CLEAR June 2018

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Upper Monongahela River Association Promotes Boating Safety
by Duane Nichols via CLEAR 28 Jun '18

28 Jun '18

President of river association offers safety tips William Dean, The Dominion Post, June 27, 2018 > > > > > > > MORGANTOWN — For some people a relaxing summer day is spent on a boat. > > “Boating gets you outside on the water and it is one of those great experiences you can have,” Barry Pallay, president of Upper Monongahela River Association, said. > > Boating can be dangerous, but following the rules can help mitigate that risk and help everyone have a fun, safe, experience. > > “If you’re a novice the biggest thing is a boat does not have brakes,” he said. “You have to be very careful and keep that in mind. > > Pallay encouraged boaters to be aware of the boating rules published and enforced by the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources (DNR) and recommended that people new to boating take a boater safety class. He also offered safety tips, but said the tips are no replacement for a class. > > According to the DNR, “no person born on or after Dec. 31, 1986, may operate a motorboat or personal watercraft on any waters of this state without first having obtained a certificate of boating safety education from this or any other state.” > > Pallay recommended people interested try to find a Power Squadron class and said there are free boater safety classes available. > > Much like the driver of a car, truck or any other vehicle, boat drivers should stay sober, he said. > > DNR has a boat that patrols Cheat Lake and the enforcement branch has police powers, meaning boaters can be cited by the DNR for violations, Pally said. > > Friday through Sunday, DNR will participate in Operation Dry Weekend — a national enforcement effort to raise awareness about the dangers of boating under the influence, a DNR press release stated. The DNR will arrest anyone driving a boat with a blood alcohol content of 0.08 or greater. > > Using alcohol while boating impairs judgment, balance, vision and reaction time and is the leading contributing factor in recreation boating deaths in the United States, according to the press release. > > Pallay also advised people planning to go out on the water to use sunscreen and not to underestimate the sun. > > Boating at night, fishing from a boat and boating in areas with dams and locks increase the number of rules and safety concerns. Pally recommended people engaging in those activities look up the relevant rules. > > “It really can add to the quality of your life and that of your family,” Pallay said of boating. > > URL: > https://www.dominionpost.com/2018/06/27/president-of-river-association-offe…

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From Polluted to Playground: It's Taken 25 Years to Clean Up the Cheat River | West Virginia Public Broadcasting
by Duane Nichols via CLEAR 22 Jun '18

