In Pennsylvania, orange could be the new gold.

At a House Republican Policy Committee meeting this week, a Penn State professor raised the intriguing prospect that abandoned mines that spew heavy metals into streams across the state — often tinting the water orange — could be mined anew for high-value “rare earth” elements.

There are 17 rare earth elements, and many are crucial for high-tech manufacturing, electric vehicle and battery development, and national defense. Yet the United States imports almost all of the rare earth elements and other critical materials that it needs for those purposes.

China has been the dominant producer of rare-earth elements for more than a quarter century. The United States imports about 80% of the crucial materials from China, a problem that grows along with trade tensions, China’s belligerence toward Taiwan and related security issues.

Sarma Pisupati, a professor of energy and mineral engineering at Penn State and director of its Center for Critical Minerals, testified Tuesday that Pennsylvania has a major opportunity to develop a critical materials industry while cleaning up a great deal of lingering mine pollution.

“The only way to break this foreign reliance is to build a robust, domestic supply chain,” Pisupati said. “We need to explore secondary resources, including industry byproducts such as coal mining waste from abandoned coal mines, refuse piles, fly ash from coal-burning power plants. Pennsylvania is rich in these resources. Locked inside this waste are significant quantities of rare earth elements and other critical minerals. By modifying the existing treatment processes, we can address multiple problems, getting the material we need for national security and remediating long-standing environmental problems at the same time.”

Pisupati highlighted cobalt, manganese and lithium as rare earth elements that can be extracted from mine waste in Pennsylvania.

Other coal-industry states, including Wyoming and Kentucky, in conjunction with the U.S. Department of Energy, have launched pilot projects to extract rare earth minerals from coal waste.

Pennsylvania has not only coal waste, but the academic and industrial expertise to try to make a valuable resource out of pollution.

— Scranton Times-Tribune