Acid Mine Drainage, oh no!

Today we had a bit of a history lesson, taught by Miranda from Jennings State Park. At first the rusty old tools on the table puzzled us, but all became clear as we began learning about one of our State's most important resources, coal. We watched one of our fellow campers dress up and do the duty of a child miner, and it was both entertaining and eye opening.

Then we played a game which taught us more about life in the mines, and some of us experienced tragic mine accidents.

As we continued our talk about Pennsylvania's mines, we finally connected all this history to environmental science. After all, this is creek camp. As it turns out, these abandoned mines are relevant today because the pollution is ruining streams across the state. We learned about Jennings State Park, which had a creek affected by this acid mine pollution. A group of people got together to try and fix the stream in the most environmentally friendly way possible, and they pioneered a technique that has become popular today. Next we did an activity to test the effectiveness of the treatment by testing water from before and after. We found that the treated water was perfectly healthy, yay!