Jul. 20—WILKES-BARRE — Kneeling on all fours near a Luzerne County stream, Bobby Hughes peers intently at a mesh net containing wet sticks, pebbles and possibly living clues as to whether this waterway is healthy or polluted.
“Stoneflies are abundant,” Hughes says to a colleague who is hunched over the same net and studying it like a treasure map. “And, oh, here’s a mayfly. There are two species here. Notice how they each have three tails?”
Hughes and his team know that the presence of mayflies, stoneflies, caddisflies and other aquatic insects — called macroinvertebrates — reveals a story about the condition of the water. Can it support trout and other fish? Or is it a biological dead zone, where the metal content is too high or oxygen level is too low, causing fish to either move out or die?
So, on this overcast 80-degree day, the team members sift through the net’s soggy catch, carefully classifying and counting bugs — each one an indicator of what’s happening in the environment.
Hughes and his companions plan to repeat this biological assessment and other field studies through fall 2025 at many sites in the Shickshinny Creek Watershed, a network of named and unnamed streams that drain into the Susquehanna River and eventually the Chesapeake Bay.
“Our work in the Shickshinny area this year is all part of a comprehensive conservation project,” says Hughes, 53, executive director of the Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation, known as EPCAMR.
“We aim to identify problem areas in the watershed and encourage collaboration among state and municipal governments, local groups and residents to address the issues,” he says. “We especially want to treat polluted water anywhere that it is escaping today from old, abandoned coal mines, pouring harmful aluminum oxide, iron oxide or other pollutants into our region’s streams and spoiling them for recreational uses like fishing, boating and swimming — which is a disservice to residents of the community.”
Reversing, minimizing the damage
EPCAMR is a nearly 30-year-old nonprofit organization based in Ashley. It promotes the reclamation and reuse of land negatively impacted by coal mining that took place in the bygone era when tens of thousands of dust-covered men worked underground to pull fortunes from the state’s anthracite and bituminous fields.
In parts of Pennsylvania, the lasting impacts of that so-called “legacy mining” include scarred land, dangerous abandoned mineworks, destructive mine subsidences, polluted streams and other health and safety concerns.
EPCAMR helps to do the tedious and costly task of reversing or minimizing some of that damage. It offers its services to government and nonprofit partners and business clients in 16 counties.
For example, EPCAMR’s small but dedicated team routinely performs watershed assessments in the eastern half of the state. To date, it has compiled extensive reports about the Lackawanna River, Schuylkill River, Catawissa Creek, Loyalsock Creek, Nescopeck Creek and several Wyoming Valley watersheds.
Reports on those and other watersheds are available at epcamr.org.
A lot of ground to cover
During its months-long Shickshinny Creek project, the EPCAMR team intends to cover a lot of ground by vehicle or on foot. The watershed straddles portions of Columbia and Luzerne counties. Streams of focus include Shickshinny Creek, Little Shickshinny Creek, Reyburn Creek, Paddy Run and Rocky Run. The study area also covers State Game Lands 260, 224 and 55.
“We have already done some work on the Game Lands and other public areas,” says Hughes. “But we would love to hear from private landowners in the Shickshinny Creek Watershed who have businesses, homes or other properties abutting those streams and who would grant us temporary access to assess the local bridges and culverts and to gather water quality data.”
This year’s conservation project is made possible thanks to funding provided to EPCAMR by the American Water Charitable Foundation and the Pennsylvania Council of Trout Unlimited’s Coldwater Heritage Partnership grant program.
Information collected by EPCAMR will eventually be published in a Coldwater Conservation Plan. The report, consisting of text and photographs, will highlight results from EPCAMR’s ongoing water quality and flow testing, biological sampling of macroinvertebrates and on-site assessments of abandoned mine drainage discharges. For historical perspective, there will be a summary of former coal mining operations in the vicinity, such as the Salem Coal Co.
Importantly, the Coldwater Conservation Plan will also include recommendations for future improvement efforts.
Municipalities, community groups, schools and other stakeholders will be encouraged to participate in upgrading the watershed. Municipalities, for example, might be able to correct a bridge or culvert design that is preventing fish from migrating through the stream. Scouts can choose to plant native trees that limit soil erosion along creek banks or organize a streamside trash pickup.
An essential first step
In short, the conservation plan is an essential first step in restoring water quality and reviving the watershed.
“This work can have a ripple effect, producing benefits throughout the watershed and beyond,” says Michael Hewitt, 45, EPCAMR’s longtime program manager. “By improving these waterways, the nearby communities can potentially mitigate flooding, improve safety for residents and visitors, and even expand economic development and outdoor recreational activities.”
In Pennsylvania, the scope of the mine cleanup work is immense. An estimated 5,500 miles of streams and rivers are tainted by abandoned mine drainage — one of the commonwealth’s top causes of water pollution. Residents of the Wyoming Valley’s riverfront communities are all too familiar with the ugly, orange discoloration that signals iron is continually seeping into the Susquehanna.
Hughes, a Wilkes-Barre native and 1995 graduate of Penn State University, has devoted his professional life at EPCAMR to educating the next generation about watershed protection and spurring environmental cleanup efforts.
The organization relies on many helpers to do its fieldwork. Those helpers include AmeriCorps service members, college work-study participants, interns and community volunteers.
Increasingly, EPCAMR also depends on the community for financial support of its mission to undo the damage caused by underground coal mining and to reclaim land for productive uses by the people.
To donate, get involved or learn more, send an email to Hughes at rhughes@epcamr.org or call 570-371-3523.