On the banks of Ten Mile Creek, a stream that snakes through Greene County, Ken Dufalla looked out at one of his favorite fishing spots.
“That’s probably one of the best walleye fishing there is in the evening you can find. I’ve caught muskies, walleyes, saugers,” Dufalla said.
Four years ago, Dufalla, who leads a local conservation group, stopped fishing here. That’s because the tests he did as president of his local chapter of the Izaak Walton League showed surprisingly high concentrations of bromides. The stream contains treated acid mine drainage from the nearby abandoned Clyde coal mine. Bromides are not typically found in mine discharges, treated or not. But bromides are typical of fracking waste water.
Dufalla sought help from the Department of Environmental Protection. Ten Mile Creek feeds into the Monongahela River, the source of drinking water for hundreds of thousands of people in western Pennsylvania, including parts of Pittsburgh.
Read more of this report at the website of our partner StateImpact Pennsylvania.
