The SCWA, in partnership with the Consolidated Coal Company (CONSOL), has agreed to purchase nearly 45 acres of land in the lower Sewickley Creek watershed near the town of Lowber. In a cooperative agreement "CONSOL has, in reality, practically donated the property to the watershed association," said Tom Keller, SCWA Executive Director. "We are able to purchase a key piece of property that will now allow us to build a passive wetlands treatment system to clean up the largest abandoned mine discharge in the lower watershed."
The "Lowber Discharge," as the watershed members refer to it, discharges over 5,000 gallons per minute of polluted abandoned mine drainage (AMD) at high flows from the long abandoned "Marchand Mine" into Sewickley Creek. Sewickley Creek then empties into the Youghiogheny River a short distance away, dumping hundreds of thousands of pounds of iron oxide into the river each year. The iron shows up in the river as a large orange plume of pollution which travels down the eastern shoreline for miles.
"The fishermen in the Lower Yough should be as excited as we are," said Keller. "Perhaps some will be willing to join in the effort. We're always looking for new partners," he said. "This will be an opportunity to further enhance the tremendous fishery that already exists throughout the lower river basin. It should also be a big boost for fishing in Sewickley Creek as well."
Future plans are to construct a series of ponds and wetlands which will hold the water long enough for the polluting iron to drop out. Hopes are that more than 90% of the iron will be retained in the man-made wetland system. "A similar type system at St Vincent College is now removing nearly 100% of the iron entering into the pond and wetland treatment cells," said Mark Killar, Regional Coordinator for the Western Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation. =We have to be cautiously optimistic with the
Lowber Discharge because it is so large. It may be that a different combination of treatment techniques will be the only way to treat it since it is such a large flow. We are lucky in that this type of water is the easiest to treat is since it's not acidic," Killar said.
SCWA hopes to use the future treatment site as an outdoor environmental education center for local schools and their students. ~We try to incorporate an educational component in all of our projects. We've worked with students from the elementary to the college level," said Keller. ~Sewickley Creek encompasses five different school districts. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have them all communicating with one another over the Internet, talking about different things they are actively involved in throughout our watershed?" he asked. Through the cooperative efforts of CONSOL and SCWA, that day may be sooner than anybody thinks.
As such the Association shall use its resources to educate the citizens of the watershed as to sound environmental practices. In addition, the Association will seek out and cooperate with government agencies, interested organizations, businesses and individuals to implement programs to improve water quality and encourage proper land use.