22 Jun '18

http://wvpublic.org/post/polluted-playground-its-taken-25-years-clean-cheat… From Polluted to Playground: It's Taken 25 Years to Clean Up the Cheat River From an Article by Brittany Patterson, WV Public Broadcast, June 11, 2018 On a recent sunny Wednesday, Paul Ziemkiewicz, director of West Virginia University’s Water Research Institute, was standing on a bridge looking out at Big Sandy Creek. It was a balmy afternoon, perfect for kayaking, and the creek running the Cheat River was clear. But 25 years ago, this water was a shocking orange color -- from acid mine drainage. "Look at this," Ziemkiewicz said, gesturing to the raging water below. "This is a fishery now, but it was completely dead back then." This year the last heavily-polluted stretch of of the watershed is set to be cleaned up. "In my lifetime a river that was dead has now come back," said Amanda Pitzer, executive director of Friends of the Cheat, a local conservation group that was formed by a motley crew of river guides and enthusiasts in 1994 to deal with acid mine pollution. The group also hosts the annual Cheat River Festival to celebrate the river and raise money to restore it. The Cheat was known to be polluted for decades, but the pollution grabbed national attention after two blowouts at the active T&T coal mine in 1994 and 1995 poured millions of gallons of acidic water into the main stem of the Cheat. Fish were killed 16 miles downstream in Cheat Lake. More than two decades later, Friends of the Cheat, local residents and businesses and state and federal regulators have a reason to celebrate: Once fully operational, an active water treatment plant run by West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection near the T&T mine will clean polluted water currently running through Muddy Creek. Once the 3.4-mile stretch of Muddy Creek is clean, fish will be able to travel the entire length of the Cheat River -- one of the longest free-flowing rivers in the eastern United States -- unimpeded by pollution. "It was such an accomplishment to bring the Cheat back, but to bring Muddy Creek back -- I mean we’re kicking ass and taking names," Pitzer said. A New Approach This success is largely the result of a decision among regulators, scientists and a local conservation group to treat the pollution problem as an entire watershed. Across the Cheat River’s 1,422-mile watershed, more than 340 abandoned coal mines feed pollution into the Cheat and its tributaries, like the Big Sandy. Acid mine drainage, or AMD, is one of the largest contributors of pollution to thousands of miles of rivers and streams from Alabama to Pennsylvania. The bright orange, and sometimes milky white, pollution contains iron, aluminum and manganese. It forms when pyrite, a mineral buried deep underground with coal, is exposed to air and water. State regulators have limited federal dollars to ensure water coming from these mines meets federal Clean Water Act standards. An estimated 300,000 abandoned mines dot Appalachia, complicating the problem. Water that comes from mines built before 1977, when the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act went into effect, must be treated by the state. The law mandated that mines built after 1977 must be bonded, or have insurance, in case they go out of business or the operator chooses to stop maintaining the site. If that happens, DEP takes the money from those bonds and must reclaim the land and treat the water from these so-called “bond-forfeiture” sites. Ziemkiewicz, of WVU, said originally in the Cheat River watershed -- as is the case in many places dealing with AMD across Appalachia -- regulators tried to address the problem by treating each individual mine contributing pollution to the river. But it’s not always effective. "You can throw almost infinite amounts of money trying to treat point sources like that in a watershed like this that has both abandoned mines and also bond forfeiture sites and not make any impact at all on the quality of the stream because the abandoned mines dominate the whole picture," he said. A key piece to making this new approach work was some innovative thinking on the part of state regulators. The state DEP created an alternative clean water permit, which allowed the agency to address streamwide water quality, rather than treat individual pollution sources. "The watershed scale strategy that DEP is using here actually restores the creek and for a lot less money," Ziemkiewicz said. Scientists also needed to show federal regulators they could get results treating AMD pollution on a watershed level. A Testbed in the Watershed Standing in a grassy clearing overlooking this forested valley, it’s just possible to see the entry to a now-abandoned coal mine here in the headwaters of Sovern Run, a tributary of Big Sandy Creek, which runs into the Cheat. Ziemkiewicz and his team built what’s called a "passive treatment" system. At Sovern site No. 62, AMD pollution flows through a series of limestone-lined ponds and channels. The alkaline limestone turns low pH, acid water coming out of the mine into much cleaner water through naturally-occurring chemical reactions. Passive systems don’t require power or the addition of chemicals and are often lower maintenance. "We were able to knock off something like 80 percent of the acid load, most of the iron," Ziemkiewicz said, of the passive treatment system. "The idea was to put a lot of these all over the watershed." During the first Cheat Fest in 1995, Friends of the Cheat and Ziemkiewicz and his team took federal officials from the Interior Department and Office of Surface Mining the treatment system at Sovern site No. 62. The strategy being employed in the Cheat River watershed could be valuable to other communities struggling with AMD pollution. To help widen the scope, the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement created a federal plan inside its acid mine drainage program that allowed states to dole out federal Abandoned Mine Land dollars to local government agencies and watershed organizations, like Friends of the Cheat, to clean up streams impaired by acid mine drainage. Friends of the Cheat took it and ran with it. They installed more than a dozen passive treatments. Today, they maintain those and a series of active treatments, or engineered systems. Active treatments include in-stream dosers, which deposit a steady stream of alkaline lime to help neutralize the water. Active treatments also include things such as water treatment plants. Toddi Steelman, one of the founding members of Friends of the Cheat, studies watershed restoration She said the collaboration between Friends of the Cheat and regulators at both state and federal levels has been a 25-year experiment. "Having the university close by and invested was a huge stroke of luck," she said. "Having several sources of financial support in the 90s has really been essential." She also underscored the importance of having a local conservation group that is deeply invested in seeing the restoration of a river come to fruition. "You need a local champion that is going to see it through because it’s really a labor of love," she said. "It’s really about love the land, love of the river, love of community and I would say that’s really what has really characterized the group over time." This type of grassroots model can be a template for others, according to Scott Hardy, with the Ohio Sea Grant program at Ohio State University. He studies collaborative watershed management and said the federal government moved toward providing resources for more grassroots, collaborative watershed restoration in the 1990s, with plenty of success stories. Hardy said although collaboration can take longer than traditional top down restoration efforts, having local groups that are passionate about their watershed helps. The Last Piece It takes a lot of heart, but it also take a lot of money to clean a watershed. Since 2000, the Environmental Protection Agency has contributed more than $5 million to the Cheat watershed. The state DEP has spent more than $13 million constructing and maintaining treatment systems across the area. Now, one of the last treatments is almost in place. Once fully operational, a water treatment plant near the T&T mine will take care of the last major polluted stretch of the watershed. You can see the T&T Treatment plant just off Route 26 near Albright. In some ways, it can best be described as a dishwasher for dirty mine water. The plant will process AMD polluted water from three abandoned mine sites. Water pumped in from the polluted Fickey Run, will also be piped to the plant, said Larry Riggleman, the regional engineer for northern region of DEP’s Office of Special Reclamation. Riggleman helped design the plant. It can treat between 800 to 4,200 gallons of polluted water each minute. A lime slurry is added to the two 80-foot tanks, or clarifiers, as they’re called. When the lime is added the iron and aluminum to drop to the bottom. The metal sludge is pushed to the middle, drains out, and is pumped back into the T&T mine nearby. "And then from here it’s a straight discharge to the river," Riggleman said. If another mine blowout were to happen similar to the events in 1994 and 1995, the plant can handle up to 7,600 gallons per minute, which will flow through the two tanks and come out the other side clean. The site cost about $8.5 million to construct and $30,000 a month to run, funded in part by the bond forfeited by the T&T mine. DEP also received support from oil and gas company, Southwestern Energy. The company has a policy to offset its water use by contributing in other water restoration efforts. "Within West Virginia we were looking for meaningful projects that were out there that we could be a contributor towards and the Cheat River is a beautiful river and one that stood out to us as a place that we could make a positive impact," said Rowlan Greaves, manager of strategic solutions for Southwestern Energy. Riggleman has been working in this watershed for years and he said once the plant is fully operational, Muddy Creek, which has been the single largest contributor of acid mine drainage for years, will be clean. He said it’s hard to quantify what that will mean. "I mean, to be able to bring a stream back to life -- which I can’t tell you when the last time it was it had a life -- but from an environmental standpoint on the Cheat it’s huge," he said. "I think from a recreational standpoint with people wanting to fish, kayak, things of that nature, I think that’s huge. I think it’s very important that this gets done and I think it’ll be very successful." Paul Hart, president of local rafting company, Cheat River Outfitters, agrees that the work done over the last two decades has made a difference in the water quality of the river. Today, he said, guides will often catch fish in the clear, clean water. "A lot of people have seen it and decided 'you know we can do better,'" he said. "And they’ve put their heads together and made it happen, which is a dream turned into a reality. The Cheat is just too much of a gem to be lost to something like acid mine drainage, it really is." But Hart added the river was already losing appeal as a rafting destination before the big mine blowouts in the 90s, and it has yet to recover. Pitzer, with Friends of the Cheat, said they recognize overcoming a polluted reputation takes time. "Just like anything it takes time to change people’s perception of what a river is," she said. "If you came here in the 80’s and you paddled the river and you remember it being orange and awful and then someone tells you 'oh my gosh, I went and I caught walleye down in Jenkinsburg,' they might be like 'oh, get out of here' you know. So, I think it just takes time." The groups plans to continue working to restore the river in the hopes that one day the Cheat has a different reputation: One of a clean, beautiful river.

