The good Lord, isn't making any more land so you deal with what you can. I doubt that my land will ever be mined, and not really sure if mineral rights have been sold. However, I don't have the rights. It will take a lot of title searching to find who retained them. And by now, one would have to find heirs and such. In reality it should never affect me one way or another. I have a major creek on one side of my property, another creek is on the other side of the hill. They will not mine within a good distance of the creeks so any recovery of coal would probably not be worth the cost.