EPCAMR’s grant coordination will be conducted in the Fall of 2020 with students from the Wilkes-Barre Area School District as we continue to work with Mike Corcoran, who has been a long-time partner with EPCAMR on many grants over the last few decades.  Mike will help to decide which classes can participate in the grant in the Elementary School System.

“This grant will help us build stewardship for our watersheds in our local youth and their families. We recognize that children are our future leaders, so it is crucial to teach them about local environmental issues and help them understand they have the power to directly help,” says Environmental Educator at EPCAMR, Laura Rinehimer, who is leading the project. EPCAMR Program Manager Michael Hewitt added, “It’s important for kids to understand what they do. Their habits can greatly impact our environment and society, in general. If we learn good habits early, it’s not so hard for us to change them later.” 

The original grant, which consisted of students going on an interactive field trip and leading their own action project, needed to be changed due to Covid-19. Instead of being able to physically take students to locations in our watersheds, EPCAMR will be creating boxed kits to send to the students with everything they need for a virtual tour. Accompanying videos will be created to allow students to “visit” the locations from the safety of their homes. These boxes include an informative guided nature journal, an original board game created by EPCAMR staff, and other materials to complete science exploration activities. Laura Rinehimer stated, “We want the kits to be a hands-on way for children to have fun exploring and learning about their local environment so that they can fall in love with nature in their own communities and feel empowered to protect it.”

Students from the Bear Creek Charter School learning about how to identify macroinvertebrates with EPCAMR.

The kits will teach children about the different types of pollution impacting our watersheds, emphasizing abandoned mine discharge (AMD) leading to iron oxide deposits in our water. This is harmful to aquatic life, coating the gills of small fish, inadvertent drinking of the polluted mine water by small animals, reducing light needed for photosynthesis in aquatic plants and algae, and leading to sediment buildup which smothers food sources and spawning beds. The emphasis, however, will be about the solutions to our environmental problems. Michael Hewitt stated, “We find it important to treat mine drainage and other nonpoint source pollution at its source in the headwater tributaries to limit the impacts of dead zones and sediment downstream and eventually to the Chesapeake Bay.”

EPCAMR Executive Director Bobby Hughes with some excited and enthused fellow students from the Heights Murray Elementary School in the Wilkes-Barre Area School District at an outdoor Environmental Education Program at Francis Slocum State Park.

Students will learn about active and passive treatment systems used to reduce the AMD entering our waterways. They will also learn about ways to directly help keep our waters clean, such as protecting and planting riparian buffer zones, conducting streamside cleanups, and making their voices heard in future environmental litigation. Cleanup materials will be included in the kits so that students can make a difference in their own communities. Families are encouraged to send footage of litter cleanups so that EPCAMR can compile them into one video showing the powerful synergistic impact of many people making small positive changes.

Students on an AMD Tour to the Audenreid AMD Treatment System in the Catawissa Creek Watershed.

Executive Director of EPCAMR, Bobby Hughes said, “EPCAMR teaches area youth that their local neighborhoods are a part of nature and the environment when they don’t often see “outside” as a part of their watershed address. We do our best to give them our place-based education philosophy. Our goal is to provide them meaningful outdoor learning experiences so that they can connect with their surrounding landscapes. No matter where they live in the Wilkes-Barre Area School District they are indirectly tied to the Chesapeake Bay through the Susquehanna River and its headwater tributaries.” 

Contact Laura Rinehimer, EPCAMR Environmental Educator for project details @ 570-371-3522 or lrinehimer@epcamr.org.

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Robert Hughes, EPCAMR Executive Director, receives the $5,000 donation on behalf of EPCAMR & WPCAMR

In the past, applications were submitted for AMD projects, educational efforts, outreach and awareness programs, operation and maintenance of AMD treatment systems, and educational signage, among others. These projects help the AMD impacted watersheds. All applicants support ARIPPA and their mission to remove waste coal piles in our communities, convert it into renewable energy, and reuse the coal ash at mine reclamation sites. The groups awarded funding maintain diverse partnerships and secure various funding sources to complete projects with EPCAMR and WPCAMR. All of the applicants want clean water, an improved environment, and a better quality of life for their communities and the fisheries they are working to protect across Pennsylvania.

