Centralia, Pennsylvania: Our Largest Deposit of Back-Up Fuel Up In Smoke, Thanks To Government Ineptitude and Corporate Greed

Centralia was a coal mining town nestled in the southern region of Pennsylvania's Columbia County: home to the largest anthracite coal deposit in the world. It is approximately 120 miles northwest of Philadelphia, far removed from the hustle and bustle and situated in the Appalachian region of rural Pennsylvania. Centralia was once a prosperous coal mining town. In its heyday, the population was over 2,000. Today, it is less than 9.

Since the mid-1800's, the anthracite coal industry was the principal employer in Pennsylvania's coal region. Coal mining in Centralia continued well into the 1960's until oil and natural gas cartels usurped the monopoly on the fuel market. But prior to natural gas and oil dominating the public's need for home heating fuel, anthracite coal was king. Homes, businesses, and schools throughout Pennsylvania and much of the northeastern states mostly relied on coal for winter heating fuel. Centralia acquired the rights to the coal from the coal mining conglomerates in 1950 the only Pennsylvania coal mining community to take advantage of a 1949 state law allowing such purchases.

Anthracite is a very hard variety of coal with a high luster. It also has the highest carbon content and least amount of impurities of all coal. It is also much rarer than the more common and much softer bituminous coal. Anthracite coal is of the highest metamorphic rank; its carbon content is between 92-98%. The metamorphic rank of coal corresponds to the amount of hydrocarbon vapors given off when the coal is heated below its ignition point. In other words, the higher the metamorphic rank, the cleaner the coal burns.

Anthracite coal is very difficult to ignite, but once ignited, it burns with a short blue smokeless flame. The moisture content in anthracite coal fresh from the mine is less than 15%. The heat content ranges from 22-28 million Btu per short ton (26-33 per Mega Joules/kg).
Pennsylvania is home to the largest deposit of anthracite coal in the world, home to 7 billion short tons of minable reserves. America's anthracite coal use as an energy source began after it was experimentally burned as a residential heating fuel on the open grate of the fireplace in the home of Judge Jesse Fell in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania on February 11th, 1808. From then onward until the 1960's, anthracite coal was the most popular fuel.

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