Murrysville acid mine remediation a 'generational opportunity' to clean Turtle Creek

The Murrysville Area Watershed Association gained the support of Export officials Tuesday night for an acid mine remediation project that would prevent additional heavy metals and other elements from entering Turtle Creek.

The association initially pitched Murrysville council on the project more than two years ago, after working with Monroeville engineers Civil & Environmental Consultants on a conceptual plan.

Murrysville and Export have the distinction of being home to two of the largest mine water sources in the Turtle Creek Watershed. Long-abandoned mine activity, combined with the natural flow of stormwater, has resulted in the slow leakage of various chemical elements over the years.

The watershed association is requesting a conservation easement for a large property that Export Borough owns in Murrysville, off Borland Farm Road. Export officials are a few years into a long-term plan to do selective timbering on the property.

“The easement would only be on the flat portion of the property, and there’s other access where they’d go to do the logging,” borough Solicitor Wes Long said.

The watershed association’s executive director, Jim Morrison, said the project has received favorable reviews from both the state’s Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation and the nonprofit R.K. Mellon Foundation, both of which have millions of dollars in grant funding at their disposal.

“I really believe that this is a generational opportunity to clean up Turtle Creek,” Morrison said. “If we pass it up, it may not come back around for a long time.”

Morrison said the easement is a key component in going after funding for the roughly $5-$10 million price tag estimated in 2022.

“When we apply for funding, they’re going to want to know if we have control of the property,” he said.

It won’t happen overnight. Morrison said even on a fast track, the project would likely take 5-7 years to complete. The first phase would include $2 million in water sampling and testing, geo-technical engineering, mine studies and a survey to identify any other acid mine drainage sources upstream.

Export council voted unanimously to begin negotiating terms for the easement.

“I don’t know that there’s a better use for that section of the property,” Long said.

Another local environmental group, the Lyons Run Watershed Association, recently partnered with Murrysville on a smaller scale acid-mine remediation project off Boxcartown Road. That project is passive, allowing mine drainage to pass naturally through a series of ponds that precipitate and remove heavy metals and other elements.

This new project, Morrison said, would be active, using an automated lime slurry treatment plant that will be cleaned of impurities and pumped into publicly accessible ponds where game fish can be raised and caught. The watershed association’s engineering consultants said the project would produce about 700,000 gallons per year of treated sludge, which would be pumped back into the mine.

It would also require full-time staffing, with an estimated operational cost of about $200,000 per year.

“We want to get a number of funding agencies involved and interested in this,” Morrison said.

The project would be located parallel to the projected future path of the Westmoreland Heritage Trail’s Export-Delmont connector, and in addition to the fishing ponds, Morrison said it could also include other recreational features like pavilions and a playground.