Indian Creek

Indian Creek Water Quality Update 10/7/05 from the Tribune-Review

The water still flows orange in some streams in the Laurel Highlands of Fayette and Westmoreland counties, but if the Mountain Watershed Association has its way, those streams will some day run crystal clear. It's been 11 years since the nonprofit group was formed by a small group of volunteers. Since that time, the organization has managed to bring in more than $4 million in private and government funding for increasingly ambitious environmental projects aimed primarily at cleaning up acid mine drainage in the streams of the Indian Creek Valley in Donegal, Saltlick and Springfield townships.

The group's first project, in 1998, was a $20,000 stream bank stabilization project along Indian Creek in Donegal Township. Since then, the scale of the projects undertaken by the association has grown, along with the cost and the frustration of dealing with government red tape. Today, the association is involved in some of its largest and most expensive undertakings, including the $2.4 million Anna and Steve Gdosky Indian Creek Restoration Project.

Beverly Braverman, executive director of the association, explained that the Gdosky project, also referred to as the Kalp Acid Mine Drainage Treatment Project, is designed to not only treat acid mine drainage from the former Melcroft No. 1 mine, but also to avert a mine pool blowout that could dump millions of gallons of acidic mine water into Indian Creek. The first phase, which involved tapping into a 53 million gallon mine pool that formed when the Melcroft Mine No. 1 was closed and abandoned in 1966, has been completed. The next step is to draw down the pool and then treat the orange mine water using a passive treatment system, made up of a series of ponds to be built on a 10-acre plot of land across Route 711 from where the pool is to be tapped. The treatment system is designed to raise the pH of the mine water to the point where it can be safely drained into Indian Creek. Braverman said the project is a priority, not only because of the environmental threat of the acid mine drainage, but also because of the danger a blowout of the mine pool poses to public safety.