Born and raised in Kingston, PA, Maria Gereda’s academic and professional pursuits initially led her to the state of Texas where she graduated from University of Texas at El Paso in 2022. Shortly after, she moved to Austin, Texas, to serve with the Texas Conservation Corps as an AmeriCorps member with their Conservation and Disaster Crew.
Our readers can look back at a previous news article from the Summer of 2025 when she joined us as a Summer Watershed GIS Outreach/Education Intern.
EPCAMR Welcomes Kingston native, Maria Gereda as a Summer Watershed GIS Outreach/Education Intern
Her service term led her to discover and pursue an education in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Maria completed her online GIS certification through Austin Community College (ACC) where she presented her final capstone project to students and staff at the end of last year. Her project applied GIS tools to evaluate the spatial distribution of past tire and trash dumpsites remediated by EPCAMR staff and volunteers over the last 20 years. She will be adding additional cleanups that she’s researching in past reports by EPCAMR from it’s first decade of existence once she can retrieve the reports from EPCAMR archived folders. By examining the sites’ proximity to sensitive environmental features as well as their potential impacts on surrounding communities, the analysis provided a clearer picture of the risks associated with tire dumping.
This project was an effort to bring attention to EPCAMR’s mission and achievements as well as highlight the environmental issues that burden communities in Northeastern and North Central PA. Her work will be highlighted later in the year, around Earth Week in April at a 1 Day Educational Forum that the Executive Director is planning called, “Illegal Dumping: Let’s Talk Trash! Tired of Seeing Tossed Tires, Yet?” Planning for the event is underway and more details will be available as soon as we secure our venue in the Wyoming Valley.
Bobby and Maria dropping off discarded Tires at The Tires Guys Shop following the Dundee Road and Nanticoke Creek Cleanup in the Fall of 2025.
Maria’s time spent studying GIS and working under the guidance of EPCAMR’s esteemed staff that have an abundance of knowledge and years of experience in surface and underground mine mapping as well as mine pool modeling in 3D. Their transfer of knowledge and training has equipped her with the necessary tools to start her next chapter as a GIS Watershed Outreach Specialist with EPCAMR spending the majority of her time on the workload for the PA DEP Mine Subsidence Insurance Program. She started right before the Christmas Holidays in 2025.
Photo of Surface, Underground, and Cross Section Map
Maria originally joined EPCAMR part-time in April 2025. After a few months, she was given the opportunity to intern full-time through Conservation Legacy’s Stewards Individual Placement Program as an AmeriCorps VISTA for 6 months.
During her six month internship, Maria assisted staff with water quality monitoring, advanced to a North Atlantic Aquatic Connectivity Collaborative (NAACC) Level 1 Coordinator just like her Supervisor, Bobby Hughes has completed and a former AmeriCorps VISTA Morgan Romanowski had achieved, attended multiple networking events and conferences, helped manage volunteers, assisted in coordinating cleanup events, and much more. She is incredibly grateful for the guidance and knowledge she has received during her time at EPCAMR and could not be happier to continue serving her community with them.
Maria and Sarah taking measurements of culverts for Aquatic Organism Passage (AOP) in the Bowman Creek watershed.
She stated, “I’ve learned more about my hometown by working alongside EPCAMR than I have in all the years I’ve lived here. Through their mentorship, Mike, Bobby, Frank, Shawnese, and Mark, have given me the tools to make an impact on the places and causes, I care about so deeply.” In her new role, Maria will give her assistance in the MSI program by scanning, cataloging, digitizing, georeferencing, and mosaicking mine maps.
Maria and Kayla out with Bobby performing macroinvertebrate surveys in the Bowman Creek watershed with our partners, including the Stanley Cooper Chapter Trout Unlimited.
Although her online schooling has ended, Maria is already planning what courses she will take next to become a greater asset to the EPCAMR team. She plans to gain her FAA Part 107 remote drone pilot license in the near future while continuing to build her GIS skillset.
Bobby stated, “Maria has been a tremendous asset to EPCAMR since she got here as an intern and then again as an AmeriCorps VISTA volunteer, where she committed herself to 6 months of community service to our non-profit and our coalfield communities up through the Winter of 2025. She’s learned a great deal along the way and picked up on everything from monitoring, water sampling, flow monitoring, culvert and bridge assessments, mine mapping, and helping with volunteer recruitment, which she has had plenty of experience doing in her previous earlier positions in Texas. I’m glad she’s back home in the Wyoming Valley contributing to her hometown Valley and the surrounding coalfield communities.”
Bobby laughed and said, “She’s very funny and laughs at all my jokes and we’ve had a great time out in the field on so many occasions. She has had to keep me from straying off the beaten paths on a number of occasions too far from the group when we are sampling because I like to wander and take photos to document our days in the field. I joke that she has had to pick up where Morgan Romanowski left off when she would do the same thing to make sure I wasn’t getting lost for too long on our field excursions and watershed assessments. She always has a smile on her face when helping others in the community. I tell her she gets it from her father, Popi Rod Gereda, who has been a long-time friend of colleague of mine since Maria was a teenager. I’m sure he would agree!”
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