‘Liability’ to ‘tremendous asset’: How Johnstown’s Stonycreek River has gone from toxic mine drainage to recreational hub

For Jason Albert, whitewater kayaking is a form of therapy.

Albert, 38, of Oak Ridge, N.J., has been kayaking since 2017. This is his first season back on the water following a two-year recovery from a car accident that hurt his back.

“There’s a lot of people that have come through struggled pasts and stuff like that,” Albert said. “And when you get out on the river and it’s you, the boat and the rapids, everything else kind of goes away and it becomes really, really peaceful.”

Albert was one of hundreds of people with canoes and kayaks in tow who flocked Friday to Greenhouse Park in Conemaugh, Somerset County.

They came from across the country.

Avid paddlers sometimes drive more than 60 miles to take a spin through the man-made whitewater park, built in 2008 along the Stonycreek River to attract the water sports enthusiasts.

This weekend marks the 34th annual Stonycreek Rendezvous, where paddlers partake in a series of races and trick competitions on the water — taking breaks in between to enjoy live music, food and beer.

Stonycreek was not always as clear as Albert’s mind when he hits the water. For many years, the waterway — which spans 40 miles from Berlin in Somerset County to Johnstown in Cambria County — was made toxic by acid drainage from coal mining.

Now, the park has earned regional attention for its whitewater conditions.

And the boulders and jumps in the river are not the only cause for the rushing rapids.

Throughout the summer, Benscreek Canoe Club sponsors water releases from the Quemahoning Dam into Stonycreek. About 300 to 400 paddlers flood the city to take advantage of the biweekly water releases — and the community has felt the impact of the tourism boost.

Tourism on the rise

Cambria County generated nearly $290 million in visitor spending in 2022 — nearly $38 million more than the year prior, according to the county’s most recent tourism data. This is a 93% recovery of visitor spending recorded in 2019, prior to the covid-19 pandemic.

Lisa Rager, executive director of the tourism promotion agency Visit Johnstown, said about 80% of the record-breaking 1,000 people who came to the city for last year’s Stonycreek Rendezvous traveled from beyond Cambria County — most commonly from the eastern and mid-Atlantic regions of the country.

“That is definitely generating spending in the area — whether they’re camping, staying overnight in hotels and motels, purchasing special services like gas and things like that,” Rager said.

In the six years that Amy Bradley has been involved with the Cambria Regional Chamber of Commerce, she has watched the Rendezvous grow — right alongside the chamber’s membership numbers.

“It’s certainly something that people are excited about,” said Bradley, chamber president and CEO. “There’s been more promotion of it, and I think people realize it’s a nice thing for our region.”

The chamber has gained more than 250 additional members since 2019, totaling around 610 today. Although not all of these new members are business owners, Bradley has noticed an array of storefronts popping up around the chamber’s downtown Johnstown office.

“We’ve definitely seen businesses open their doors,” she said. “It seems almost weekly we have ribbon cuttings.”

With surrounding woods, trails and state parks, Johnstown has become a bit of a recreation hub, Rager said.

“We’re seeing it, and it’s been gradual,” Rager said. “It’s not like it’s exploding, but there’s definitely an impact. And when you see more and more bicycles on people’s cars, and canoes and kayaks on the rooftops and stuff, you can tell that things are certainly changing here.”

Cleaning the waterway

Before it became a bucket-list whitewater paddling destination, Stonycreek River was the victim of Johnstown’s coal mining days.

Large-scale coal mining came to Cambria County in the 1850s, according to the Johnstown Area Heritage Association. By 1885, mines were producing more than one million tons of coal.

More than 200 coal mines opened in the Stonycreek Watershed between the late 1890s and 1930, according to the Stonycreek Quemahoning Initiative.

But by the 1940s and 50s, water and land pollution from abandoned mines began to leave a mark on Johnstown, according to the initiative.

Coal mines were commonly dug at the top of a slope, said John Wenzel, executive director of the Conemaugh Valley Conservancy. Any water that filtered into the mine would naturally flow out, discharging harmful chemicals into nearby waterways — including Stonycreek.

“When the water’s in the mine, it’s up against the coal and it leeches out the sulfur and the iron and aluminum and manganese, all these nasty things that are in the coal,” Wenzel said. “And then it carries them in solution to wherever it goes — like right into the river.”

The waterways were unsafe for use, killing any natural life that once existed in them.

