"No one kept records." That's how
an official from the U.S. Department of the Interior describes the locations of old, defunct mines across the country. That's not just a random, interesting piece of data about the nation's mining history - it's also having a direct, and frightening, impact on everyday people. That's because
old mines in the U.S. are starting to cave in, swallowing homes, cars, highways, and even pets and people.Sign the petition to demand that the U.S. Congress restore the $500 million in federal funding (that they then re-allocated), which was supposed to address this problem!The U.S. is covered in a network of underground mines, many of them abandoned, and some of them dating back to the 1700s. These include coal mines, as well as mines looking for gold, silver, iron, and even uranium. When mines were shut down or became derelict, their locations weren't recorded in any centralized database to keep track. Most weren't filled in to ensure structural stability. Some were located directly underneath whole towns and communities.
We don't know the full extent of this problem. The director of the Inactive Mine Reclamation Program in Colorado, Jeff Graves, estimates that just his state alone is probably home to more than 23,000 abandoned mines.
And now, suddenly, a number of these old underground sites are crumbling, becoming sinkholes. Some of the people who we know have lost their lives include a woman hiking in Colorado, a man and his dog who were sitting in their home in California, and a grandmother in Pennsylvania. A 25-year-old man in Pennsylvania nearly died two days after Christmas when a 35-foot sinkhole opened up under his family's driveway. He was lucky - one car disappeared into the abyss, while the one he was sitting in remained safe.
Infuriatingly, it turns out that much of this calamity could have been prevented. In 2021, the U.S. Congress passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which allocated $500 million in federal funding to protect communities from the dangers of abandoned mines. But in December 2025, the Republican-held Congress decided that program was unnecessary, and diverted the funding away and towards other projects. No other federally-funded programs exist to proactively clean up and fill in old mines.
It's outrageous that Congress is allowing people to die and their homes to be swallowed up, while mines that are directly under communities continue to crumble and cave in. A previous round of lawmakers already allocated funding to help fix this problem. The current Congress must honor that.
Sign the petition to demand that the U.S. Congress restore the original $500 million in funding for clean-up projects to protect everyday Americans from dangerous abandoned mines and sinkholes!