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West Virginia Guardsmen Train For Water Rescue In This Intense Video
by Duane Nichols via CLEAR 17 Jun '18

17 Jun '18

https://taskandpurpose.com/west-virginia-national-guard-video/ Watch West Virginia Guardsmen Train For Swift Water Rescues In This Intense Video By Brad Howard on June 15, 2018 Looking for a great career? Or know another veteran, service member, or military spouse who is? Get started at Hirepurpose. On June 11th, the West Virginia National Guard practiced rescuing mock victims out of fast moving river winding through the rolling hills of Appalachia. The harrowing training involves nerves of steel by the skilled helo pilots, and in video captured by reddit user M109A6Guy, the UH-60 Blackhawk skirts just above the churning waters as one guardsman scoops his target to safety. The Swift Water Rescue Team is assigned to the Army Interagency Training & Education Center. Training missions like these help prepare guardsman for unpredictable weather events, like the floods that ravaged West Virginia in 2016. They also certify the unit to support Federal Emergency Management Agency operations across the country, which can range from flooding search and rescue to hurricane response. We here at Task & Purpose want to give a shout out to not only the amazing helo crew, but also the National Guardsman who volunteered to be literally be sucked down a river in the name of realistic training. If anyone deserves a free beer in Greenbrier, West Virginia, it’s you. Sent from my iPad

