While a large part of the nation’s infrastructure — especially its older construction — involves steel that was born in Southwestern Pennsylvania, the process started earlier with another industry.

None of that steel was made without coal. The steel industry is a large part of the reason that about 5,000 abandoned mines dot Pennsylvania. More than 100 of them are in Westmoreland County.

But after the earth was hollowed out to the fires of industry, many of the mines were left like empty shells. There is a word for them. Abandoned.

Abandoned mines are not like blighted storefronts in an old downtown. They are more like old land mines left buried in a demilitarized zone. They can be forgotten. They can be dangerous. And they can be damaging even when they are silent and deep.

They can cause mine subsidence, placing homes and buildings and roads at risk of collapse. The changes to the land, like highwalls, or the architecture of old shafts can be their own hazards. Then there is the way they can poison the earth and water.

Pennsylvania’s importance in the Industrial Revolution and the growth of the nation can be measured in those abandoned mines. Despite being 33rd in geographic area in the United States, Pennsylvania holds one-third of the abandoned mine land.

It now will be getting $245 million to clean up those mines. It is part of almost $4 billion for that purpose the state would receive and distribute over the next 15 years under the federal infrastructure bill.

This is one of the things infrastructure investment can and should do. It can correct past mistakes. It can make existing assets better. It can put people to work — and the people who have been left behind as coal mining has slowly disappeared from the landscape over the past 40 years are still pining for those jobs, as proven by yard signs and voting records.

Pennsylvania was shaped by coal, built by coal and eventually all but abandoned by coal, just like those mines. This is a way to correct that.

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