West Branch Susquehanna Restoration Coalition


About the West Branch Recovery Benchmark Project

Mario Carrello, Department of Environmental Protection

Twenty-six years ago everyone took it for granted that the West Branch Susquehanna River was a dead waterway destroyed by acid mine drainage (AMD).  At that time, however, the 1977 SMCRA regulations were finally put into effect when PA gained primacy in 1982.  Maybe we shouldn't have been surprised to hear recent reports that fish were returning to the river, but we were.  A journey starts with a small step forward—and we’ve taken many of these small steps like changing mining practices, enforcing water treatment requirements, reclaiming abandoned mine lands, and partnering with local citizens and volunteers to initiate and participate in clean-up projects.  So maybe we shouldn't be surprised that these many small steps forward have started to return environmental benefits. The West Branch re-evaluation project will help us see just how far we’ve come, celebrate our newfound success and see where we still need to go. Our plan is to get updated water quality and biological data to document the current conditions in the river and its tributaries. The sampling will quantify the improvements in water quality due to past and current AMD remediation projects and will also establish a current benchmark to measure the environmental benefits of any future proposed projects.