WILKES-BARRE -- For more than a century, the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania fed the furnaces of a nation. It boiled the steam in the locomotives that transported tons of coal to Harrisburg and Philadelphia, where it fueled the industries that built America and warmed the homes of workers at night.



It was, and remains, perhaps the largest anthracite coal deposit in the world -- some 480 square miles of coal-bearing rock, which ran from northern Dauphin County through the valleys past Pottsville, north to Hazleton and beyond to Wilkes-Barre and Scranton.



In the mountains along the Susquehanna River valley, hard men dug deep for hard coal. At its peak in 1917, more than 100 million tons of coal were extricated from the hills and valleys by more than 130,000 men employed by a web of mine shafts, tunnels and bores that honeycombed the region.



As they chased the veins ever deeper, the mines sowed the seeds of their own destruction. It was not labor unrest which closed the mines or oil or gas, although these all would play their part. What doomed the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania -- and a way of life for generations -- was water.



A drop of water will always seek the path of least resistance toward the lowest point it can reach. In the ridge and valley system of the anthracite fields, those lowest points were often underground, deep under the valley floor.



Entire streams were lost to seepage, disappearing as they ran off of the mountain's flanks, flowing into any opening in the mines. The deeper miners dug, the more water seeped into the mines.

To reach the coal, the water had to be pumped out. Federal reports show the ever-increasing load; in 1920 it was estimated that for each ton of coal mined, eight tons of water had to be pumped out. By 1950, it was 27 tons of water per each ton of coal.



As coal faced increasing pressure from oil and gas, the costs of pumping began to outweigh the price of coal for many mines.



By the early 1950s, anywhere from one third to two thirds of the mines were abandoned. From 1950 to 1955, the number employed in the region's mines fell nearly in half, from 75,231 to 37,397. Vast subterranean pools were formed in the abandoned mine workings.



As the industry declined precipitously, the federal Bureau of Mines, led in part by the son of a coal miner, put forth an audacious -- perhaps implausible by today's standards -- plan to save the coal industry.



If the mines were filling with water, then the answer was simple: Drain the water.



The plan to do so: Dig a gravity-fed 137-plus-mile-long tunnel roughly 1,500 feet below the coal fields north of Scranton, down the Wyoming Valley to the lower deposits around Mahanoy City and Pottsville.

From there it would bore through five mountain ranges south to the rolling farmland of Lancaster County and, eventually, the mouth of the Susquehanna River. Individual coal mines could then connect to the tunnel bringing the entire length, planners estimated, close to 200 miles.

The proposed route for the Conowingo mine drainage tunnel. The tunnel would have cut through the heart of Pennsylvania, discharging mine drainage water in the Susuquehanna River just north of the Chesapeake Bay.





The 71-mile-long main line would be 16-feet in diameter, would drop approximately 1 foot per linear mile, even through the heart of the Sharp Mountain, Blue Mountain and Second Mountain ridges, and have a capacity to drain -- and discharge into the river -- nearly 400,000 gallons-per-minute.



When the concept was introduced in 1950, a federal expert estimated it would cost between $300 and $500 million to complete (or $3.1 to $5.1 billion today after inflation). They told The New York Times the huge cost would be offset by allowing the mining industry to access another 10 billon tons of coal.



It would be an extraordinary -- even heroic -- feat of mining and engineering. But at that time, in the hills of the Wyoming Valley, there were no better miners or engineers on earth.



As preposterous as the plan may sound today, it was taken very seriously in the early 1950s, when the fear of the industry's collapse was a daily concern for an entire region of the state.



The plan's chief architect, Simon H. Ash, then chief of the federal Bureau of Mines safety division, knew what was a stake. A child of a coal mining family, he had grown up in the coal fields near Roslyn, Wash., and studied at Lehigh University before beginning a career in the industry.



"The whole economy of the northeastern section of the United States depends, to a large extent, on the mining of Pennsylvania anthracite, which is shipped to New Jersey, New York and New England and is a principal source of energy and heat for that entire region," he wrote as part of a 1953 federal study examining water issues in the mines.



Ash and his cohorts estimated that the tunnel could advance at a pace of 30-feet per day. The project was expected to take a decade to complete.



Where possible or necessary, it would make use of existing or abandoned underground mining tunnels, although much of the construction would take place through virgin earth.



It would require a massive buy-in from the mining industry, the state's government and the townships and counties along the tunnel's route. The tunnel would require access roads, access shafts, pumping plants, and surface excavation.



The majority of the price tag for the project would be carried by the federal government, with the additional support of the state and mining industry.



Of course, discharging a vast amount of mine drainage into the Susquehanna River -- and subsequently, the Chesapeake Bay -- could potentially have adverse environmental affects. Federal researchers felt that the acidity of the mine water would be quickly diluted by the river (and communities that use river water for drinking purposes would probably have to rethink that plan). Researchers felt that any negative environmental impacts could be mitigated.



They also suggested that if the environmental impacts on the bay proved to be too severe, the plan could be altered to reroute the mine drainage into the Atlantic Ocean via the Delaware River near Marcus Hook, a town with a long industrial heritage.



The federal government spent four years studying the proposal and drilled numerous test bores along the proposed route.



Then Pennsylvania Governor John Fine formed a special committee to review the federal program and make a recommendation as to whether or not it should proceed. After months of review, the commission recommended that the tunnel be shelved, instead urging that the state invest in a jobs program for the coal region.



Among their many concerns with the federal tunnel plan was the estimated decade to complete the project. "The anthracite industry is presently suffering the most severe and serious economic depression in its history and therefore, in its present condition or in the foreseeable future could not participate financially in the construction of the necessary tributary tunnels feeding to the tunnel project."



In other words, the coal industry was out of time. Despite its audacity, the Conowingo Tunnel project was simply too late to save it.





Reporters note: If your interest is piqued, this story heavily relied upon the following sources: Retired DEP Staffer Michael Korb, who in 2013 wrote an excellent report on the Conowingo Tunnel, which you can find here. Also, the Final Report of the Anthracite Flood-Prevention Project Engineers by S.H. Ash, H. A. Dierks, and P.S. Miller, 1955, which can be found here.