Paul Ziemkiewicz has been working to clean up streams for decades, but the discovery that acid mine drainage or AMD, holds the elements used in electronics has made that effort not only noble, but potentially profitable. The most valuable — neodymium, praseodymium, terbium and dysprosium — that make high-performance magnets and others that fire up flat screen televisions, smart phones and LED lights, can be found in the leftover gunk from coal mines that turns streams orange and sterile.
Ziemkiewicz, a self-described “water guy,” said acid mine pollution is the biggest water problem in the state. Deckers Creek is a good example of the generational trauma that West Virginia’s streams have endured.
Thirty years ago, the nearly 25-mile length of Deckers Creek ran red all the way from the headwaters to the Monongahela River. But work by the Friends of Decker’s Creek, WVDEP and WVU has restored most of the creek.
Now, the abandoned mine at Richard is the last big source of AMD. It dumps into the otherwise clean stream, where fish now glide beneath the surface — at least until they get to the pollution — and farther upstream from the mine, trout are making a comeback.
“It’s the last big insult to Deckers Creek,” Ziemkiewicz said of the plume of acid mine drainage that still flows into the larger stream. And it’s here where the concrete arch of a brand-new bridge and the hum of equipment signal that something is happening within sight of the cut stone entrance to the mine where generations of men crawled on their hands and knees to remove the coal from the 48-inch Freeport seam.
Abandoned in the 1950s, the huge expanse of the underground mine complex stretches from Dellslow, just east of Sabraton, to a hillside above Cheat Lake. As the sandstone formation above the mine entrance dips toward the west, so the does the coal seam below it.
Nearly extending to I-68, Ziemkiewicz said the mine below this point is flooded. The water looks clear as it rolls out of the large pipe adjacent to the entrance, but in a four-foot-deep concrete trench buttressed by blocks on each side, the iron oxides leave a thick, orange mass, warning of its toxicity.
