Water: An Endangered Resource

[Padraic]

I just saw a fantastic program on the Public TV station here.

http://www.wpsu.org/water/index.html

Folks who want a good program for a TU or watershed meeting might want to get a copy of this show. It's very specific to PA, showing how volunteers cleaning up small streams are having big effects on the major waterways. Kids from Philly and da'Burg are shown collecting samples, fishing etc. It really shows how we can really make a difference.

 

[wetnet]

Did you also see the one on treating acid mine drainage and restoring dead streams? They treat the acid mine drainage with limestone lagoons to raise the pH and then when the metals (usually iron oxide) drop out they collect the silt, clean it up and use it as pigment for paint etc. Really neat. They use the money from the pigment sales to fund the maintanence for the lagoons which don't require a ton. They have restored miles of streams, restocked them with fish and have seen reproduction. I live in NE Pa and acid mine drainage is a huge problem.

 

[Maurice]

Wetnet,

Don't get Pad Started on DFTU's Limestone dosing project on Stony Creek. :-D

 

[jolie]

Scrubgrass creek in southern venango county was one of the saddest affairs I think I have ever seen in the wild.

When I first moved into the area I was interested in it, as it was a relatively large watershed- that no one had mentioned fishing. Perhaps I thought it was a sleeper trout stream..

one of those gems that the locals didn't broadcast and that had 15" brookies...

A visit to the stream made it clear, why no one fished it. the waters were dark orange and I doubt ever got much more higher than a 4 pH. the entire watershed was completely barren of anything except an occasional chub.. and then probably because it come from the allegheny river (which although not the cleanest, was eden compared to the acid of the stream)...

ironically, one of its branches was even called 'trout brook'...
you can read about it here Scrubgrass creek

Downstream going south starts the slippery rock. what people might not know is how acidic and difficult the upper slippery rock is...

the crimes of unwarranted stocking are mere juvenile misdemoners compared to the heinous felonies of what a few selfish people and groups have done to these two beautiful watersheds.


Now that I'm up here on the ANF. I wonder about the whole thing... there's drilling for oil and gas and lots of it, with the high prices. but in the northern ANF every trickle has brookies in it. And trout prosper into the lower reaches of all the big streams.

Some day it would bring me joy to learn that someone cared to try to restore that blighted watershed...jolie

 

[Gone4Day]

jolie wrote:

Some day it would bring me joy to learn that someone cared to try to restore that blighted watershed...jolie

Its your lucky day, amkennerdell shows that Scrubgrass creek has been getting some attention. It has benefited from Growing Greener and federal funding to plug abandoned wells for one. Water quality has improved on several Venango county streams like East Sandy, Sugar creek and Oil creek as a result of the program. Unfortunately, the old wells were the ‘low fruit’ on the tree; fixing the abandoned strip mines is a much more difficult problem. Even if we could turn off the AMD with a flick of a switch, it will take decades for some of these streams to recover. With all the panic about climate change, I wonder if restoring trout streams will have to take a back seat to more urgent problems.

 

[jolie]

I am very glad to see that stream 'on the radar'. I knew it was after I wrote the email- cause I browsed the web a little.

what I read assured me that the stream really is as bad as it seemed. A ph of 3.1 (in spots), toxic metails, devoid of trout- with a highly struggling crawfish and minnow population.

it also seemed very sad that the stream had been first addressed in 1973 (operation scarlift). I was 1 year old.

basically they've been working on it my entire life- and still it is a sterile, sad aquatic wasteland (more or less).


What's Not so certain in any report- what are they going to do about it??? Coal mining has been stopped - with nearly all the damage done 50 years ago. if in 50 years, it goes from an acid sump to a few minnows-- when will it support a real trout population. 70 years? 80? More than a lifetime 100 years??

you'd think they would try neutrilize acid sources with loads of limestone; they did that on another blighted stream I knew of (East branch Clarion tributaries)? Do you know if the idea has been proposed??...


although to some global warming may seem the bigger 'big picture' kind of problem. it is a little stream like scrubgrass where we see how awful man can really ruin the environment.
Jason