Mine Subsidence and Mineral Rights in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania

The Unity Township sinkhole: a fatal, still-unfolding case with a named mine owner

In December 2024, a sinkhole opened in Unity Township, Westmoreland County, in the small community of Marguerite, directly above the abandoned Marguerite Mine, last worked in 1952 by the H.C. Frick Coke Company. Elizabeth Pollard, who had parked near Monday's Union Restaurant on Marguerite Road with her young granddaughter and gone looking for the family cat, fell roughly 30 feet into the void and died; her body was recovered days later after an extensive search-and-rescue effort. PA DEP's Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation performed emergency grouting at the site to stabilize the remaining mine workings.

What makes this case unusually actionable for a land buyer, rather than a purely cautionary tale, is what happened next. Reporting identifies U.S. Steel as the current owner of the abandoned Marguerite Mine. In April 2026, Kenneth Pollard, acting as administrator of his late wife's estate, filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in the Westmoreland County Court of Common Pleas against U.S. Steel and the owner of the restaurant property, represented by attorney Mark Malone of Morgan & Morgan. The complaint alleges the defendants were negligent in failing to inspect the mine, remediate hazardous subsurface conditions, and warn the public of the danger. As of this research pass, the case remains active litigation, not a resolved matter -- confirm its current status and any resulting findings about the mine's condition directly with the Westmoreland County Court of Common Pleas or current news coverage before relying on this page for the case's outcome.

How to actually check a specific parcel, and what insurance exists for this exact risk

Pennsylvania DEP maintains a public, interactive mine-subsidence risk map at gis.dep.pa.gov/msiRisk, built from the state's Act 155 mapping project, which shows known or suspected underground mine workings by municipality across the historically mined parts of the state, including Westmoreland County; DEP also publishes a county-specific abandoned-mine-site PDF map for Westmoreland County through its Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation. Checking whether a specific parcel or its immediate surroundings show mapped underground workings is a concrete, do-it-yourself first step before buying rural or semi-rural land anywhere in the county's historic coal belt, not just near Unity Township specifically.

Separately, Pennsylvania has run its own Mine Subsidence Insurance (MSI, commonly called PAMSI) program since 1961, created specifically because ordinary homeowners' insurance policies exclude subsidence damage from collapsing coal or clay mine voids. Coverage is available through the Commonwealth's own program (dep.pa.gov/msi, or 1-800-922-1678) for structures in eligible mapped areas, and given Westmoreland County's documented, fatal 2024-2026 case history, asking directly whether a specific parcel or planned building site is eligible for MSI coverage -- and what it would cost -- is a genuinely practical, non-boilerplate step here, not a generic insurance suggestion.

Title research and the difference between abandoned and active mining

As in Fayette County's own documented abandoned-mine pattern, Westmoreland's coal legacy is mechanically different from the active longwall mining regulated under Act 54 in neighboring Washington and Greene counties: there is no currently operating coal company automatically on the hook for new subsidence damage from decades-abandoned workings, which is exactly why the Unity Township lawsuit had to name the mine's corporate successor owner (U.S. Steel) and the surface property owner directly under ordinary negligence law, rather than proceeding under Act 54's repair-or-compensate framework for active operators. A full title search at the Westmoreland County Recorder of Deeds is worth doing for any historically mined parcel to check for a severed coal, mineral, or support estate -- ownership of the right to physical surface support from below can be held separately from the surface itself in Pennsylvania coal country, and identifying who (if anyone) holds it is a genuinely useful, checkable fact before you buy.