The Red Waterfall EarthCache
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This EarthCache is located along the Youghiougheny River Trail.
It should be handicap accessible, however because of the distance to the cache and the non-paved nature of the trail I will leave that up to your discretion.
The Youghiougheny River Trail North Section is a 43-mile limestone surfaced trail built along the “railbanked” right-of-way of the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad between McKeesport and Connellsville in southwestern Pennsylvania. This keystone section of the Great Allegheny Passage is complete and is open and free to the public!
The Great Allegheny Passage is a 150-mile system of biking and hiking trails that will connect Cumberland, MD and Pittsburgh, PA when completed. The connection to the C & O Canal Towpath in Cumberland, MD was made in 2006, creating a continuous non-motorized corridor, 318 miles long, from McKeesport, near Pittsburgh, to Washington, DC.
Nearby is an abandoned mine. The water you see before you flows from this mine. The water is acidic and this phenomenon is one of the main causes of water pollution in Pennsylvania. This red waterfall is acid mine drainage also referred to as AMD. AMD results when mineral pyrite (FeS2) is exposed to air and water, resulting in sulfuric acid and iron hydroxide. Acid mine drainage is caused by water coming in contact with coal or mining activity. Pyrite is commonly present in coal seams and in the rock layers overlying coal seams.
Acid mine drainage can come from any number of coal related sources, including strip mines, old coal refuse, or bony piles, the worst pollution however, comes from abandoned deep mines.
Since coal mining is common in Pennsylvania it is the most common form of water pollution in the state and any state where vast amounts of mining has taken place.
Water that has come in contact with the pyrite usually has an orange-red or yellow-orange color. When the pH of AMD rises past 3, either through contact with fresh water or neutralizing minerals, previously soluble iron ions precipitate as iron hydroxide, a yellow-orange solid nicknamed “Yellow boy”. “Yellow boy” discolors water and smothers plant and animal life on the streambed, disrupting stream ecosystems. The process also produces additional hydrogen ions, which can further decrease pH. Research is currently being conducted regarding the possibility of using “Yellow boy” as a commercial pigment. The orange material is simply rust.
In deep mines, metals are dissolved in the water and stay in solution beneath the earth due to the lack of oxygen. When water emerges from the mine through a shaft, bore hole, or natural cracks in the earth, it reacts with the oxygen once it hits the air. When that happens, chemical reactions take place that bring the minerals out of solution and they precipitate in the stream, leaving deposits of iron, manganese, and aluminum on rocks and the stream bed.
If the discharge from one of these streams is white it is high in aluminum. If the discharge is black it is high in manganese. The worst possible discharge caused by acid mine drainage is clear. When the AMD is clear the water is so acidic that the minerals are being dissolved.
Even in moderate concentrations, AMD is toxic to fish and aquatic insects that fish eat. AMD has four characteristics, although not all discharges have all of these characteristics:
High acidity
High metal concentrations
High sulfate levels
Excessive suspended solids
The products of AMD formation, acidity and iron, can devastate water resources by lowering the pH and coating stream bottoms with iron hydroxide, forming the familiar orange colored “Yellow boy” common in areas with abandoned mine drainage.
As the acidity increases, fewer and fewer living things can tolerate the harsh conditions. And the corrosive acid also eats away at culverts and bridge pylons, resulting in a need to rebuild the infrastructure sooner than it would normally require.
Even the smallest amounts of AMD can harm the life in streams because metals, sulfates and/or other suspended solids drop out of the water and coat the rocks and gravel on the stream bottom. The insects that live on and under the rocks cannot get oxygen out of the water and suffocate. Aquatic insects are the main source of food for the fish in rivers and streams. This directly affects them as well. Without food the fish start to die out.
The affect of AMD on local streams varies with the size of the stream and the total pollution put in to the stream. The pollution load is the product of the concentration of contaminants and the stream’s flow. AMD has eliminated fish completely from the major portions of the Conemaugh and Little Conemaugh Rivers. The upper reaches of the Stonycreek River are considered to be one of the best reclaimed trout fisheries in America, and that fishery has recently been extended approximately seven miles downstream because of AMD treatment methods.
Many efforts are underway to reduce and reclaim acid mine drainage.
The metals or minerals can be recovered and sold. Recent research has shown that mine drainage also has many other metals in lower concentrations, including some relatively high priced metals such as strontium and magnesium. Resource Recovery efforts are under way to recover and sell iron and aluminum from mine drainage because of their higher concentrations, but the idea of recovering other metals has been suggested.
The clean water has an ever-increasing value. There are proposals to use AMD as the source of water for a pump storage electric generation facility and as coolant for a co-generation plant that would produce electricity from old coal refuse or bony piles. Likewise, in Tennessee, there is a proposal to treat a mine discharge and build a lake that potentially could become a state park. And the AMD & Art project used clean water from the end of its Vintondale treatment system to make additional wetlands, which were sold to PennDOT as mitigation for wetlands taken in nearby highway projects.
AMD sludge has potential uses as agricultural micronutrients and in certain environmental processes because heavier metals adsorb to charged iron particles in the AMD.
There are proposals to make bricks or other building materials from AMD sludge. Unfortunately, the biggest “value” of all is one for which we cannot derive a revenue stream: the “value” of the restored waterways that now support fishing, boating, wildlife, fish, and quality of life in nearby communities.
After you have had time to view the waterfall that despite its menacing side effects is quite beautiful, please make your way to the informational sign and answer the following questions:
1. What is the name of the mine that is the source of the waterfall?
2. What formed the massive Pittsburgh coal seam according to the sign?
3. The Ocean Coal Company was a subsidiary of what other company?
4. When combined with water and oxygen what causes the acid mine drainage?
*NOTICE* It has come to my attention that the sign has been vandalized. Others have still been able to come up with the answers so I will not be disabling the cache. Do your best.
Please send the answers to me in an email and do not post them in your log. In addition to answering the questions please take a picture of yourself or your GPS with the waterfall in the background and post it here.
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