WV Coal Project - Day 3

Today we visited an active surface mine called Joe Knob that included an area that had been mined and reclaimed in the 1970's. An invasive species had been planted as land cover that actively discouraged other plant species. This was a problem because it prevented other species from moving in and biodiversity was reduced. This prevented the land from recovering so the food web was not fully developed after 40 years. It was raining so runoff was visible and highlighted the effort to return clean water to the watershed. Storage tanks with sodium hydroxide were located above settling ponds to neutralize the acid in the runoff water from the mine site. The water that finally comes off the mine site is sediment-free with a pH of about 7. The next place visited was the ruins of a coal town on the New River called Nuttallburg. This town was a twin to another coal town called Kaymoor just across the river. These coal towns and coal mines were constructed from timber harvested in the immediate area. These two now abandoned towns were once thriving communities with diverse populations living and working on both sides of the river. There was no reclamation effort to restore the land to its original state when the coal ran out and the towns were abandoned in the early 1950's. However, nature has done a remarkable job in restoring the health of the ecosystem without human intervention. The water in this area was sampled and found to have a quality that ranged from moderate to high quality. This quality may have been negatively affected by heavy rains that had fallen earlier in the day. This would have increased turbidity and total dissolved solids in our sample. Samples taken over several days would have corrected this problem. The pictures below were taken from Joe Knob, Nuttallburg, and New RiverGorge.