Terence Ostrowski hiked through vegetation in Hanover Township last week to reach a marvel he will never tire of seeing — the clear water of Espy Run gently flowing toward the Nanticoke Creek and, eventually, the Susquehanna River.
This stream is unlike the many others winding through this region because it is brand new — the resurrection of a waterway that was erased seven decades ago when it became a victim of coal mining.
To convey why this achievement is worthy of understanding — and a recently announced environmental award — Ostrowski spread out a series of maps at the nonprofit Earth Conservancy headquarters in Ashley, where he serves as President/CEO.
An 1894 map showed Espy Run flowing from the Hanover Reservoir through the West Hanover section of Nanticoke along Espy Street and into Nanticoke Creek, he pointed out.
The stream still generally followed the same path on another map from 1939.
But on a 1950s map, the stream was interrupted and diverted due to strip mining at the Bliss Colliery. Mining created fractures in the earth, swallowing up the stream underground.
“It was disconnected from the watershed and never made its way down to the lower reaches. Instead it went into the strip pits,” Ostrowski said.
As a result, runoff from the Hanover Reservoir and remainder of the 200-square-mile watershed drained through the deep mines and resurfaced, heavily contaminated, through boreholes at the Askam pond area along Dundee Road, he said.
A 2001 study identified the severe water quality problems associated with Espy Run’s underground disappearance, which led to a 2005 assessment of the Nanticoke Creek Watershed and plans to reconstruct the waterway as it was intended.
A riparian forest buffer also was designed for the new channel to improve habitat and create a wildlife corridor to the top of the Wilkes-Barre Mountain, Earth Conservancy said.
Design, permitting and the securing of grants began in 2016 to build a new stream 6,000 linear feet long to channel water on the surface.
The stream path had to change slightly to avoid a residential area that had emerged in the original course since Espy Run was cut off, Ostrowski said.
Working with the state Department of Environmental Protection on permitting, Earth Conservancy agreed to design a channel that did not seem artificial, he said.
“It mirrors a natural stream, so it meanders, has pools and rifts and is heavily vegetated,” Ostrowski said.
The entire channel was lined with clay to prevent water infiltration below, and a mix of more than 1,500 coniferous and deciduous trees were planted along the reach as a buffer, he said.
Crews started construction on what would be the downstream end and worked their way up, he said.
They blocked off the eroded water path headed toward the mines and made the final connection to the new channel the end of 2022.
Elizabeth Hughes, Earth Conservancy’s communications director, said she will never forget the moment the new channel was activated and describes it to anyone who will listen.
“To hear the stream burbling through the rocks was mind-blowing,” Hughes said. “It’s just really incredible.”
Overall the project was $2.7 million and funded through state and federal grants and more than $500,000 from Earth Conservancy.
The nonprofit is working with the North Branch Land Trust and state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to convey 1,400 acres that includes the Espy Run watershed to the state so it can become part of the Pinchot State Forest, Ostrowski said.
The Northeast Environmental Partners recently announced it has selected Earth Conservancy to receive an annual environmental partnership award this fall for the Espy Run stream restoration project.
“The newly intact channel, with uninterrupted flow, has improved water quality, mitigated erosion and sedimentation, reestablished aquatic and terrestrial habitat and transformed a blighted area into a green, natural space,” its announcement said.
With the Espy Run project under its belt, Earth Conservancy has initiated plans to tackle a similar above-ground restoration of the upper reach of Nanticoke Creek. That creek was similarly altered and diverted through Truesdale coal mining. Officials announced the receipt of a $1.96 million U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Brownfields and Land Revitalization Program grant in June to start that project.
Nanticoke Creek is another main contributor to the acid mine drainage released in Askam, Ostrowski said. That project will require a much longer nearly 11,000 linear feet of channel and cost an estimated $18 million, he said.
Ostrowski said these problems exist because mining sites did not have to be reclaimed or treated to correct acid mine drainage at the owner’s expense before federal regulations in the 1970s.
“Multiple streams in the area were similarly impacted by mining,” he said.