A new group restarts ‘Red Mo’ watershed cleanup project, with millions of dollars in potential benefits

Residents of the Moshannon Valley know Moshannon Creek as the boundary separating Centre and Clearfield counties. The waterway, which is a tributary to the West Branch of the Susquehanna River, is known colloquially as the “Red Mo” because of the rusty color of its rocks and water.

The “Red Mo” hasn’t always been red, though. The creek and many of the streams in the Moshannon Creek watershed are contaminated with abandoned mine drainage (AMD), the iron, manganese, aluminum, and sulfuric acid of which affect the color and quality of the water.

Various groups have worked over the years to remediate the AMD, but so far, efforts have not moved beyond the sampling and planning stages. In July 2019, however, a new band of volunteers – the Moshannon Creek Watershed Association (MCWA) – formed and has been working to tackle the substantial project of cleaning up the watershed and bringing about its far-flowing benefits. 

The history

AMD has been a problem in the Moshannon Creek watershed for decades.

“There might be a few folks around who remember when this small stream or that might have still been healthy, but for the most part, people living in the Mo Valley have never seen the local streams looking any other way,” says Eric Rosengrant, a retired mining permit and compliance specialist at the state Department of Environmental Protection and current MCWA vice president.

In 1977, Congress enacted the Surface Mining Conservation and Reclamation Act, aimed at regulating active mining practices and reclaiming abandoned mines.

“That was the start of a change,” Rosengrant says. “Before that, it was easy for a company to disappear, leaving a poorly or un-reclaimed mine site or a post-mining discharge in its wake, and most of what needs to be addressed today still dates from pre-1977 mining, stretching back into the 1800s.”

“The Moshannon Creek watershed has a dual character as a popular area for trout fishing and recreation and a mine drainage disaster,” says Eric Skrivseth, MCWA president. “About half of the streams in the watershed have clean water, and many of those have natural populations of brook trout. About half of the streams have mining impacts. Some areas have mining impacts along with the trout that manage to live there anyway.”

Previous groups had built treatment systems within the Moshannon Creek watershed, but many of them have been neglected.

“One of the things that led to the demise of the previous watershed group was the fact that they … were discouraged by their lack of progress,” Skrivseth says. “We decided we wanted to start out with concrete responsibilities where our members could work with their hands and make real progress while our group was growing. … [Some treatment] systems had been sitting, mostly unmaintained, on game lands. We took over operation, monitoring, and maintenance responsibility for them and began maintaining this group of six treatment systems in June. We are learning how to work together as a group while we are learning how to repair and rehabilitate older treatment systems.”

The group

Skrivseth became aware of Moshannon Creek through his involvement with the Clearfield Creek Watershed Association.

Skrivseth learned from Rachel Kester, program director of the Coldwater Heritage Partnership, Trout Unlimited, about the work and challenges of the past watershed groups before attempting to start another one. 

“I look at things with the belief that one person or a small group of people can’t solve all the world’s problems, but they can make a big difference if they concentrate on one,” Skrivseth says. “I think the scale of the problem and the importance of the watershed, along with its potential, help sell the efforts to restore Moshannon Creek.”

As he approached retirement, Rosengrant was also contemplating a cleanup project.

“I could sense that there was more of an interest in environmental activities in the Mo Valley [since past groups disbanded], as I was running into a lot of individuals interested in stream cleanup, perhaps inspired by [other] success stories,” Rosengrant says. “We were also being contacted more often than ever by local high school students and groups. … All of these things were in my head as I approached retirement this summer, and I was considering if this was something I would want to get involved with post-career. Fate intervened, and along came Eric Skrivseth last fall with an extremely well-developed plan for doing this very thing. Four of us met to discuss it, and we agreed it could be and should be done! It was truly was serendipity!”

Skrivseth, Rosengrant, Kester, and Kelly Williams, watershed specialist for the Clearfield County Conservation District, met at RJ’s Pub and Grill in Philipsburg in July 2019 and founded the MCWA.

“We have gradually grown with each passing month and now have about 30 members, with about a dozen of them being the most active group for hands-on activities like treatment-system maintenance and water sampling,” says Skrivseth.

George Franchock is MCWA director and an active volunteer. A native of the Moshannon Valley, Franchock now resides in Stormstown. He saw a post about the cleanup effort on Facebook, and, as a retired forester who comes from a community-minded family, decided to get involved.

“Every time I drove through Philipsburg, I’d look at those wetlands and think, ‘Boy that’d be something if that was clean water and fishable, and be an asset to the community, instead of sort of an eyesore as you come into Philipsburg,’” Franchock says. “So far, it’s been a very rewarding experience to do some work where it looks like we can have an impact.”

The project  

Eric Gilliland is president of Warriors Mark Wingshooting Lodge and Kennels in Ginter. He owns 1,400 and 1,300 acres in Clearfield and Centre counties, respectively, close to the headwaters of the Moshannon Creek, with land on both sides of it.

“The Moshannon Creek goes from here to north of Interstate 80,” says Gilliland. “[Cleanup] is going to benefit everybody in the valley. Having that resource, whether it’s canoeing, or recreation, fishing, or just having clean water, it’s invaluable. How do you put a price on that? It’s a beautiful stream the whole way along – it’s just sad when you look in and it’s orange.”

Gilliland uses his own money to spread 500 to 800 tons of mulch on his property each month to remediate the AMD.

