Schuylkill Conservation District has received a $221,600 grant to put toward the Pine Forest Shaft Abandoned Mine Drainage Treatment System Design project.
The local project is one of eight across Pennsylvania to receive funding from the state’s Dept. of Environmental Protection Section 319 Nonpoint Source Management Grant program.
This grant program is funded by the US Environmental Protection Agency and selected for by DEP.
Projects receiving awards are focused on improving water quality and restoring impaired watersheds.
“Clean water is vital to community health and a fundamental right of every Pennsylvanian,” DEP Secretary Jessica Shirley says. “These projects are examples of good stewardship and best practices to create healthier streams and wetlands, reduce flood risk, and improve fish and wildlife habitat.”
Nonpoint source pollution is water pollution that doesn’t come from a single specific discharge point, such as a pipe from a factory, but rather from diffuse sources, such as stormwater runoff, mine drainage, and farm fields.
According to DEP, approximately 53% of the water-quality-impaired watersheds in the state are affected by nonpoint source pollution.
Section 319 Nonpoint Source Management Grants focus on reducing:
- Nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment pollution from agricultural activities, urban stormwater runoff, and streambank and shoreline erosion; and
- Iron, aluminum, and acidity pollution associated with energy resource extraction and acid mine drainage (AMD).
According to Alexa Smith, Watershed Program Technician at Schuylkill Conservation District, grant funding will enable the Conservation District to gather new water-quality and flow data for both the Pine Forest Shaft and the Pine Forest discharges.
An abandoned mine drainage treatment system already handles the Pine Forest discharge, but the Pine Forest Shaft discharge remains untreated. That discharge emerges just north of the Pine Forest outflow and currently avoids the existing treatment system entirely.
Using the data collected through this monitoring, the district will partner with a consultant or engineer to design and secure permits for a treatment system specifically for the Pine Forest Shaft discharge.
This discharge sits just outside St. Clair and enters Little Wolf Creek. From there, the water moves into Mill Creek before reaching the main stem of the Schuylkill River.
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