Blue Mountain High School Field Trip

On November 13, 2014, students and teachers from Blue Mountain High School braved the chilly weather to spend a day with Schuylkill Headwaters Association and volunteers at our Silver Creek abandoned mine drainage (AMD)treatment system. The day started with a walking tour of the system where the students learned a little history of coal mining in the area, how AMD is formed, and how the Silver Creek system is working to clean the water. The students then broke into two groups for the rest of the day. The first group stayed at Silver Creek, where two RSVP volunteers taught the students about several water quality parameters that they were going to test, such as pH, iron content, dissolved oxygen, acidity, and alkalinity. The students spent an hour and a half testing the water quality of the different ponds that make up the system. The second group of students were taken to the main branch of the Schuylkill River in the borough of New Philadelphia to collect and identify macroinvertebrates, as well as learn how to take a flow measurement on the stream. The day concluded with a discussion of why the events of the day were important, and what the results of the water quality testing and macroinvertebrate sampling were.