Students get education in environmental cleanup, career opportunities at Lowber mine drainage treatment

Mt. Pleasant Area High School senior Kelsey Davis was testing clear water Friday that had just discharged from the abandoned Marchand Mine in Lowber to see how much invisible iron was in that liquid.

Davis was among the 150 students from five high schools in the region — Kiski Area, Mt. Pleasant Area, Greater Latrobe, Trinity Christian and Yough — at the environmental education Field Day at the Sewickley Creek Watershed Association’s abandoned mine drainage system at Lowber.

Students learned about how the mine water turns orange when it reacts with the oxygen and the resulting iron oxide that flows through the pond settles at the bottom before entering Sewickley Creek, with much less pollution.

The Field Day offered students such as Davis, who is in Mt. Pleasant Area teacher Randall Duke’s ecology class, a chance to see environmental work in action.

“It’s a great opportunity to show how we can apply the concepts we learn in the classroom to the (environmental) industry,” said Duke, a chemistry and biology teacher.

Students walked around the ponds and wetlands, learning at various stations about the history of the mine, the wildlife in the area, how quickly the mine water can turn orange and the value of the orange-color iron oxide in giant piles by the wetlands.

To Sydney Heinack, a Kiski Area sophomore in Alison Bresnahan’s advancement placement environmental science class, the education program was an opportunity to learn how polluted water affects animal life, changes colors and it smells.

Bresnahan said she brought about 60 of her students to the program, which gives them an opportunity to experience what they have learned in the classroom about pollution and wetlands.

Before the passive mine drainage treatment system was created about 19 years ago, Bob Hedin, owner of Hedin Environmental of Castle Shannon and one of the creators of the treatment site, said the water from the old Marchand Mine mine flowed across Lowber Road and into the creek, “where it hammered it (the stream) and devastated the creek,” Hedin said.

Now, the water that pours out of the bowels of the abandoned mine at a rate of about 1,000 gallons per minute, flows through the six ponds and constructed wetlands in about 40 to 50 hours. The iron oxide that settles in the ponds is dredged and dried in big piles at the site.

After it is cleaned and dried, Hedin’s company, Iron Oxide Recovery, has it moved to a customer or to a processing facility. He told the students it might end up as color for a crayon or for tinting concrete to a yellowish-brown sienna hue.

Austin Erhard, a watershed association member, impressed upon the students the important role treatment systems such as the one at Lowber and three others operated by the watershed, play in cleaning up the creek. The pollution has decreased to the extent that the stream, that once was fit only for bottom-feeders such as carp, can now be stocked with trout.

Hedin also reminded the students their generation is needed to pursue a career in environmental industries.

“It is very rewarding, and there is a great opportunity for you. We need young people” to do survey work, design projects and related work, Hedin said.

Vanessa Whipkey, executive director of the Sewickley Creek Watershed Association, said this educational program could prompt some students to consider a career in the field.

“I hope we may spark an interest in the students that this could be a field ‘I can get into.’ It (Field Day) shows you the point of it.”