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AMD&ART Program
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Dark Shade Watershed
Statistics |
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Borough of Central City Statistics Population: 3,177 Per Capita Income: $8,797 Poverty Rate for Families with Children: 72.9% People over 25 with a College Degree: 9.9% |
Shade Township Statistics Population: 1,246 Per Capita Income: $8,201 Poverty Rate for Families with Children: 53.8% People over 25 with a College Degree: 6.0% |
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Roughly nine miles long, the Dark Shade Creek Watershed in Somerset County encompasses farms, towns, game preserves, wetlands, active and reclaimed mines, and historic sites. Dark Shade Creek is, however, the most polluted tributary of the most polluted river in Western Pennsylvania and runs through a landscape blighted by hundreds of acres of abandoned industrial sites, former mine lands, boney piles, and twenty-one AMD discharges. Three of these discharges release more than a thousand gallons per minute. Pre-regulatory coal mining and industrial abandonment have had devastating environmental, economic, and social impacts on the watershed. AMD&ART worked with Central City Borough to propose the Dark Shade Brownfields Project to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, who designated this 34 square mile rural area as a brownfield. The first coal valley to be granted a Brownfields Assessment Pilot Project, Dark Shade is redefining how coal watersheds are conceptualized both within and outside of the region. The Brownfields Project is the core of AMD&ART's efforts in Dark Shade Creek, with the goal of addressing both the real and perceived contamination that hinders redevelopment efforts throughout the watershed. Throughout the year 2000, the staff went through an inventory and assessment process, and is now at the point of ranking sites in the watershed. Five high priority locations have been selected for redevelopment and remediation, based on access to commerce and transportation, local community interest, feasibility of on-site cleanup, and redevelopment potential.
In collaboration with the Brownfields Center at Carnegie Mellon University, the Dark Shade Brownfields Project and the Pittsburgh Brownfields Pilot Project will serve as the core training centers for a Brownfields Job Training Program in spring 2001. The training program looks to improve employment in distressed areas in the region, remediate and reclaim brownfields and abandoned mine lands, and demonstrate the applicability of innovative technologies. With many new things going on in the watershed, recovery efforts have really taken off. |
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Working within a coalition of organizations and
agencies concerned with regional watershed health, AMD&ART and our
partners are beginning to tackle the discharges of the Dark Shade Creek
Watershed. AMD&ART has taken a watershed approach to all planning
and development for remediation, thus reaching beyond community
boundaries and exercising true cooperation on a regional level. The
Stonycreek River, into which Shade Creek empties, has already undergone
tremendous improvement due to efforts by local watershed organizations
and government agencies.
Local residents participated in community
visioning sessions that were held in the summer of 2000, and the
Brownfields Project has helped community members launch the Shade Creek
Watershed Association. SCWA members have taken responsibility for
community outreach, collecting water samples, and monitoring the health
of streams within the watershed. As a result of these community efforts,
a watershed restoration and brownfields redevelopment plan that is
driven and supported by their participation will be distributed
throughout the watershed in mid-2001. The goal of this plan is to
stimulate economic growth and to create opportunities for commercial
business, recreational trails, and AMD treatment systems that are
incorporated into community parks.