Acid water major peril for a river

By Mark Guydish mguydish@timesleader.comEducation Reporter

KINGSTON – At its peak, acid mine drainage dumped so much iron oxide – the stuff that makes the water a yellow orange – into the Susquehanna that the bottom of the river turned orange in spots.

In a 2004 Times Leader article, King’s College Environmental Program Director Brian Mangan noted such deposits in the past had killed the river insects, crayfish and clams.

At a 1996 conference on acid mine drainage hosted by Wilkes University, experts warned that such drainage was dumping 13,000 pounds of iron and 200,000 pounds of sulfate into the 440-mile Susquehanna each day. In high concentrations, the pollutants can kill everything in a waterway, as had happened in stretches of Nanticoke Creek when, at its peak, the Dundee Road mine outfall poured 7,000 gallons of iron-polluted water into the stream every minute. Local children dubbed the creek “The Stinky Stream.”

Nationally, mine drainage has been known to kill water fowl as well, when migrating flocks mistook an acidic pool for a safe drinking stop.

The most common way to clean acid mine water is a through construction of wetlands specifically designed for the task. Such efforts have cropped up in the region in the past two decades, typically near streams that feed into the Susquehanna.

Mitigation efforts have worked, as the Susquehanna water quality has improved, with one highly though briefly visible piece of evidence: The almost staggering number of mayflies that emerge each August. The bugs exist most of the year as “nymphs” under the water, and their numbers during the frantic mating season – more of a mating day, as they die off quickly - are an indicator of river quality.

The more mayflies, the healthier the river, and they have been so numerous at times that Market Street Bridge was been closed to clean dead flies off the road. The bridge lights attract the mayflies in thick clouds, and the dead ones were so numerous they made the surface slick.

And the Susquehanna’s health is inextricably linked to the health of the Chesapeake Bay by a simple fact: the 440-mile river provides about half the freshwater in the bay.