Water-themed events commemorate watershed coalition
BRADY TWP — The Slippery Rock Watershed Coalition celebrated 30 years of water quality improvement work on Saturday, Oct. 4, with a gathering where the work began three decades ago: Jennings Environmental Education Center.
Working with volunteers and money donated by the state and foundations, the coalition has built and maintains 22 passive water treatment systems in the headwaters of Slippery Rock Creek to remove acid mine drainage from abandoned coal mines.
“This is a volunteer group that started 30 years ago,” said coalition member Margaret Dunn, a retired geologist in the coal mining industry.
The coalition formed after the seal placed on the former Brydon mine in the 1970s “blew out” in 1989. The mine is in the area where Jennings sits today, Dunn said.
Money to build a passive treatment system to treat the mine water and discharge it into Big Run, a tributary to Slippery Rock Creek, and treatment systems for many other old mines came from “Operation Scarlift,” the abandoned mine reclamation portion of an environmental bond issue approved by state voters in 1967. A tour of that treatment system was part of the coalition’s anniversary celebration.
Some of the other passive treatment systems built and maintained by the coalition are located along Slippery Rock, Blacks, Seaton creeks, and in state game lands 95.
“We formed to address the abandoned mine problem in Slippery Rock Creek,” said coalition member Cliff Denholm.
The systems treat a billion gallons of acid mine drainage a year. Passive treatment systems last 10 to 30 years depending on their design and use. Most of the coalition’s systems were built between 1995 and 2005 and some have reached the age that the treatment media — consisting of limestone, compost and wood chips — has to be replaced, Denholm said.
Water from old mines is directed into treatment ponds containing the limestone mixture and is passively treated before being released into a waterway.
“No electricity is needed. No harsh chemicals,” Denholm said.
The coalition also has restored 15 miles of the banks of creeks and streams in the watershed, he said.
“The work we’ve done to clean up those streams has been pretty good,” Denholm said.