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How Kayakers Saved a River and Started a Movement
by Duane Nichols via CLEAR 09 Jun '18

09 Jun '18

http://nationswell.com/kayakers-saved-cheat-river/ How Kayakers Saved a River and Started a Movement From Eric Jankiewicz, Nation Swell, June 8, 2018 The Cheat River in the Appalachian region was doomed — until a group of local outdoor enthusiasts stepped in. While most mines in the eastern region of the Appalachian Mountains are no longer in operation, they are far from inactive. In lightly populated places such as Albright, West Virginia, water with heavy metals seeps from mines into tributaries — the small streams that flow into rivers — finally pooling in reservoirs near the Chesapeake Bay. It’s also here where a group of kayakers made it their mission over 20 years ago to clean up one of the most polluted rivers in America: the Cheat River, a 78.3-mile tributary that runs through eastern West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania. And they’re still at it today. Jim Snyder, a 64-year-old thrill-seeker who lives on the banks of the Cheat River near Albright, was one of those initial kayakers. “The pollution there would burn your eyes,” Snyder says, recalling the condition of the river in the mid- to late-’90s, when a series of underground coal mine blowouts released orange-tinged water thick with heavy metals into the river. The first blowout, in 1994, lowered the pH of the water to dangerous levels, killing off fish as far away as 16 miles downstream. Another blowout a year later eventually devastated the area’s tourism industry, known for its whitewater recreation. The Cheat River soon after became ranked as one the nation’s most endangered. To reckon with the pollution and damage to the river’s ecosystem, Snyder and other kayakers in the community formed Friends of the Cheat to clean up the dirty streams and creeks that fed into the Cheat River. Their efforts helped the river recover and, with it, a tourism industry centered around its rapids. “I’d never done much work on committees at that time so it was an awkward fit for me, but we kept making it work,” Snyder tells NationSwell. “We were rookies, but we endured.” Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation works to counteract the damage done to rivers by mining.Photo courtesy of EPCAMR After the mine blowouts, the whitewater industry suffered from more than a 50 percent drop in business, while whitewater participation increased nationally by 33 percent during the same time period. “Twenty-thousand people were going down the canyon annually in the ’80s and ’90s,” says Owen Mulkeen, associate director of Friends of the Cheat. “Albright [became] a ghost town compared to what it was like at the height of rafting.” Friends of the Cheat led an effort with the Environmental Protection Agency to use various methods of water treatment, such as limestone filtration, to clean up the tributaries in the area. The success Snyder and the others had with bringing back the Cheat River became widely considered one of the most successful conservation stories. “[Kayakers] have a passion and that usually keeps them in West Virginia,” says Mulkeen. “We are blessed with the natural beauty and recreation here.” And that has helped keep the organization’s ranks filled — a necessity, given that mine pollution is still a very real problem in the waters around the Cheat. Over 7,500 miles of streams in Appalachia are still polluted by heavy metals from abandoned mines, according to data collected by Friends of the Cheat. Before the passage of the Surface Mining and Reclamation Control Act in 1977, mining companies could seal their operations in whatever way they liked, with little or no oversight. And over the decades many of those seals have busted open. “Mining had a huge impact on the industrial revolution, and allowed us to win or at least participate in two wars,” says Gavin Pellitteri, a recreational kayaker and outreach specialist for the nonprofit Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation. “There’s a lot of that culture and pride left in the area.” Pellitteri’s coalition works to correct for acid mine drainage, known as AMD. Similar to Friends of the Cheat, EPCAMR’s treatment strategy is to find an empty piece of land that can be filled with mine water into a pondlike basin. Limestone is used to neutralize the water’s acidity, and exposure to oxygen removes iron and drives off sulfates. Once done, the clean water is put back into a river. “If you look at where these impacts are, it’s the spine of Appalachia — Northern Georgia, Tennessee, West Virginia, up to Pennsylvania,” says Pellitteri, who estimates that there are over 400 billion gallons of mine water in the Scranton, Pennsylvania, area alone. As water conservationists like Snyder and Pellitteri continue to clean up the area’s waterways, where a virtually endless flow of polluted water streams from abandoned mines, there’s a fear that they’ll fail to attract a younger generation of outdoor activists to the mission. “Unfortunately, there’s a brain-drain out of West Virginia,” Mulkeen says. “But we’re born and bred by paddlers, and we hope to continue that relationship. That’s our base.” Because unlike a tree falling in the forest, a blown-out mine will matter, even if no one is around to witness it. Share Get the best of NationSwell in your inbox. Sent from my iPad

