Ground broken for treatment system
SALTLICK TWP. – A grassroots organization geared toward having clean water is one step closer to remediating the Indian Creek Watershed and its tributaries with the construction of a permanent treatment system. Through a joint effort with state and local officials, the Mountain Watershed Association (MWA) recognized those involved with the $3.4 million project Monday during a groundbreaking ceremony at the site located off Route 711 in Romney.
After seven years of studies, water monitoring and design, the Anna and Steve Gdosky Indian Creek Restoration Project, otherwise referred to as the Kalp discharge Melcroft No. 1 mine, is under way by Stoy Excavating of Somerset.
Stoy recently began moving dirt for the project’s initial phase, which involves building an access road and drain to collect clean water and divert it around the site where treatment ponds will be placed after the winter.
“This is the type of project that says to anyone, ‘You can clean up Pennsylvania’s water so you don’t have to live with orange streams,'” said Scott Roberts, deputy press secretary for the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).
The project is being funded in part with a $1.6 million grant from the DEP’s Growing Greener program and more than $500,000 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS).
The conservation service completed a comprehensive plan for the project in October 2000 that included a benefit to cost analysis ratio.
According to Craig Derickson, NRCS state conservationist, the outcome of the plan indicated that Indian Creek Watershed had the highest benefit cost ratio of any other watershed in the state.
Derickson noted the overall goal of the plan is to restore 17.4 miles of Indian Creek and its tributaries to a trout fishery with 10 sites identified that address 95 percent of the acid mine drainage polluting the watershed.
“After the treatment system is built, it will clean up the iron, aluminum and acid from Indian Creek,” said Deb Smiko, MWA project coordinator.
Every year, Smiko said 184 million gallons of mine water enters Indian Creek from the discharge.
While the additional water is good, Smiko said it carries with it about 76,800 pounds of iron into the creek, with the mine acid in the water producing about 40 percent of the total pollution in the watershed.
Because of its impact to local properties and the potential for a mine pool blowout, the state Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation (BAMR) and the Federal Office of Surface Mining have deemed it a health and safety hazard.
Following the construction of the ponds, Smiko said the water would continue to be orange for another two years as the treatment system is built.
Dean White, MWA board member, recalled the idea for the project dates back as far as 1970, when the community met with former state Sen. William Lincoln and current state Rep. Jess Stairs (R-Acme), but couldn’t get it implemented.
Scott Horrell, manager of BAMR in Ebensburg, commended the MWA for going above and beyond cleaning up the environment with its outreach to local school districts and educating local residents.
“Hats off to this organization,” said Horrell.