{"id":224382,"date":"2025-11-02T01:04:01","date_gmt":"2025-11-02T06:04:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/abandoned-coal-mine-drainage-identified-as-a-significant-source-of-carbon-emissions"},"modified":"2025-11-02T01:04:01","modified_gmt":"2025-11-02T06:04:01","slug":"abandoned-coal-mine-drainage-identified-as-a-significant-source-of-carbon-emissions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/11\/abandoned-coal-mine-drainage-identified-as-a-significant-source-of-carbon-emissions","title":{"rendered":"Abandoned coal mine drainage identified as a significant source of carbon emissions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/abandoned-coal-mine-drainage-identified-as-a-significant-source-of-carbon-emissions.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>For the past <a href=\"https:\/\/guides.libraries.psu.edu\/anthracite\" target=\"_blank\">250 years<\/a>, people have mined coal industrially in Pennsylvania, U.S\u2026 By 1830, the city of Pittsburgh was using more <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pa.gov\/agencies\/dep\/programs-and-services\/mining\/bureau-of-mining-programs\/pa-mining-history\" target=\"_blank\">than 400 tons<\/a> of the fossil fuel every day. Burning all that coal has contributed to climate change. Additionally, unremediated mines\u2014especially those that operated before Congress passed regulations in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.osmre.gov\/programs\/regulating-active-coal-mines\" target=\"_blank\">1977 <\/a>\u2014have leaked environmentally harmful <a href=\"https:\/\/uknowledge.uky.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?article=1205&context=jnrel\" target=\"_blank\">mine drainage<\/a>. But that might not be the end of their legacy.<\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/gsameetings.secure-platform.com\/connects25\/solicitations\/103002\/sessiongallery\/schedule\/items\/95149\/application\/10087\" target=\"_blank\">research presented<\/a> last week at GSA Connects 2025 in San Antonio, Texas, U.S., Dr. Dorothy Vesper, a geochemist at West Virginia University, found that those abandoned mines pose another risk: continuous CO<sub>2<\/sub> emissions from water that leaks out even decades or centuries after mining stops.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For the past 250 years, people have mined coal industrially in Pennsylvania, U.S\u2026 By 1830, the city of Pittsburgh was using more than 400 tons of the fossil fuel every day. Burning all that coal has contributed to climate change. Additionally, unremediated mines\u2014especially those that operated before Congress passed regulations in 1977 \u2014have leaked environmentally [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[493,1490,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climatology","category-government","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}