But with the help of agencies such as the Conemaugh Valley Conservancy, that started to change in the 1990s, Wenzel said.

The conservancy — with help from the Somerset and Cambria County Conservation districts and the Cambria-Somerset Authority — lobbied to open treatment facilities that remove the harmful chemicals from the waterways.

“Now, after what’s really been 30 years of remediation, Stonycreek is healthy again,” Wenzel said.

The river has become a hot spot for fly fishing, and bald eagles are commonly spotted, he said.

“What was once really a liability has now become a tremendous asset, and it’s not just for recreation — not just for sportsmen and the kayakers,” Wenzel said. “Again, if you have 1,000 people come to your town, that’s going to be an economic boost you really notice.”

Canoe club keeps whitewater alive

Wenzel has seen people from Ohio, New York, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia and even Florida travel to Johnstown for the Stonycreek whitewater releases.

But if it weren’t for the Benscreek Canoe Club, paddlers might not be able to experience the whitewater rapids.

The Quemahoning Reservoir was built between 1907 and 1912. The Cambria-Somerset Authority purchased it in 2005.

The canoe club approached the authority in 2006 about regularly releasing water from the reservoir into Stonycreek to create whitewater conditions for paddlers, said vice president Stephen Podratsky, who was president of the club for 16 years.

The authority denied the request, citing concerns of potential damage to the dam’s valve, he said.

Purchasing and installing a new valve would cost about $1 million — an estimate given to the club by engineering consultant Gannett Fleming, Podratsky said. Through a connection to Cindy Dunn, secretary for the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, the club secured a $500,000 grant.

After a year and a half, the Community Foundation for the Alleghenies helped the club secure grants from Pittsburgh’s Richard King Mellon and Colcom foundations to cover the rest of the project.

The valve was installed in 2010, with a grand opening in May 2011.

“One hundred percent we believed we could do it,” Podratsky said of the club’s mindset toward raising the $500,000. “We just knew we had so many strong connections to these foundation organizations that could make it happen.”

The canoe club pays $380 per day for water releases, said president Mike Cook.

This means upwards of $6,000 in water release payments for the club throughout the summer, assuming water levels are high enough for the releases to take place on the biweekly schedule.

Anticipating another year of record-breaking attendance, Cook is proud of how the tradition has spread to larger audiences.

“I think most importantly it has an incredibly positive impact on our mentality,” Cook said. “It’s such a great feeling to look back year after year after year on an event that you and your team put so much time into.”

When Debby Heider attended the Rendezvous for the first time in 2015, she had no idea she would leave with a new hobby.

Heider’s home in Hollsopple, Somerset County, overlooks a river. But her family did not get involved with watersports until her then-14-year-old son, Lee, expressed interest in joining the paddlers who floated past their home in brightly-colored vessels.

It did not take long for Heider to follow in her son’s footsteps, taking up whitewater paddle boarding.

“Before you know it, I’m buying a paddle board,” Heider said. “That first year, I probably paddled two or three times all the way through the river because it never froze.”

Heider does not paddle board for the adrenaline rush. She does it for the serenity.

“What’s nice about the paddle board, I can get out on the dam and it’s almost a bird sanctuary,” Heider said. “If I go out there in the morning, it’s very serene. I can get down on my knees, paddle along the shore, sneak up on birds, see all kinds of cool stuff.”

For Ian Smith, the Rendezvous is more than a chance to get out on the water. It’s an opportunity to give back to a community that has supported him for more than a decade.

Smith, 38, of Cheswick, runs a stand-up paddle boarding instruction company called SurfSup and nonprofit Watersmith Guild — which connects underserved communities with outdoor recreation, conservation and filmmaking opportunities. Both are based in Pittsburgh.

He has been stand-up whitewater paddle boarding for about 17 years. Greenhouse Park was one of the first places he went to teach himself the activity.

“We ran into so many people here that were so welcoming and just made great friends, so just sort of adopted us into this little family up here,” he said.

Smith first attended the Rendezvous in 2011. Friday, he led 23 children ages 13 to 20 in planting trees and cleaning up trash along the Stonycreek River — an initiative he has no plans to end anytime soon.

“It boils down to the nature of the rivers — the character of the rivers are just really high quality rapids, and there’s a lot of it in this small location,” Smith said. “If it wasn’t for the river, it wouldn’t be as special.”

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this story listed Greenhouse Park in the incorrect county.