Outdoors | Shade Creek Watershed Association to celebrate 25th anniversary Saturday
When a group of concerned Cairnbrook and Central City citizens decided to do something about the orange-stained, lifeless Dark Shade Creek that ran through their communities in the early 1990s, the stream had a potential of hydrogen – or pH – of 4.4.
This Saturday, the group that grew to become the Shade Creek Watershed Association will reflect on efforts that raised that creek's current pH to a healthy 6.5, when it celebrates its 25th anniversary, and the return of aquatic life to that waterway.
The group initially acquired help from stipend AmeriCorps volunteers from the United States Environmental Protection Agency, which adopted the 13-mile Dark Shade watershed as a "Brownsfields" project.
"I did not understand the impact of what the coal industry had done to this area because of the poor mining practices of the past," SCWA vice president Larry Hutchinson said.
From the start, SCWA faced an uphill battle to restore one of the Stonycreek River basin's main sources of pollution. Beaverdam Run, Coal Run, Laurel Run, Miller Run, Panther Run and Shingle Run, are all naturally acidic feeder streams that form the Dark Shade as they flow off Shaffer Mountain in northeast Somerset County.
The coal-rich land has been heavily deep and strip mined in a pre-regulatory environmental-unfriendly era.
Five main abandoned mine drainages in the watershed had destroyed all aquatic life in the Dark Shade.
Hutchinson, who also served as SCWA's president for 20 years, credited Pennsylvania Environmental Protection Agency's watershed specialist Malcolm Crittenden for showing his group how to add copious amounts of limestone near the discharges (known as dosing) to balance pH levels. After eight years, the tactic paid off.
In September 2008, Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission biologist Gary Smith led the effort to shock and transfer roughly 70 native brook trout to Shingle Run. The following spring, an assessment was conducted.
"I remember the words, 'We got fish,' " Hutchinson said. "Not only did they survive the winter, but there was young of the year in there, so now we had a repopulating native brook trout stream again."
Hutchinson added that the Somerset Conservation District conducted another favorable assessment a few years later.
"They found three generations of trout in Dark Shade," Hutchinson said.
Since then, limestone dosing has continued in the upper tributaries of Panther Run and Shingle Run, and two passive treatment facilities have been added to Coal Run. Construction of an active treatment facility begins this fall thanks to a development grant acquired by SCWA. Hutchinson said AMD is to be gathered together and diverted to one main discharge point for the active treatment.
"Dark Shade will become a premium fishing stream," Hutchinson said.
Dark Shade Creek meets the clean waters of Clear Shade Creek northwest of Cairnbrook to form Shade Creek, which spills into the Stonycreek River near Seanor.
"The work we've done is bringing the streams back naturally, so that they can support themselves basically with a little bit of help from us," SCWA President Jeff Sarver said.
Sarver claimed that two to three thousand gallons of water per minute will be treated at the new active treatment facility.
"That will be restoring Dark Shade all the way to the Stonycreek, and a few miles of the Stonycreek will be improved as well," Sarver said.
Sarver explained that removing the dissolved iron from the water is the challenge in restoring the Dark Shade to a more viable resource.
"The treatment center will buffer the pH, yes, but the important thing is that it would remove about 2,000 pounds of iron out of the water daily," Sarver said.
Sarver estimates that $1.5 to $2 million has been spent so far on the watershed in the past 25 years, but he estimates the payoff to be much larger.
"They're claiming bold numbers," Sarver said. "Like, the potential of a billion dollars over the next 20 years it would bring to the economy."
Besides fishing, Dark Shade Creek offers Class 5 whitewater.
SCWA will host an open house and tour of its treatment facilities at its office at 1221 No. 1 Road, Cairnbrook, from 1 to 5 p.m. Saturday
"Larry is the founding father of this," Sarver said. "He's contributed 25 years of his life to this cause."
