Editing Centralia, Pennsylvania (section)

==Mineral rights==
Several current and former Centralia residents believe the state's eminent domain claim was a [[conspiracy theory|plot]] to gain the [[mineral rights]] to the [[anthracite coal]] beneath the borough. Residents have asserted its value to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, although the exact amount of coal is not known.<ref name="Beauge">{{cite web |last=Beauge |first=John |title=Court denies Centralia property owners looking to keep their homes |url=http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2012/02/court_denies_centralia_propert.html |work=The Patriot-News |access-date=March 12, 2012 |date=February 23, 2012 |quote=The same individuals have a suit pending in U.S. Middle District Court that alleges the condemnation was part of the commonwealth's plot to obtain mineral rights to the anthracite coal they claim are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.}}</ref><ref name="Rubinkam">{{cite news |last=Rubinkam |first=Michael |title=Few Remain as 1962 Pa. Coal Town Fire Still Burns |date=February 5, 2010 |url=http://www.aolnews.com/2010/02/05/few-remain-as-1962-fire-still-burns-in-coal-town/ |access-date=February 6, 2010 |publisher=[[ABC News (Australia)]] |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121129045230/http://www.aolnews.com/2010/02/05/few-remain-as-1962-fire-still-burns-in-coal-town/ |archive-date=November 29, 2012  }}</ref><ref>This is stated in Joan Quigley's ''The Day the Earth Caved In'' in a section that indicated that Centralia is the only municipality within the Commonwealth that owned its mineral rights.</ref><ref>{{cite journal |journal=[[People (magazine)|People]] |last=Walter |first=Greg |title=A Town with a Hot Problem Decides Not to Move Mountains but to Move Itself |date=June 22, 1981 |url=http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20079574,00.html |access-date=December 25, 2008 |quote=Despite the inferno below them and the gases that seep into their basements, some Centralians do not want to leave their homes and remain convinced that it's all a plot by coal companies to drive them off valuable land since the borough owns mineral rights to the coal below. (Other rumored villains have variously included anonymous Arabs and large energy cartels.)}}</ref>

This theory is based on the municipality laws of the state. According to state law, when the municipality can no longer form a functioning municipal government, ''i.e.'', when there are no longer any residents, the borough legally ceases to exist.{{citation needed|date = March 2016}} At that point, the mineral rights, which are owned by the Borough of Centralia, would [[reversion (law)|revert]] to the [[Pennsylvania|Commonwealth of Pennsylvania]].{{Citation needed|date=September 2010}}