Maria Gereda, Kingston, PA  from the Wyoming Valley, and Dennis Dukinas, Dallas, PA, from the Back Mountain, both natives of Luzerne County, will be hosted and supervised by EPCAMR until the end of December 2025 to work with us to provide volunteer services to add some capacity to the organization starting yesterday.

Bobby Hughes, EPCAMR Executive Director exclaimed, “We are thrilled to have both of these environmental and conservation professionals join us for the 20 plus weeks through the end of the year to assist us with a number of direct service projects that we currently have underway with a limited staff, who have the passion and commitment to follow through on a number of our awarded grants and professional services throughout the EPCAMR Region.”

Bobby went on to say, “I can’t say enough about Conservation Legacy, OSMRE, and especially AmeriCorps (State and National) and AmeriCorps VISTA and their support for our work. April Elkins Badtke has been a long-time friend and colleague for over 2 decades when the original Appalachian Coal Country Watershed Team was formed to provide similar support to non-profit environmental organizations that were and are still working in coal country up and down the Appalachian Mountain Range. She is a consummate professional at Conservation Legacy who never has had a problem responding to my emails or messages at all hours of the night or on weekends and listening to my concerns about AmeriCorps and the funding cuts that we had to endure several months ago. We currently have Morgan Romanowski, Scott Township, Lackawanna County working with us through the end of September 2025 to finish up her year term as an AmeriCorps (State and National) volunteer fellow GIS Watershed Outreach Specialist and Mark Jones, who initially was an Energy Community Assistance Program (ECAP) Community Development Coordinator volunteer with AmeriCorps VISTA, who had to placed into Conservation Legacy’s AmeriCorps VISTA Program. He will be volunteering with us until the end of December 2025.”

Maria will continue her work with EPCAMR as a GIS Watershed Outreach Specialist through the Stewards Individual Placement Program. In her new role, she will help promote food security by encouraging the creation of community gardens in coalfield communities and working with local organizations to plant, maintain, and harvest them as one project that EPCAMR has already started on with the distribution of biodegradable Waterboxxes from Groasis that we have been giving away for free to groups that are interested. Community gardens were very common in what were called “patches” in the coal towns around the Anthracite and Bituminous regions. She will also support affordable housing development by advocating for new housing developments to consider being built on reclaimed abandoned mine lands. She will also continue to engage and assist with  environmental education experiences for students in school districts throughout the region that are under the poverty level.

Dennis and Maria are “kicking for macroinvertebrates on Little Shickshinny Creek in Shickshinny Borough as a part of our Coldwater Heritage Conservation Plan where we are developing a watershed assessment for the Shickshinny Creek Watershed and Paddy and Rocky Run.

Bobby said, “Maria, a Luzerne County native, from Kingston, PA in the Wyoming Valley, joined EPCAMR just two months ago as a part-time Summer Watershed GIS Outreach and Education Intern. In that short time, she has gained a wide range of hands-on experience that will serve her well in her expanding role. She was a natural fit for this longer term position that could give her full-time hours under this program.” 

During her internship, Maria earned a certification in the Non-Tidal Streams Protocol through the North Atlantic Aquatic Connectivity Collaborative (NAACC). She worked closely with EPCAMR Staff to scan and catalog both surface and underground mine maps for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Mine Subsidence Insurance Program. She also participated in field watershed assessments, surveying bridges and culverts across the Shickshinny Creek, Paddy Run, and Rocky Run tributaries in the southern Wyoming Valley—work that directly supports EPCAMR’s ongoing watershed assessment efforts in the Northern Anthracite Coal Fields funded by the PA American Water Charitable Foundation and the PA Council of Trout Unlimited‘s Coldwater Heritage Planning grant program. 

Maria also contributed to community outreach by assisting with water quality monitoring, stream flow measurements, and abandoned mine drainage (AMD) evaluations. She also helped engage local youth in environmental learning during educational events like tie-dye workshops. Her professional network has expanded by attending conferences, including the Abandoned Mine Pools as Beneficial Resources event at Bucknell University and the 2025 ARIPPA Annual Conference.

EPCAMR Staff conducted an AMD Tie Dye T-shirt Workshop for PA Inclusive in Pittston with our recycled iron oxide pigment. Dennis assisted Morgan Romanowski, Mark Jones, and Bobby Hughes in putting on the workshop for the youth and adults.

In addition, Maria will contribute to the development of “land that channels rainfall” resource maps, combining data on demographics, economic indicators, and workforce development with information on local trade schools and community colleges. She will conduct short community surveys and polls via EPCAMR’s social media platforms, update and expand the EPCAMR Partnership Database across 16 counties within our region alone, with our Community Development Coordinator Mark Jones, and will assist in identifying grant opportunities and other organizations and foundations that might be suitable for preparing future grant applications. Her work as well and Dennis’s work will be closely aligned with the goals and objectives laid out by EPCAMR’s Strategic Planning and Education/Science Committees.

Currently enrolled in an online GIS course through Austin Community College, Maria is eager to apply what she’s learning to the real-world challenges facing Pennsylvania’s coalfield communities. Her passion, commitment, and growing expertise make her a valuable asset to EPCAMR’s mission of revitalizing the region through education, outreach, sustainable redevelopment of our abandoned mine lands, and restoration of our watersheds impacted by abandoned mine drainage (AMD).

