We are so hard on our planet

Pennsylvania has been blessed with beautiful mountains and streams but it seems that in their pursuit of the resources that come with the package, they have done just about everything possible to mess it all up. The part of the Allegheny's I was recently in used to be all hemlock. The following is a quote from East Fork Revisited, the memoir of Alfred Borelli, who grew up in nearby Potter County.

"The foundation for all of this commercial activity was the seemingly endless forests of hemlock trees. Mountains were denuded of these magnificent trees. There was no regard for water runoff or decimation of habitat for the many varieties of creatures who lived in these forests. Hemlock was king, green gold, there for the taking."

"In the space of a very few years the "endless" forests were gone. The party was over. The tram roads were pulled up, and like a giant receding wave the economy of the region went bust. Gone were the stave mill, the roundhouse, and the blacksmith shop. The exhausted forest had no more to give. The stately hemlocks were gone for good and in their place a second growth of trees, with a mixture of species began to dress the bare mountains. The new growth was lush but economically unimportant. By the time I was born, the mountains, which were the foothills of the Allegheny Chain, had hid the ravishment of the early part of the century."

Then there was mining. The photo above this post shows Babb Creek flowing into Pine Creek. The following is from the Pennsylvania Department of Natural Resources, publication called The Resource, published on-line in 1998. The contribution is by Denise Kelly:

As a result of a decline in Pennsylvania's extensive coal mining activities in the 1800s, there are now many abandoned small mining towns as well as associated mine tailing "spoil piles" throughout the state. One of these towns was the town of Klondike, located southeast of Wellsboro in the Tioga State Forest. Mine tailings (a spoils pile) at Klondike consisted of a large, unsightly pile of shale, waste coal, and sand cut with large gullies which funneled water into the Babb Creek watershed.

Years of unrestricted acid mine drainage (AMD) adversely affected the water quality in this watershed. As a result, the Babb Creek Cleanup Project was established in 1990 to develop an AMD treatment system. This project represents a cooperative effort between the old DER (now DCNR and DEP), several other state conservation organizations, and the Pennsylvania Environmental Defense Foundation (EDF). Funding is provided by the EDF which also acts as the overall coordinator of this ongoing project.

In order to help improve the water quality within the watershed, the Klondike spoil pile was regraded, and drainage terraces were constructed to maintain a stable slope. Additionally, alkaline sludge from the tannery in Westfield, Pa. was mixed with the spoil in order to create a less acidic site. Seed mix was then applied to this surface, and the annual rye grass quickly took root and began to thrive. The Klondike project appears to be successful, increasing the pH of the stream in some areas from 3.5 to 7.0.

Acid mine drainage is a ubiquitous problem throughout the coal regions of Pennsylvania. Although the Klondike spoil pile is just one element of the Babb Creek cleanup project, reduction of AMD from this area and noticeable water quality improvements to Babb Creek and the lower Pink Creek valley are a tribute to the coordinated effort between agencies to improve the natural resources of the state.

A few years ago, some people we met down in Pennsylvania told us of another plan to add limestone bars to the creek bed to help neutralize the acidity of the water which flowed over them. I have no idea if that project ever happened, or how accurate that information was.

I do know that the trout fishery in this section of Pine Creek remains a "put-and-take" trout fishery. I don't know if the water quality has improved enough for the trout to hold over and survive winters, but they don't seem to be reproducing. In fact stocking is ubiquitous in the area, except for a smaller number of streams like Slate Run and Cedar Run which are managed as wild trout fisheries. The fellow who runs the store and fly shop in Slate Run told us he has personally bought and stocked brown trout to enhance the Pine Creek fishery in the area of his shop. All this seems perfectly reasonable to the fishermen in the area, and in fact I can tell you that in my experience, you see lots of fishermen on the stocked streams and very few on the wild trout streams.

Once, East Texas Red and I were in the Poconos chasing trout, and we stopped into a local fly shop to buy this and that and talk to the proprietor. This fellow suggested we fish a local creek...but he said we had to walk up two miles. Apparently at the start of season, they stock the whole creek, and the local fishermen start fishing them out at the bridge and work upstream, taking out all the stockers along the way. At the point in the season we visited, it was necessary to walk two miles upstream to find a trout. We spent the rest of the trip trying to find a wild trout stream. We finally found a lovely little stream in a valley filled with rhododendron, loaded with small wild brown trout.

One night a the campsite, Idaho Ken and I were enjoying a cold beer in the rain, and Ken told me about an enterprising fly tier who invented a fly that imitated the liver pellets they use to feed trout in hatcheries. Necessity, it seems, really is the mother of invention.