mines

OAK GROVE, Ala.—Clara Riley thought she was having a heart attack.  As an Alabama mine has slowly approached the coal seam under her home, Riley’s anxiety has sometimes gotten the best of her. In late April, after a mine representative visited her home, the 90-year-old said she broke down. She could feel the weight of […]

Over the past few decades, the United States has imported most of its lithium from Chile and Argentina, but there’s one major domestic source of the mineral—Nevada. Clayton Valley, a remote basin in the nation’s driest state, is home to the Silver Peak mine, where lithium is extracted in gridded ponds that turn neon blue […]

In Luzerne County, in northeast Pennsylvania, the Nanticoke Creek is dry most of the time because unless there’s a major storm, any water that flows into it disappears into underground voids created by coal mines that operated there for decades until the 1960s. The creek has long been a target for restoration by Earth Conservancy, […]