Western Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation

OSM-VISTA Report

Jeffrey Gerard
February 2007

Treatment System Monitoring Grant Announcement

WPCAMR is offering funding for chemical analyses in passive AMD treatment systems to watershed groups who have taken responsibility for the systems. The initiative, called FACTS (Funding AMD Chemistry for Treatment Systems), also provides a public, online repository of systems' data, called Datashed. Information and the application is on the web at www.wpcamr.org/facts

As the FACTS project manager, I've worked with our contractor to establish Datashed, the online database for chemical analyses. WPCAMR teamed up with the Indiana County Conservation District and Mahaffey Laboratory (Grampian, PA) for a pilot test of the FACTS program and Datashed in January. Everything went fine, so we're opening up the grant to public applications immediately, and I hope to enroll 20 passive treatment systems and a handful of other laboratories by the end of my OSM/VISTA term in May.

Check out the grant's website (www.wpcamr.org/facts), then get in touch ASAP (preferably this week or next!) if you want to help this program grow while receiving free sampling for treatment systems in your watershed.

OM&R Guidance for Passive Treatment Systems

Besides the FACTS Program, I'm coordinating an effort to produce a guide for sampling in passive treatment systems, per the board's action at the last meeting. After having to postpone twice, our meeting was last week and was superb. This endeavor should be much more established at the next board meeting.

Land Reclamation Brochures

I wrote and designed two tri-fold brochures for WPCAMR:

We've printed 1000 of each. They're also both on the web at amrclearinghouse.org/Sub/landreclamation