Tioga River clean-up effort gets major boost

This story comes from WVIA News.

Almost half of the Tioga River is polluted by the long-gone mining industry that operated for over a century near Blossburg. 

A $68 million dollar grant will finally clean up the acidic water. For one local couple — Joyce and Charlie Andrews — that’s a relief. 

Rocks on either side of the river are tinted orange from the iron and other materials in the mines.

“On the one side of the bridge the water’s pretty clear,” said Joyce Andrews. “On the other side … that’s where the water starts really turning.”

The Andrews are the backbones of the Tioga County Concerned Citizens Committee (TCCC).

Earlier this year, the state allocated $101 million in federal funding to clean up mine waste around the region. The Susquehanna River Basin Commission (SBRC) will build an active treatment plant that will treat the five largest mine discharges in the Tioga River Watershed, cleaning up 22 miles of the 58-mile Tioga River. It will restore aquatic life to the river and its tributaries.

The Tioga meets the Chemung River in New York, which flows into the Susquehanna.

Charlie Andrew, president of the Tioga County Concerned Citizens Committee, points to the future treatment plant for the Tioga River. Photo: Kat Bolus / WVIA News

Blossburg is named after Aaron Bloss. He’s considered its first settl a road was cut from Loyalsock to New York and coal was first discovered. 

First came deep mining for bituminous coal followed by strip mining. Water still fills up the mines. There’s nothing on top to absorb the water.

“That’s part of the problem with the mine drainage that we have, why it’s so severe, is that when they strip off the topsoil, then the water goes right down the mine,” said Charlie Andrews.

The TCCC began as an informal group in 1984. They first opposed a landfill in the area that planned to take out-of-state trash and pile it overtop old deep coal mines. Then around 2000, the SRBC did a study on the Tioga River.

The concerned citizens became a nonprofit in 2001. And with SRBC’s study sought out and managed grants to improve the watershed.

“We were turned down so many times, we did so many grant applications … but we get just enough to keep us going,” said Joyce Andrews. “We met a lot of nice people too and the different agencies, that you know, really, they taught us a lot because we didn’t know anything about it.”

The group raised awareness about the pollution of the river, did stream cleanups and programs in the local schools and partnered with area organizations to raise money for their efforts.

But they weren’t able to secure the type of big funding needed to make lasting changes to the river and its tributaries, many of which act as streams for the mine pools.

“We kind of felt at that point, we were almost defeated,” said Charlie Andrews. 

Then Southwestern Energy started fracking for natural gas in the area.

“They had a program where for every gallon of water they used in fracking, they would treat a gallon of water,” he said.

The energy company funded two passive treatment systems near Fall Brook, one of river’s tributaries and the first significant source of mine drainage pollution to the Tioga River, according to SRBC.

The polluted water runs over limestone beds. Once it’s treated it’s put back into the streams. 

Limestone beds help clean up acid mine drainage at Fall Brook. Photo: Kat Bolus / WVIA News

Lasting Impact

Abandoned mine drainage is a leading source of stream impairment in Pennsylvania with more than 5,500 miles of waterways affected statewide, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

The 2021 federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act included $11.2 billion for the national abandoned mineland programs….