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Additional information on this topic provided below. |
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Erico Bridge Abandoned Mine Project
By Anna McAninch and Maggie Allio of Aquascape Environmental
 aturday,
July 26th began early for 120 participants in the Youth Conference
sponsored by the Pittsburgh North Stake of the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints. Each summer, as part of their annual
Youth Conference, the Youth Council selects a service site.
This year, the Slippery Rock Watershed Coalition was overjoyed
to learn that the participants of the Youth Conference would
be helping out with a wetland planting in their watershed.
 epresentatives
of the Slippery Rock Watershed Coalition, and employees of Aquascape
Wetland and Environmental Services were awaiting their arrival
at the Erico Bridge restoration site.
 ob
Beran, director of Aquascape, commented “For the request
to come the summer we were planting the three acres of wetlands
at Erico Bridge was a Godsend, no pun intended. Three acres
is a lot of wetland and it will take a tremendous effort to
plant it all. The work of so many enthusiastic youth will go
a long way toward our goal of having the wetland well vegetated
by fall.”
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 he
Erico Bridge Abandoned Mine Restoration Project is one of many
Growing Greener funded projects the Slippery Rock Watershed
Coalition has been instrumental in completing. Abandoned Mine
Drainage (AMD) heavily impacts the headwaters of the Slippery
Rock Creek, but the efforts of the Coalition are changing that.
In fact, for the first time in 25 years, fish were recently
spotted in Seaton Creek, a small tributary in Venango Township,
Butler County, PA. Until recently, Seaton Creek had been receiving
polluted discharge from the mine seeps and gob piles that were
the focus of the Erico Bridge restoration. The first step of
the project, completed last year, was the removal of an estimated
24,100 yd3 of coal refuse which formed two large piles near
the old mine. This summer, a passive treatment system was installed
at a former coal-mining site, abandoned since World War II.
he
passive treatment system consists of a collection system for
five different mine discharges, with total average flows of
300 gallons per minute. The collected discharges pass through
the largest known anoxic limestone drain in Pennsylvania before
entering a settling pond/wetland complex. The limestone drain
increases the pH of the water; and the settling pond/wetland
complex gives the iron a place to precipitate. Flows are then
sent through a horizontal flow limestone bed, which again raises
the pH, adds alkalinity and removes manganese from the water,
before discharging back into Seaton Creek.
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 hile
Aquascape employees made one last trip to collect plants from
a nearby wetland, Bob Beran met the volunteers to escort them
to the project area. “We were sure we had an exceptional
group of planters when we heard numerous excited exclamations
and looked up to see members of the youth group running for
the water as quickly as they could,” stated Cody Salmon.
“The subsequent splashes as the young men jumped into
the deeper areas of the treatment system confirmed our suspicions.”
n the few hours the volunteers were there, hundreds of plants
were added to the Erico Bridge passive treatment system’s
wetlands, in addition to a few lost tennis shoes and lots of
laughter (which is guaranteed to make the plants grow more quickly).
 rovisions
had been made for the few members of the group who were less
than thrilled by the prospect of being wet and muddy from head
to toe. Darrell Daubenspeck, the Butler County Coordinator of
the Bluebird Society of Pennsylvania, and Holly Martinchek,
one of Aquascape’s summer interns from Slippery Rock University,
had kits for constructing Bluebird houses ready to go. The houses
will be installed around the treatment system, as the combined
availability of open water, grassland, and forest provides excellent
habitat for these birds.
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ays
Holly “We all had an excellent time. The youth worked
hard, and we were able to construct about twelve Bluebird boxes,
which, if utilized, could mean 24 broods of Eastern Bluebirds
each summer – quite a help for a species with a declining
population.”
aggie Allio, in her second summer of working at Aquascape, summed
the day up this way: “We all worked hard, had fun, and
can be proud of what we have done for the environment.”
he Erico Bridge Abandoned Mine Restoration Project has been
funded by a PADEP Growing Greener grant with partnership funding
from the Butler County Commissioners and the Western Pennsylvania
Watershed Program. Both public and private groups, including
the Slippery Rock Creek Watershed Coalition, Stream Restoration
Inc., BioMost, Quality Aggregates and Aquascape Wetland and
Environmental Services, have implemented the project.
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For more information, visit these sites:
 Slippery
Rock Watershed Coalition
Aquascape
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