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Time to see the sites - Morgantown Dominion Post
by Duane Nichols via CLEAR 05 Jun '18

05 Jun '18

https://www.dominionpost.com/2018/06/03/time-to-see-the-sites/ Time to see the sites 30 Columns/Opinion, John Samsell, The Morgantown Dominion Post, June 3, 2018 The geographic territory in which we live was developed through the centuries in a manner that included oceans and glaciers too big it’s hard to imagine. If you are taking a mobile vacation this summer, you might try the Piedmont area on one side of the mountain ranges and the mountains and valleys of West Virginia on the western side. That’s how they were left after a large sea and glacier receded. The geographic makeup can be observed along I-68. A rest area pinpoints the separation of the mountains and valleys of the Mountain State and the less mountainous area east to the Atlantic Ocean and Tidewater area. Actually the eastern area is divided into four different sections. One begins at the Atlantic Ocean and goes westward to a Fall Line, a granite ridge connecting Fredericksburg, Richmond, Petersburg and other cities to the north, the Tidewater area. West of the Tidewater area are the Piedmont and Blue Ridge Mountains. that leads to the Appalachian Valley. Between the top of the Alleghenies and Lake Erie is part of the Allegheny Plateau. Land immediately to the west is the Central Lowland and Plain. That’s West Virginia with its combination of fertile soil and fine climate. It also has “easy communication and possibilities for manufacturing and commerce, according to early geologists. Temperature between warmest and coldest is 20 degrees. The Allegheny Highland has an area of about 6,000 square miles. Because of its scenery West Virginia has the name Mountain State. Its topography causes its varied climate and ample rainfall. The state’s natural resources represent vegetative life aged from an ancient sea bed. Rivers poured mud, sand and stones under conditions that led to the formation of the area now known as West Virginia. Under the conditions present stones were formed. In deeper parts of the sea, from its shores were many marine animals that shed their shells and skeletons that fell to the bottom and pressure cemented them into limestone, a prime state product in this 21st Century. Through the ages the processes continued and coal also was developed. The geologists explain the formation of the state’s Natural Wonders are now tourist attractions. The emergence of rivers in the north and east was gradual. Potomac, South Branch and New rivers and others cut beds across the rising surface. The Ohio River originally flowed north to create lakes and possibly a sea. The glacial movement from the north cut rivers into lakes and left the Ohio as it is today. Lakes in the West Virginia area were drained completely dry. Glacial movements also left deposits of gravel and fertile soils. Much of the soil had large amounts of sandstone. West Virginia has nothing but sedimentary rocks. Thus, there is nothing but bituminous coal. Pennsylvania has the “hard coal” and some “soft.” Tourist attractions include “Hanging Rock,” in the South Branch River in Hampshire County. The rocks reach 300 feet, while the state’s highest point, Spruce Knob is over 4,600 feet. “The Trough” in Hardy County the South Branch travels 7 miles between the “Image Rocks.” Blackwater Falls in nearby Tucker County is at the bottom of the Blackwater River that travels down a hillside. It not only is a site of beauty but is a state park, with many attractions. The Blackwater River flows into the Cheat River, that flows into Cheat Lake (Lake Lynn) that empties into the Monongahela River at Point Marion, Pa. Seneca Rocks in Pendleton County is said to be a “picturesque scene of the Far West.” Seneca Caverns is nearby at Riverton.

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CLEAR June 2018