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.

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The project will also include an educational aspect where children are taught about the importance of growing their own fruits and vegetables along with coal mining history of the Wyoming Valley and even nutrition. Laura Rinehimer, Watershed Outreach Education Specialist at EPCAMR, explained, “This project provides an opportunity for youth to learn about plants first-hand through engaging in the process of growing vegetables from seed to table.” Rinehimer is responsible for creating a multidisciplinary, standards aligned curriculum for the project that will be provided to area teachers in the targeted school districts we would like to work with in the Wyoming Valley.  In addition to the Growboxxes^© and gardening supplies, several iPads will also be distributed to local schools so that they can share their experiences with children around the world through a concurrent project taking place in Ethiopia. Claudia Meglin is managing the project for Inquiring Systems, Inc. “We are looking forward to deepening our collaboration with EPCAMR to empower communities that have suffered under the demise of capitalistic extraction”.  Additionally, a documentary will be filmed to monitor the growth of the project, run by videographer John Welsh.

The mission of the grant is to help youth in the coal region reclaim their backyards. This region was heavily extracted for Anthracite coal for nearly 200 years. Many of the miners lived in company houses and already spent the majority of their earned income at the company store through the use of scrips. In order to become more self-sustaining people grew their own foods in patchwork gardens. In doing so, they reclaimed their freedom from the mining companies. “While EPCAMR normally focuses on reclaiming land and polluted mine water, this project will allow us to reclaim the backyards of residents located in previously mining impacted areas and provide families with an option to garden together and grow some healthy food options much like the mining families of the past,” said Executive Director at EPCAMR, Bobby Hughes.

Today, children in the region face a different type of oppression. 58% of individuals lie below the poverty level. For families with no transportation, often times, the easiest and cheapest food options are fast food or processed food options from local convenient stores. The focus area for the project can be seen as a food desert in many ways and it is difficult for people without vehicles to make trips to grocery stores to obtain nutritious, fresh fruits and vegetables. By teaching kids to grow their own food, it will help reclaim the freedom to eat healthy and make informed nutrition choices.

EPCAMR plans to partner with local Luzerne County children in the 4^th grade class in the following schools and organizations: The Graham Academy, Wilkes-Barre Area, Nanticoke Area and Hanover Area. Mt. Zion Baptists Church youth and Good Shepherd Lutheran Church youth from the Greater Wilkes-Barre Area will also be involved. Staff will be reaching out to the School Districts and the Churches shortly. EPCAMR is patiently awaiting the arrival of 200 Growboxxes. If it is successful with the classrooms that we will be looking to work with, we will be making an appeal to Groasis to provide us with additional Growboxxes to get them to each of the other 4th grade classes in each of the school districts to reach even more youth and families in the Wyoming Valley. A pilot program will start in the fall with the full-blown program commencing in the spring.  For more information on the project, contact EPCAMR at (570) 371-3522.

A lemon tree in combination with melons using Growboxx technologies to flourish.

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Robert Hughes, EPCAMR Executive Director, and Ray Clarke, HBPS Chairman and Treasurer, stand with Charlie Jones and other members of Troop #152 in front of the Huber Breaker and memorial at the Miner;s Memorial Park.

The Groasis Waterboxx, an AquaPro Holland product developed in 2009 as a way to grow trees and plants in desert environments, serves as an “intelligent water incubator” that captures water from the air through condensation and rain. Due to the design of the device, the condensation is produced and captured without using any energy. Installing a Waterboxx begins with digging a 4-6 inch hole that allows the Waterboxx to sit at the surface. After digging, the hole should be filled with 5 gallons of water to help restore soil capillary systems and allow for better water retention. At this point, the Waterboxx can be installed and is ready for planting, with an 8-shaped notch at the top providing space for plant growth while reducing evaporation.

This diagram shows the interior of a Groasis Waterboxx. The Waterboxx allows water to be retained in its base, as shown in blue, which allows plants to grow in desert-like environments. The notch at the top, seen near the trunk of the tree, reduces evaporation.

The Huber Breaker Preservation Society‘s Miner’s Memorial Park is a great location to test and monitor the effectiveness of the Groasis Waterboxxes because of the high concentrations of culm and other coal waste in the soil. The culm acts similar to sand, allowing for little moisture retention, making it difficult for native plants to sustain life. The Waterboxxes, which are designed for environments with poor water retention, will help to solve this problem and allow for more variation in plant life on the Memorial Park property.

Ray Clarke, HBPS Chairman and Treasurer, helping Troop #152 scouts dig a Waterboxx hole after hitting the Engine House Foundation.

After EPCAMR obtained the funds to begin the reforestation project at the Miner’s Memorial Park, Charlie Jones, an Eagle Scout candidate, decided to organize his Boy Scout Troop #152, Forty-Fort, to assist EPCAMR. On August 3, 2013, work began at the site with EPCAMR staff, Ray Clarke – Huber Breaker Preservation Society Chairman and Treasurer, and members of Troop #152. The day consisted of digging holes for the installation of Waterboxxes, mulching and tending to various shrubs that already been planted at the site, and planting four fruit trees: pear, peach, plum, and black cherry. After the end of the project, EPCAMR installed 20 Waterboxxes that will be monitored for water content and tree growth monthly as part of research for the Regional Reforestation Planting Project funded by the ACCT and Groasis.

Troop #152 members install Waterboxx lids on top of the plum and pear trees at the Miner’s Memorial Park

The information will be valuable in determining the viability/value of using Waterboxxes. If they are deemed successful, as they have been over the last year, they will be included in other reforestation projects by EPCAMR.

EPCAMR Intern- David Svab places a Groasis Waterboxx into its freshly dug hole at Espy Run.

EPCAMR Executive Director- Robert Hughes plants a Groasis Waterboxx at Espy Run.

EPCAMR was again funded for a Phase II round of research funding and was provided with an additional 20 more Waterboxxes, of which 8 were planted at the Espy Run AMD Treatment Wetlands location, in Hanover Township in the Fall of 2013 by EPCAMR Watershed Outreach Intern David Svab and EPCAMR Executive Director, Robert Hughes, in partnership and with permission from the landowner, the Earth Conservancy. Due to the fast approaching Winter and a delay in getting the seedlings and trees delivered and in stock from the nursery that was used, EPCAMR will be continuing to plant an additional 12 Waterboxxes at the first sign of Spring.

This photo shows the newly planted Waterboxxes next to the settling ponds at the Espy Run AMD Treatment Facility.

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