>>KATHY COSCO: Everyone likes a good comeback story. Overcoming the odds to triumph over
adversity.
But there's more to this story than that, because it's a story about coming back
from the dead. The DEP's Mike Huff has a second look at one of this year's big
success stories.
>>NARRATION: The water is clear now but it wasn't that long ago Three Fork Creek
in Preston and Taylor Counties was fouled by acid mine drainage.
Coal-mining within the Three Fork Creek Watershed dates back to the mid eighteen
hundreds
and left for fling ninety one hundred acres of untreated mine pools
discharging into its head water tributaries.
>>SHEILA VUKOVICH: This...
this watershed has been heavily mined
prior to nineteen seventy seven.
There weren't regulations during that time
and, as a result of that,
we still have drainage that
comes from those oldl
mines and...
it's pretty acidic --
a lot of iron, a lot of aluminum --
and most of that occurs upstream of this point...
>>NARRATION: That acid drainage left more than seventeen miles of Three Fork Creek essentially
dead --
lifeless except for a few tolerant insect species and continued to cause
pollution problems downstream as it emptied into the Tygert River and beyond.
>>LEROY STANLEY: The acid mine drainage was terrible...
this stream has been dead for almost
fifty, sixty years...
back in the fifties
and at one time this was one of the best trout streams in West Virginia
for this area.
>>NARRATION: In 2004,
the west virginia division of natural resources
determined that Three Fork Creek
was the second-highest contributor of acid mine drainage
in the entire Monongahelia River basin.
It was clear something had to be done, but what?
>>SHEILA: a lot of the...
areas we've done some small
at source projects to try to remediate the water but that's
such a small area and such a small amount of drainage that we didn't see
and overall impact on the stream
and
so we decided to try to improve the whole watershed and improve the fisheries here.
>>NARRATION: And that meant trying something new. (Splash)
This is a lime dosing station, one of
four installed along tributaries that form Three Fork Creek by the WV
department of
environmental protection's office of abandoned mine lands.
This station, along Byrd's Creek, is powered by water from the stream.
A measured amount of lime is added creating an alkaline solution. When added to the stream,
it neutralizes the acid.
>>JEFF BAILEY: Basically the last time... I guess it was in 2009...
we didn't find
anything.
We shocked this for fish and found no fish whatsoever
and we can only the most tolerant
benthic macroinvertebrates... the bugs and now we're seeing stone flies.
We're seeing some hellgramites...
Haven't seen a crayfish ye but I'm expecting to see one of those maybe in a couple of years
which would definitely be a benefit...
But things are looking better. It's been an amazing turn around, actually.
It's been better than I thought it would be.
>>NARRATION: This year, survey crews documented more than 1600 fish fish including
twenty one different species
at the same four test sites as the 2009 survey.
A dramatic change, to say the least...
>>LEROY: We're very elated with the
corporation we've have with the DEP
in cooperation with them and
our watershed association.
We have formed a great partnership here and it's resulted in
this great recovery... >>NARRATION: In Preston County,
I'm Mike Huff
for Environment Matters.
>>KATHY COSCO: The project is funded through the West Virginia acid mine drainage set-aside
account.
West Virginia communities have a new tool to help reduce the impact of polluted
stormwater runoff.
The DEP has produced a five hundred page stormwater management and design
guidance manual in conjunction with the center for watershed protection.
Stormwater runoff is one of the leading causes of water pollution in the United
States, so controlling and minimizing it can have a significant environmental
benefit.
Managing harmful stormwater runoff is just one part of the Chesapeake Bay
Initiative.
West Virignia is one of six states that make up the chesapeake bay watershed and
following President Obama's executive order declaring the Bay a
national treasure in two thousand nine, the state has made significant strides
towards the Bay's natural sustainability.
As the DEP's Tom Alluise first reported earlier this year, West Virginia's
efforts to improve the water quality of its downstream neighbors started well
before that.
>>NARRATION: Indian Run is a small stream that runs through Cacapon State Park in Morgan County.
Just a drop in the bucket really, in the much larger Chesapeake Bay watershed,
but those drops have a way of adding up.
>>ALANA HARTMAN: And anything we do on the landscape around Indian Run
will influence the runoff from the rain water that flows into Indian Run so
anything we do in the watershed of Indian Run will affect
the water that ultimately ends up in the Chesapeake Bay.
So we can either have negative impacts or positive impacts.
>>NARRATION: Alana Hartman is the DEP's Potomac Basin coordinator.
Eight eastern panhandle counties: Pendleton, Grant, Mineral
Morgan, Hardy,
Hampshire, Berkeley and Jefferson
make up west virginia's portion of the potomac river basin
which is a part of the Bay watershed. As part of the Bay Initiative, the u_s_
e_p_a_ established the chesapeake bay
total maximum daily load.
The total maximum daily load is the maximum amount of a pollutant a body of water
can receive and still meet its water quality standards.
The chesapeake bay TMDL targets three pollutants:
nitrogen, prosperous and sediment
from sources like agriculture, wastewater treatment facilities and stormwater
runoff.
>>ALANA: The reason that nitrogen and prosperous where identified as the key pollutants in
to the Chesapeake Bay is that they cause a
big bloom of algae in the hot weather and then that algae dies off
and when the bacteria work on decomposing that algae, they rob the water
of oxygen. >>NARRATION: West Virginia's the eastern panhandle counties are
also some of the
most rapidly developing areas of the state and
with that development comes the challenge of dealing with storm water
runoff --
a major contributor to the
types of water pollution the state's watershed implementation plan is
working to limit.
Jim Price lives along in the Indian Run.
He says it's important to take a proactive approach.
>>JIM PRICE: With the paving in the cul-de-sac we have and all the runoff that we get,
we've added quite a bit of shrubs and trees when we first built
and it's noticeable for how it...
has held the...
actually the property together. >>ALANA: Volunteers around here have done things like
tree plantings
because this forest you see here is actually the best condition for water quality
and where we live and where we farm and where we work is usually not a
forest,
so adding trees can really help
bring the landscape back to a condition that's best for water quality.
They've also
encouraged businesses to do stormwater friendly practices so that
more rain water will soak into the ground and be filtered before it reaches the
creek.
They do things like permeable pavements
and rain gardens and they capture rain water in rain barrels
and just try to educate everybody about how too much pavement and too many rooftops
can really be detrimental to a creek. >>NARRATION: And when it comes to education and outreach,
local watershed groups play a major role.
>>GALE FOULDS: It's probably the most important thing we do because if we don't have people
who understand what's happening and we don't have the citizens or the residents
here in the county helping,
we can't really do anything. Everything that we do, every project we talk about we
try to be sure that it's understood by all the people we're talking with that
it's ultimately reaching the Chesapeake Bay. >>NARRATION: And that's ultimately the message: that that's often the only the message
like individual threads that make up a cloth -
the fabric of the watershed it's only a strong,
as healthy, as the individual headwater streams that form its creeks and rivers
and maintaining that healthy watershed is the responsibility shared by everyone
lives or works there.
In Berkeley Springs, I'm Tom Aluise for Environment Matters.
>>KATHY COSCO: The U.S. EPA has praised West Virginia for it's efforts.
Coming up, the day of learning and fun -- why a lifetime of sustainable choices
begins with some early lessons. We're back in a moment.