In Eastern Pennsylvania, EPCAMR awarded three projects for the year of 2015. First is the Mehoopany Creek Watershed Association (MCWA), who will be receiving $800 to cover the cost of 50 tons of high calcium carbonate limestone sand needed to treat the acidic conditions of the south branch of Mehoopany Creek, which is not only impacted by AMD, but also acid rain deposition in the headwaters.

Limestone sand pile

Askam AMD Treatment System

Second is the Earth Conservancy (EC), who will be receiving $1,200 to design and build a wayside environmental education exhibit for the Askam AMD Borehole Maelstrom Oxidizer Treatment System, located in Hanover Township, along Nanticoke Creek. EC will partner with students and teachers from the Wilkes-Barre Area School District to create several points of interest and design elements at the AMD treatment site to be used by students throughout the Wyoming Valley that take tours provided by EPCAMR and EC. The students will tour the site, while learning about the AMD treatment system, mine pools, abandoned mine land reclamation, wetlands, wildlife habitat. They will then design the content and locations of the exhibits.

Third, and finally, is the McGlynn Learning Center, who will be awarded $500 to partner with Home Depot to build bluebird boxes for abandoned mine lands and AMD sites throughout the Wyoming Valley, as well as for their own community housing developments.

Bluebird box

McGlynn Learning Center youth

The funds will be used for transportation, supplies, and the creation of EPCAMR’s iron oxide wood stain to paint some of the bird boxes, while others will be painted. These bluebird boxes are being donated by Home Depot and will be used to allow for increased wildlife habitat and diversity of bird populations within their complexes and out on some of the AMD sites that will be visited by the students. The McGlynn Learning Center has been serving vulnerable children since 1988. The Center provides after-school funding for tutoring, recreational, and cultural activities at no cost to the children or families that live within the low-income housing town homes. EPCAMR has a long history of supporting the Center that goes back nearly two decades.

Remediation projects are costly and long-term endeavors, with costs averaging between $10-20,000 per acre, according to the Pennsylvania Mining Reclamation Advisory Board. The ARIPPA Reclamation Awards are designed to help watershed groups continue their volunteer efforts toward improving our environment.

Organized in 1989, ARIPPA is a non-profit trade association representing alternative energy plants that remove coal refuse from AML areas, convert it into alternative energy, and use the ash byproduct to reclaim thousands of acres of mine-scarred lands and hundreds of miles of formerly dead streams, without any expenditure of tax dollars. To date, over 212 million tons of coal refuse has been converted into alternative energy by member plants. ARIPPA uses Circulating Fluidized Bed (CFB) technology, one of the cleanest methods available today.

The unique nature of ARIPPA’s environmental efforts, combined with the desire to coordinate these efforts with “hands-on” environmentally-oriented groups and governmental agencies, symbolizes its commitment to improving the nation’s landscape and environment. Updates and further information on the “coal refuse to alternative energy” industry can be found by using the links below.

Website:                             www.arippa.org

LinkedIn:                            www.linkedin.com/ARIPPA.org

Facebook:                          www.facebook.com/ARIPPA.org

Twitter:                               www.twitter.com/ARIPPAORG

YouTube:                             www.youtube.com/user/environmentalrenewal

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In 2012, EPCAMR built a large mobile kiln for demonstration purposes in environmental education programs to showcase how oxides can be recycled from AMD. Funds were donated to EPCAMR by the Wilkes-Barre Area School District after the kiln construction to continue to use at other local school districts. This kiln and another smaller kiln, built for the Solomon-Plains Elementary School, has allowed EPCAMR to educate elementary students across the EPCAMR Region. The reason for the design was due to the need for a more efficient way of drying metal oxides collected from local mine drainage that is then utilized for education programs to make AMD Tie-Dye t-shirts, Iron oxide chalk, and paint pigment and wood stain for local artists. This project brings EPCAMR a bit off the grid by reducing the utilization of a soil oven, which consumes a fair amount of electricity to dry the oxides for only a small amount of dried oxide.

