Acid mine water treatment plant project gets $2M boost from state grant

An acid mine water remediation project, first pitched to Murrysville officials three years ago, has received $2 million in support from the state Department of Environmental Protection.

As part of more than $5 million in mine-related grant funding, the department awarded $2.1 million for the Murrysville Area Watershed Association to begin creation of an active mine water treatment plant in Murrysville’s White Valley neighborhood.

Last summer, Export officials approved a conservation easement for a piece of borough-owned property along Borland Farm Road in Murrysville, and lent their support to the project, a lime-slurry treatment plant to remove impurities such as sulfur and aluminum runoff from mine water.

Murrysville and Export are 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.

“These are funds we’ve been chasing for quite some time, and we’re ready to kick this thing off,” said Murrysville Area Watershed Association Program Manager Melissa Church.

Association officials estimated a 5- to 7-year timeline for completing the overall project. The grant would fund preliminary work like water sampling and testing, geotechnical engineering, mine studies and a land survey to identify any additional acid mine drainage sources upstream.

“This is the first phase, and these projects typically run in three phases,” Church said. “Next up, we’ll move on to the planning and design. But the grant will cover a hydrology study and those types of things. It’s the beginning of some major, major work.”

In addition to the treatment plant, the initial pitch for the project also included recreational features such as a pavilion, playground and a pond created using treated mine water that could be stocked with aquatic life for fishing.

“We’re talking to some other partners and we’ve been approached by the Pennsylvania Association for Waterways and Rivers to perhaps expand the recreational opportunities in these remediation areas,” Church said.

Unlike the passive remediation project that association officials recently completed in the nearby Lyons Run Watershed, the White Valley plant would require staffing and ongoing operational costs of about $200,000 per year.

Watershed Executive Director Jim Morrison said the project offered “a generational opportunity” to clean up Turtle Creek, which has headwaters just east of the proposed remediation site.

The creek flows westward through Export, Murrysville, Monroeville, Penn Township, Trafford, Pitcairn, Wilmerding, Turtle Creek, East Pittsburgh and North Braddock, before entering the Monongahela River in North Versailles Township.