Published: February 28, 2009 11:50 pm      

Basin's problem areas are targeted

Using a systematic approach for data collection and analysis, the groups in charge of cleaning up mine-polluted waterways in this region are putting resources where they will do the most good.

Descriptions of it are peppered with acronyms and scientific phrases, but the end result is discovering that just 10 small portions of the West Branch Susquehanna, starting at its headwaters in Carrolltown, account for more than 76 percent of the acid-mine drainage that is polluting the waterways.

Clean those sites, and much of the problem is solved.

It’s called an “AMD remediation strategy,” and has been used by the Susquehanna River Basin Commission, the federal-interstate watershed agency established in 1970 to improve water quality of the Susquehanna, its tributaries, and feeders creeks.

That strategy had a simple goal – to figure out where to put the money for the biggest return.

To do that, the commission, partnering with the West Branch Susquehanna River Task Force, had the help of local government agencies, conservation groups and environmentalists.

First they established “total maximum daily loads,” or TMDLs, which are the maximum amount of a specific pollutant that can be assimilated by a stream without violating federal water standards.

At one point, state agencies estimated it would cost between $250 million and $464 million to treat all sources of acid-mine drainage affecting the West Branch-Susquehanna subbasin – meaning that it would take decades.

So SRBC developed a mediation strategy as a guide for government and private organizations to put their efforts where they would see maximum results.

Most data were collected from existing records. But monitoring by environmental groups, Trout Unlimited chapters and conservation groups helped form the model.

More than 100,000 individual samples are included in the database.

The subbasin was divided into 34 management units, which equaled 67 percent of the total West Branch subbasin. Each of the 34 units was then analyzed for the impact of acid-mine drainage.

In short, this technology led to what the commission calls “a focused watershed approach” where the highest priority treatment went to the spots that had the most acid-reducing impact on the watershed.

Those spots were on portions of Clearfield Creek, Moshannon Creek, Bennett Creek, Kettle Creek and Beech Creek.

This has been different than the approach in central Cambria County, where three cogeneration plants built in the past 20 years have been burning waste coal from sites in Revloc, Colver and Cambria Township. The plants sell the power, the waste coal gets cleaned up and the acid runoff is minimized.

But in the West Branch headwaters area, some mines never were registered and are not mapped. The owners are bankrupt and out of business.

The commission is under contract to clean up that area and must show progress by 2010, officials said.

Thomas Clark, abandoned-mine drainage project coordinator for the commission, says that the bad should not overshadow the good.

“Yes, there are many examples of good water quality in the West Branch Susquehanna Subbasin,” he writes in the group’s recent report.

“So much attention is focused on the impaired regions that many times the areas with exceptional water quality are overlooked,” he said.

Clark says that 1,249 miles of the West Branch are classified as “exceptional,” and 73 miles have high-quality stocked trout.

“These high-quality streams hold potential biological recolonizers,” Clark said. “As water quality improves within impaired sections, these recolonizers could move into the restored streams and repopulate.”