SIZES OF COAL
RECLAMATION . . . PUTTING BACK THE LAND

What happens to the land after the coal has been removed by surface mining? The reclamation process begins. The rock and dirt is returned to the same pit from which the coal was removed. A bulldozer smoothes the land. The topsoil is replaced and the area is seeded and fertilized. In other words, it is treated like a giant garden.

Before too long, the land looks the same as it did before mining. Reclamation is the last phase of modern surface mining. Examples of successful reclamation are throughout the country. If you live in Ohio, there is a huge campground and a wildlife preserve that was once a surface mine. In Pennsylvania, a golf course was built on mined land. Indiana has several parks in the southern part of the state that are reclaimed areas. In West Virginia there is a high school built on a mountaintop, where not too long ago, draglines and trucks were mining coal; and a hospital built on reclaimed land. Out west, in Arizona, there are cattle grazing on land restored by coal companies. If you drove past these places you would not be able to tell the reclaimed land from land that had never been mined.