Maria participated in an AMD Tour in Schuylkill County with EPCAMR where she was able to visit the infamous “Ashland Fountain”, which is a constantly overflowing AMD discharge from the Bast and Continental Collieries that drains to the Mahanoy Creek watershed as explained by Bobby Hughes, EPCAMR Executive Director.

Dennis Dukinas, Dallas, PA, in the Back Mountain of Luzerne County is currently completing my final course at Bloomsburg University, where he is finishing his degree in Environmental, Geological, and Geographic Sciences with a Minor in Hydrology.

Bobby shared that “Throughout his academic career, he has gained valuable hands-on experience both outdoors as an Eagle Scout and indoors, working with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) desktop environments. He has already used mapping technologies such as ArcGIS Pro and ERDAS Imagine remote sensing imagery and software to create various hypothetical scenarios in college and now gets to take those lessons learned from the hypothetical to the real world watersheds that EPCAMR works in throughout the coalfields. His experience already includes georeferencing, story mapping, census data analysis, and using tools like ArcGIS Pro Online’s ModelBuilder. He already has earned certifications through ArcGIS Online and holds a Watershed Management Training Certification. He’s also already received a free Aquatic Organism Protocol Training from EPCAMR while a volunteering two weeks before his official internship from NAACC. Maria already has this Certificate as well, however, both of them have to assess 20 culverts and or bridges before they can become a field Lead Observer.”

In his role as a GIS Watershed Outreach Specialist, prior to his start today, he’s already gained valuable experience assessing water quality, conducting visual habitat assessments, identifying, counting, and classifying macroinvertebrates as a part of the biological assessment monitoring EPCAMR conducts for our watersheds assessments, and he’s learned how to use our field photometer and YSI Multi-parameter probe already to perform chemistry tests in-stream. He will be involved in a number of projects that were highlighted by Bobby Hughes on their first day of orientation, along with some training provided to them in EarthVision, where they will be helping to digitize mine maps for another project of ours in the Bear Creek Watershed, Dauphin County and creating 3D surface and underground mine pool models to help us calculate volumetrics of water and coal remaining a region of the Southern Anthracite Coalfields. 

Bobby joked with Dennis before this week to get as much sleep in over the Holiday Weekend because he will be shifting from volunteering a few days a week to a full 40 hours a week through the end of the year. “He was in this morning ready to go and get some administrative paperwork out of the way, hear about the myriad of projects that we are going to be working on, work on his background article notes for this release, and to begin his initial training on EarthVision with Mike. I’m really looking forward to the energy, enthusiasm, willingness to jump in and learn from the Staff about all of important work in the region and the value that their efforts are going to have in the communities that we are working in that we have maintained positive, trusting relationships with, for nearly 3 decades.”

Michael Hewitt, EPCAMR Program Manager and Frank Sindaco, GIS Watershed Outreach Specialist is teaching Maria and Dennis how to use our field monitoring equipment at the Askam AMD Maelstrom Oxidizer Treatment System on Earth Conservancy’s property along Dundee Road in the Nanticoke Creek watershed.

The post EPCAMR Hosts 2 Stewards Individual Placement Program (SIPP) GIS Watershed Outreach Specialist AmeriCorps (State and National) Interns Administered by Conservation Legacy through the end of December 2025 appeared first on epcamr.org.

Figure 1. A freshman class reflecting on their day of service at the Community Garden, sitting among the beds, compost, and water collection system.

Expanding Partnerships 

In two years, the campus group has expanded from four students and two staff members to over 20 students and six staff members. In addition, partnerships have been created with engineering classes, the engineering club, the Hispanic Outreach Program, the Juvenile Mentoring Program, the campus volunteering center, Campus Ministry, Crestwood High School, Coughlin High School, the Hildebrant Learning Center, Ruth’s Place, and The Wilkes-Barre Department of Health. Jessica Britten, a founder and our Winter Semester Intern, she has been able to develop a partnership with the King’s College Community Garden that will allow for the students to also try out this new innovation in the Spring.

EPCAMR is joining and supporting them in their efforts to unite the community and promote sustainable lifestyles by donating boxes from the Growboxx project, which will be placed in one of ten of the garden’s plots to be utilized for their second harvest.

EPCAMR Involvement 

Staff members Denise, Laura, Robert, and Shawnese have been working with The Growboxx project from Groasis, an extremely innovative Dutch company, by sharing the initiative with elementary schools in the community. The project promotes sustainability in every aspect by upholding the company’s goal of, “‘low cost, less water, faster growth”’. EPCAMR is fortunate to be a part of bringing their innovative sustainability tactics to high poverty area school districts throughout the Wyoming Valley, Luzerne County, PA.

The Community Garden could not be more thrilled to learn from EPCAMR and share the international initiative with King’s College and the surrounding community.  Each Growboxx increases the survival rate of plant species by 90% while also using 90% less water. Following EPCAMR’s suggestion, the garden will be growing native raspberry plants along with herbs in these “intelligent buckets”.

Figure 2. A Growboxx that will be used in the garden in support of their second harvest.

Growing Community

Bringing this project to the garden will build bridges between different populations in the city and surrounding municipalities, now stretching as far as the Netherlands. Creating relationships and continuity between people is a goal of the garden’s and creating collective change in the community through environmental initiatives has been a goal of EPCAMR’s. This mutualistic partnership is guaranteed to make a lasting impact on our combined communities.

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