May 10, 2018 3 min read

Jacob Shoup said Raccoon Creek used to flow clear.

“You can catch smallmouth (bass) in it,” said Shoup, 36, of Hanover Township.

“Bald eagles, everything. I kayaked on it every spring.”

Now, he said, “I wouldn’t touch it.”

For the last three months or so, a portion of the creek starting near Joffre Cherry Valley Road in Smith Township has been a fluorescent orange. The color gradually gets more diluted as the creek flows north near Raccoon Creek State Park and more streams feed into it, Shoup said.

The Day-Glo sheen on the creek’s surface is caused by iron in runoff from nearby mining sites. Heavy rainfall – like the chain of storms that caused floods throughout the region earlier this year – can displace water sitting in pools inside old mines and send acid mine drainage into Raccoon Creek and other area waterways.

“While many of these are known discharges that occur regularly throughout the year across the region because of historic mining activity, they are more noticeable right now,” said Lauren Fraley, spokeswoman for the Department of Environmental Protection, in an email. “The water levels in many of the area mine pools are high due to abnormally high rainfall, discharging more (acid mine drainage) into area streams.”

She also said the agency has received an uptick of reports about the acid mine drainage as more people head outdoors.

Shoup mostly grew up in Bulger and now lives a few miles down the road in Bavington.

“It was like this my entire childhood,” Shoup said of the creek. “Then they got sewerage, put in sediment ponds.

“There should be some treatment,” he added about the current conditions.

More than 60 tons of iron and another 8 tons of aluminum used to seep into the creek’s headwaters every year from the abandoned Joffre Branch 2 mine. In 2003 and 2004, the nonprofit Independence Conservancy and Raccoon Creek Watershed Association spearheaded efforts to build a vertical flow wetland – “a passive system which removes the iron compounds and acidity” – and improve the whole watershed, according to the conservancy’s website.

Members of the conservancy couldn’t be reached on Thursday.

Shoup said Raccoon Creek has been clear – except for the occasional day or two of discoloration following a rainstorm – for the past 10 or 15 years.

Raccoon Creek isn’t the only affected body of water. Local CBS affiliate KDKA-TV reported Tuesday a creek in Churchill, Allegheny County, had turned cloudy, and “it almost looks like the rocks below have been glazed with something that looks like mayonnaise.” The DEP attributed the discoloration of the water there to aluminum.

Jennifer Dann, watershed specialist with the Washington County Conservation District, said iron, aluminum, sulfates and other compounds in runoff from mines can be detrimental to aquatic life at high enough levels.

“When the streams flow that color, most things that live in the stream – the fish, the aquatic insects, the macro-invertebrates – most of them can’t survive,” Dann said.

She hasn’t studied the present conditions in Raccoon Creek, and wasn’t sure when it might clear up.

“I think (people are) concerned about what does this mean for their potential to use the stream for recreation this year,” she said. “Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait and see … especially in regards to fishing.”