EPCAMR Program Manager, Mike Hewitt, designed a system that relieves the oven process. The solar kiln runs off of a 45-watt solar panel system and is made out of mostly recycled materials: motorcycle battery, 12 volt computer fan, single pane storm windows, T-111 wooden siding, and 2x4s. The computer fan is run by the solar panels to remove any excess moisture within the kiln. The inside of the kiln is painted black to absorb as much heat from the sun as possible. The larger kiln is approximately 4′ x 6′, with two hinged doors in the back for loading in the oxides. It rolls on wheels for easy outside access. The solar kiln can dry 8 cake pans at one time, as compared to the two cookie sheets the oven can dry at one time. Within 4 hours, on an 80 degree day, the kiln can reach an inside temperature of 120 degrees. The solar kiln can dry 40 pounds of oxides a day, as compared to 1 pound a day using the oven.

EPCAMR places hydroxides that are about 95% liquid rust into the cake pans and allows for the heat energy to dry them naturally. EPCAMR Staff, interns, and volunteers then sifts the oxide powder to remove any leaf litter or sticks and packages it up to be sold through the EPCAMR Online Store. Proceeds from the Store support our education and outreach programs as well as general operations of the organization.

The smaller solar kiln was provided to the Solomon-Plains Elementary School, who are consistently taking part in environmental programs with EPCAMR. There is a great need for environmental education for students within the Wilkes-Barre School District, who are among the lowest poverty level in Luzerne County, PA. The students can now dry and process their own oxides for when EPCAMR comes to conduct education programs. Other local schools, including Greater Nanticoke Area Elementary and Wilkes-Barre Area Elementary, have also seen the solar kiln in action.

A novelty of this project is that it uses zero use of electricity for the project, unless we produce pigments of Anthracite Red or Silverbrook Purple, which need to be dried in the soil oven after the solar kiln in order to get their darker hues. EPCAMR estimates the electricity used to power the soil oven costs approximately $120/year, just to dry the oxide from the Yellow Boy pigment to Anthracite Red. It costs EPCAMR nothing to utilize the solar kiln to dry the oxide to Yellow Boy.

AMD Pigments

The EPCAMR “Mobile Recycled Solar Kiln for Processing and Drying Oxides from AMD” project was funded by the PPL Empowering Educators Grant, in partnership with the Wilkes-Barre Area School District, PA DEP Environmental Education Program, Earth Conservancy, King’s College Environmental Club, Lowe’s, RESTORE, Appalachian Coal Country Team, Office of Surface Mining, and AmeriCorps Volunteers in Service Training for America.

The program involved EPCAMR Staff and interns from King’s College and Wilkes University assisting with the collection of oxides and construction of the solar kilns. Earth Conservancy provides us with the storage for the kiln and access to their AMD treatment systems in Nanticoke and Newport Township for oxides. The Solomon-Plains Elementary 6th grade class and their teachers participated in outdoor field tours with EPCAMR to AMD sites before utilizing the kiln. The students made AMD tie-dye t-shirts for their field trip with the dried Iron oxide they collected on a tour with EPCAMR and have made it an annual tradition that is 3 years strong. More recently, the Greater Nanticoke Area Elementary 4th and 5th grade classes got to see the solar kiln and utilized the Iron oxide from through EPCAMR’s AMD & Art Pottery Education program. Ann Devine and two interns from the PA DEP Environmental Education Program conducted a Solar Race Car Construction Workshop at Solomon-Plains Elementary. Alana Malar Roberts, former PPL Community Relations Coordinator, was was also instrumental in the project.

EPCAMR’s objective was to create a demonstration piece of equipment that would provide under-served elementary school students within the Coal Region the ability to dry Iron oxide from AMD on their own. There were two goals: 1) to go off the grid and be 100% solar and 2) provide students with an opportunity to learn about AMD impacts to their watersheds and find ways to recycle the oxides into many productive uses that are fun and “green”. The benefits of this projects are that students are engaged and introduced to Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math (STEM) principles that meet the PA Standards for the Environment and Ecology.

Students gather with PPL, EPCAMR, and WBAD at Solomon-Plains Elementary to receive grant check

EPCAMR has always been committed to restoring Pennsylvania’s waterways impacted by AMD and abandoned mine lands. EPCAMR plans to build a 3rd solar kiln in the Fall of 2015 with the remaining materials we have left over from the project and provide it to Heights Elementary. This project educates not only students, but teachers on how schools can be a part of the solution by working with EPCAMR. They will be provided with environmental education experiences on local environmental issues that impact their community directly. They will also learn about environmental stewardship and ways they can get involved in stream-side cleanup.

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