Workgroup sets sights on retuning trout to Beech Creek stream
From staff reports
BEECH CREEK, PA – For more than a year now, a local workgroup has quietly begun to lay the foundation to restore Beech Creek stream as a functional fishery. If you delve into the history of Clinton County, it will not be long before you stumble across the name John Reaville. To keep someone from poaching it, a mining company hired Reaville to watch over their claim. His answer: live in the mine for nearly eight months. His reward: Reaville was handed the Tangascootac mining towns of Revelton, Eagleton, Peacock, and Rock Cabin.
While these mines and others like them fueled the growth of a young nation, they all too often left us with a legacy that still exists today: abandoned mine drainage (AMD). Long before modern reclamation practices, these bituminous coal mines were simply abandoned and the result was the leachate from the mines carried acidity, dissolved metals as well as sulfur-containing compounds straight to our streams – killing them. Such is the history of Beech Creek stream.
Today, Beech Creek’s toxic water chemistry makes it uninhabitable for fish. According to Brian Cooper of Trout Unlimited, “Beech Creek has nearly everything you might hope to find in a trout stream: long riffles, deep pools, cold water, and plenty of in-stream cover. The only thing Beech Creek lacks is fish.”
But all hope is not lost. On November 15, 2021, President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. With its passage, along with the reauthorization of the Abandoned Mine Land Program, Pennsylvania is set to receive $245 million in new funding annually to address AMD through reclamation and treatment projects. To prepare for this influx of funding, the Clinton County Conservation District, at the request of Clinton County Commissioner Jeff Snyder, assembled an AMD work group. The group consists of both the Clinton and Centre County Conservation Districts, the Lloyd Wilson Trout Unlimited Chapter, the national Trout Unlimited organization, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, the Western Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation and consultants from Hedin Environmental and Larson Design Group.
The group has also received strong support from a number of state and local elected officials including Senator Cris Dush, Representative Stephanie Borowicz and the Clinton County Commissioners. “Restoring fish to fishable abundance on Beech Creek would be a huge win for the County both environmentally and economically,” said Clinton County Commissioner, Angela Harding, “Fishing is not only part of our culture, it adds considerable dollars to our economy.
According to Wade Jodun, Director of the Clinton County Conservation District, a great deal of credit is also owed to Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission Waterways Conservation Officer, Justin Boatwright. “Officer Boatwright had the forethought and vision to start the process of making the connections with most of the current members of the workgroup more than a year before we even knew there was funding available.”
Trout Unlimited, through their Technical Assistance Program, has been collecting data to help to reevaluate conditions within the more than 170 square mile watershed that stretches across both Centre and Clinton Counties. This data will help to identify and implement high-priority projects that have the potential to reduce the overall acidity of Beech Creek “So far, the news is encouraging,” said Jodun. “Conditions on the North Fork of Beech Creek – once on of Beech Creeks most impaired tributaries – have improved greatly, largely as a result of a lime doser that adds pulverized limestone to the water. Although the North Fork’s headwaters remain significantly impaired, the water quality downstream of the lime doser has improved immensely. “Recent sampling by Trout Unlimited found that fish have responded positively to this improvement, and trout are recovering within the downstream portions of North Fork Beech Creek. That data also has the group focused on Sandy Run, a tributary to Beech Creek.
“Sandy Run is Beech Creek’s single greatest hurdle to recovering as a trout fishery,” says Brian Cooper of Trout Unlimited. “In the watershed snapshot we completed this summer, Trout Unlimited found that on the day of sampling, Sandy Run was responsible for nearly all of the acidity in Beech Creek at the Kato Bridge, and nearly half of the total acidity measured downstream in the town of Monument. Above the AMD influence, Sandy Run holds good populations of wild trout. However, recovering the lower reaches of Sandy Run will be critical to Beech Creek’s recovery and will depend on a collaborative effort with private landowners whose properties have been impacted by abandoned mine lands.”
Jim Smith of the Lloyd Wilson Chapter of Trout Unlimited is optimistic about the future of Beech Creek. “Many of its headwater tributaries already have strong populations of wild trout above the influence of AMD. Some are even designated as Class A brook trout fisheries. Once the water quality in Beech Creek improves, those isolated brook trout populations in the headwater tributaries will expand into Beech Creek.” The work group’s next step, along with continuing to collect additional water quality data, will likely be to apply for grant funding in December to begin the design of a system to treat Sandy Run.
“There is a lot of work still in front of us,” says Ivie Foster of the Centre County Conservation District, “but we have assembled a strong partnership, the grant funding is available and there are a lot of reasons to be hopeful.” Those same sentiments were echoed by Senator Cris Dush (R-25). “Prioritizing conservation over preservation, President Theodore Roosevelt had this to say about being responsible stewards of our resources, ‘Conservation means development as much as it does protection. I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land,’” emphasized Sen. Dush. “I am confident that securing the necessary funding to address abandoned mine drainage and restore trout fishing to Beech Creek will achieve the proper balance between outdoor economics and responsible stewardship of our natural resources