“The mulch comes from the paper mill, and it has lime in it,” Gilliland explains. “It has a lot of organic matter in it – wood fibers, so it decreases the erosion or eliminates it. A lot of these spoil banks that were mined during the WWII timeframe were never reclaimed, because back then, you didn’t have to. Still, every time it rains, it runs that iron or aluminum into the stream. But if we spread that mulch, plant grass on it … it seals it in, and it doesn’t really hurt anything.”

Gilliland has avoided timbering or doing anything near the stream that may disrupt it. He’s also spread DEP-approved lime mixtures and has planted lots of trees and grasses to filter runoff and improve the steams’ PH levels.

Gilliland has worked with the various watershed groups that have taken shape over the years.

“They’ve all done lots of testing, but none of them have done any work,” says Gilliland. “They have plans made, then government changes, and suddenly there’s no money for that.”

Gilliland says he’s hampered from making improvements to the stream because doing so requires government permitting.

“But if they said, ‘You can do certain things to the stream,’ give me $40,000, and I can fix it,” he says. “I want [the systems] to be easy for me to maintain, so if money ever runs out for them to maintain them, I would be able to maintain them myself, because I would.”

Skrivseth says fixing AMD doesn’t come down to a single solution.

“It is the combined impact of hundreds of individual problems, and they will have to be solved individually,” Skrivseth says. “Part of our efforts now to update conditions in the watershed, and learn more about parts of it that weren’t as well investigated previously, is to identify those places where it would be a good place to start. There are some moderately sized mine discharges in various places in the watershed that are small enough that a passive treatment system can handle them, and large enough that fixing them would make a discernible difference in the streams that the discharge impacts. Our intent is to identify several of those that make good candidates for treatment systems and then seek design/permitting funds, and then construction funds to build them.”

Skrivseth says that eventually, the watershed area north of Philipsburg will likely require “much larger water treatment plants” that would “be built and operated by the PA DEP, as they have done in multiple other places in PA.”

Rosengrant says the MCWA plans to concentrate first on changing water quality on smaller streams, “then on Moshannon itself, gradually allowing the streams to support a diverse biological population of plants, insects, and fish.”

“We are hoping that even moderate improvements will also spur a change in local perceptions, that such recovery is possible and that the best is yet to come,” Rosengrant continues. “This, in turn, will bring more people to the group.”

The potential

Cleaning up the Moshannon Creek watershed could mean millions of dollars in economic benefits, not to mention other advantages that don’t have a price tag.

Kester says property values are one big thing people may not consider when thinking about the consequences of AMD.

“Few, if any, folks choose to live near an AMD-impacted stream because they are usually eyesores due to metal precipitates … that can coat the stream bottom, making it orange, white, black, or some combination,” Kester explains.

The West Branch Susquehanna Restoration Coalition released an economic benefit analysis for abandoned mine drainage remediation in 2008 that found “property value loss of over $4 million for the owners of 2,734 single-family residences on parcels located within 200 feet of AMD-impacted streams.”

The report concluded that mine remediation generates millions of dollars in communities by creating new, “green-collar” jobs, stimulating the economy, increasing recreational and tourism spending, and making drinking water cheaper and more plentiful.

Kester says abandoned mine lands can also affect people in ways that might not be obvious.

“Toxic metals like aluminum can leach into drinking water and make it unsafe for human consumption,” says Kester.

Clean water also has the potential to attract big business to the area, such as factories and manufacturers, she says.

The future

Kester points to several regional examples of how mine sites can be reclaimed to become sports fields, industrial parks, airports, green spaces, and so forth. 

“Cleaning up our watersheds provides not only environmental benefits, but economic benefits as well,” Kester says. “An abandoned mine site in Pittsburgh has been restored and is now home to the Pittsburgh Botanic Garden. An old refuse pile along the banks of the West Branch Susquehanna River in Cambria County was removed and turned into a soccer complex. In Jefferson County, water from an abandoned mine is treated and used to raise trout to stock local streams.”

“Right now, many of the streams in the area are things to be ignored or avoided altogether,” Rosengrant says. “Go into a stream, and you may come home orange! I can imagine a future where people want to go to the Moshannon. Where it is a center of activities, especially in towns like Philipsburg, where people may be fishing and floating, and with their presence, supporting local businesses. …The northern ‘canyons’ of the Moshannon are beautiful, isolated, and wild, and lack only decent water quality to become significant destinations for lovers of the outdoors.”

Kester says the best way for community members to help keep streams healthy and restore damaged creeks is to join a watershed group or other conservation organization and assist with stream cleanups, water sampling, fundraisers, and outreach initiatives. She encourages people to pay attention to legislation that protects and restores streams and to inform friends and neighbors about the importance of clean, cold water.

“This [project] affects a huge number of people – there are a lot of people between here and the Susquehanna,” Gilliland says. “The creek is fishable now, but it’s not great fishing. Seeing those trout and catching them is fantastic. They’re beautiful, and you know they were born here. It’s great to see that the stream will support that, but if the stream were better quality, they would grow to a bigger size, or there would be more of them. I hope it gets done, but I’ll still be doing my stuff even if it doesn’t, little by little, because it is expensive.”

Skrivseth says he’s confident there will eventually be fish in many of the watershed’s side streams, but adds, “We are under no illusions that this project will be quick or that it will be easy. We are going to be methodical, and we are going to be persistent. With a lot of help, we intend to make a difference.”

 

For more information about the MCWA, visit moshannoncreek.org.

Teresa Mull is a freelance writer in Philipsburg.