Ultimate recycling

Info: epcamr.org, 570.371.3522

Right in our backyard, tucked away just off of Dundee Road in Hanover Twp., there’s a vast marsh teeming with insects, muskrats and plant life that beckons only the most daring of outdoorsmen. Inside that bucolic setting lurks something foreign, though: An orange sludge with deadly potential.

That sludge, known as iron oxide, comes from the abandoned mines that pepper what is known as the “Anthracite Region,” from Carbon to Wyoming Counties. Though it is dangerous to wildlife, it’s useful for humans, and a non-profit organization known as the Eastern PA Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation is harvesting the resource for use in educational programs for kids, making tie-dye T-shirts, chalk and powder that’s sold to local artists for use in painting and pottery.

“It’s really toxic to aquatic life and fish life in the streams,” said Robert Hughes, executive director of EPCAMR. “But when it’s sitting on the stream bottom and you can harvest it, you can find multiple uses for it, like we are.”

Hughes graciously took a few members of the Weekender staff on a tour through some of the hotspots for collecting iron oxide, including the manmade Phase I wetlands in Hanover Twp. and the Askam borehole across the street, the Solomon’s Creek boreholes along the Sans Souci Parkway in south Wilkes-Barre and something known as the Honey Pot Discharge in Nanticoke, which is the discharge to the south branch of Newport Creek that spews out from under Access Road — and we’ve got the insect bites and orange-tinted jeans to prove it.

CHEMICAL LANDSCAPE

Though the issue of abandoned mine pollution is complicated and expansive, the short story on iron oxide can be summed up by looking at underground mining. The low areas in the mines easily fill with water, and now that they’re out of commission, the pumps that kept them dry were shut down and water fills the mines and then drains, taking minerals and metals with it.

“(The stuff) that kind of looks like gold on some of the rocks and the coal you find laying around, it’s pyrite,” Hughes explained. “And that really just kind of interacts with the air and the water, and that’s what forms the iron oxide that drops out. It’s no different than rust coming off your bike on a chain.

“It’s pretty devastating. In Pennsylvania, there’s 5,000 stream miles impacted by mine drainage.”

Aptly decked out in orange apparel and talking animatedly amid swarms of bees that would make the average person cower in fear, Hughes explained the process that happens in the wetlands. Essentially, water is pumped into the ponds there and then flows into a lush growth of cattails, a plant that creates a sort of natural filtration system when the iron oxide adheres to its roots.

“If I was to scrape that off, that would be what we would use to dry,” Hughes explained, referring to the orange-coated roots of a cattail plant he dug up from the wetlands. “And it’s purely 100 percent iron oxide pigment. So there are no impurities or chemicals, it’s pretty natural when it goes through a system like this. If we were to add chemicals, it might mute (the iron oxide) or it might make it fade out.”

THE NATURE OF EDUCATION

Hughes and his non-profit, which was launched in 1996, operate off of federal and state funding. From their quarters in the Earth Conservancy Building in Ashley, the group dries the harvested iron oxide in a makeshift lab, using instruments that are surprisingly low-tech when compared to the complex process of obtaining it.

“We just let it dry out and it gets the orange color to it,” Hughes said, noting that the orange shade is called “Yellow Boy Orange.” “And then the other (shade) is ‘Anthracite Red,’ and it’s the same iron oxide, but it’s heated for one hour in the soil dryer, and all that does is, chemically, it changes the iron oxide to a darker pigment, so we can get two colors.”

Hughes and his staff then either bag it up to sell to local artists, mix it with plaster and mold it to create fun little pieces of chalk or use it to make tie-dye T-shirts.

“This stuff on a shirt, as a pigment value, it’s high, very high,” he said.

In August, EPCAMR celebrated its 15th anniversary, and to commemorate the event, students of Heather Radel at Arts YOUniverse in Wilkes-Barre created art out of iron oxide mixed with traditional mediums, such as watercolors and acrylics, for a recent exhibit. Hughes also took his iron oxide to the 2nd Annual Children’s Chalk Festival Oct. 8 at the River Common in Wilkes-Barre to educate kids in attendance.

The small staff at EPCAMR works to promote and facilitate the reclamation of land and water negatively affected by past mining practices, and their Iron Oxide Resource Recovery initiative is just part of what they do there.

“We’re just doing it on a small scale for educational purposes,” he said. “But there are probably other people with more capital, more resources that could do it on a much larger scale than we could. It’s not our intent. Our intent is to help clean up the water and to educate the communities on how to do it and get them money to do it. But I’d be more than happy to have a private venture come in.”

Hughes, who has been involved in mining in some capacity or another for the past 20 years, is passionate about his work.

“That’s pretty rich stuff right there,” he said, referring to some orange residue left on the roadway at our last stop, by the Honey Pot Discharge. “When I see that, I just want to scoop it up. That’s pretty sick!”

w