AMD Treatment Systems
Abandoned Mine Drainage
Abandoned Mine Discharge, or AMD, is the major impairment in the Raccoon Creek region with over 200 mine sites and 10,000 acres of surface-mined land. Cleaning up these discharges is crucial to improving water quality.
Abandoned Mine Drainage and Treatment
Drainage from abandoned coal mines is the largest nonpoint source of water pollution in Pennsylvania. 5,500 miles of our state’s streams are impaired by the legacy effects of unregulated mining practices in the 19th through mid-20th centuries. For over a hundred years, orange-running, foul-smelling streams were considered signs of prosperity and progress. Today, we face a tremendous and expensive challenge to fix the mistakes of the past and secure a clean, healthy future for our waterways.
Abandoned Mine Discharge, or AMD, is the major impairment in the Raccoon Creek Region with over 200 mine sites and 10,000 acres of surface-mined land. Forty miles of the main stem of Raccoon Creek and 30 to 40 miles of tributaries are degraded by AMD. The Raccoon Creek Watershed is known to have between 175 and 200 AMD discharges, or places where water seeps out of abandoned underground or above ground mine workings.
Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection identifies the cleanup of seven of these discharges as crucial to improving water quality in the Raccoon Creek region. Of the seven, the following are being fully or partially treated: Langeloth Borehole, Joffre Branch 1 (JB1), Joffre Branch 2 (JB2), all in Smith Township, and the Hamilton Farm in Findlay Township. East and West Plum Run and Erie Mine are yet to be undertaken.
Conventional treatment of mine drainage is labor and energy intensive and typically uses harsh chemicals. In contrast, passive treatment systems use no electricity, require limited maintenance and use environmentally friendly materials to add alkalinity and neutralize acidity. Independence Conservancy’s AMD treatment systems use passive treatment technology to reduce the total load of pollutants from the Solar Mine and JB2 discharges.
There are five passive treatment systems in the Raccoon Creek watershed. Together they treat about 2.5 billion gallons of mine drainage per year. This reduction in pollution as improved several miles of streams that, until recently, no living person had ever seen any color but orange!
