A Healing West Branch; Sum of Its Parts

By Ben Moyer

News about our environment can get you down, because so much is bad. Invasive species, climate change, habitat destruction, rampant development, and pollution feel like such daunting challenges that we’re numbed, resigned to inaction.

But sometimes news—real news—is good, even uplifting, hopefully inspiring. People working together can make things better. They can resurrect our waters and land better than they found them and bequeath later generations a healing landscape. Could there be a better tribute?

I heard such news last week at the Keystone Coldwater Conference in State College. This meeting is held every spring through a collaboration of the PA Council of Trout Unlimited, DCNR, the Fish and Boat Commission, and the Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds.

One of the presentations detailed a study of water quality improvements in the West Branch Susquehanna Watershed, a huge 7,000-square mile (Pennsylvania holds 45,000 sq. miles) crescent-shaped swath across central and northcentral Pennsylvania, stretching from Cambria County northeastward to the North Branch confluence near Sunbury.

The West Branch basin epitomizes outdoor Pennsylvania. It’s rugged, scenic, 85 percent forested, and graced by large tracts of public land, where anyone can fish, hunt, or be outdoors. Its most remarkable natural asset is that thousands of miles of mountain streams vein its wrinkled contours, all of them once dense with trout, spawned in those shady haunts. No person could have fished them all in a lifetime.

Coal seams also veined beneath the surface, and beginning in the 1800s and spanning centuries, deep mines burrowed under, and strip pits raked the surface, long unregulated and later, often shoddily regulated. Acid, iron, and aluminum drained out of the shafts, pits, and gob piles so that by the 1970s, over a thousand miles of West Branch tributaries were tainted and 40,000 acres of mine lands scarred the woods. All those dead streams drained to the West Branch, rendering it void of life.

A 1972 Operation Scarlift report by the then PA Dept. of Environmental Resources stated this: “The overall acid loading conditions to the West Branch are such that no significant length of stream above Bower Station can be permanently recovered for recreational use…”

Fast-forward to now, and the presentation in State College. Its authors, all scientists affiliated with Trout Unlimited, noted that over the past 30 years, dozens of mine reclamation and pollution abatement projects have been undertaken and completed throughout the far flung reaches of the West Branch basin. These projects were pulled off by volunteer watershed groups, conservation districts, Trout Unlimited chapters, state agencies, and regional conservation organizations—all of them refusing to accept the 1972 prediction that the West Branch was unsalvageable.

The study authors wondered how all those scattered and sometimes small-scale projects might have affected the West Branch main stem downstream. In other words, they sought to determine the cumulative effects on the entire watershed of all that widespread work.

They found so much encouraging news that it’s tough to fit it into this space, but we’ll summarize the highlights below.

Since a similar earlier study in 2009, more than 200 “new” tributary stream miles once again harbor wild trout, including over 50 miles of Class A wild trout water. Amazingly, 26 miles of the West Branch Susquehanna main stem itself, once dismissed as unrecoverable, now supports wild trout.

Fish diversity has also improved. In 1998, after the river had begun to recover, 24 species of fish were known to inhabit the West Branch. By 2009, biologists documented 29 species, and the 2019 survey found 31 different fish, including the first brook trout documented in the West Branch main stem.

In many tributaries the recent study found young-of-the-year wild trout but no adults. This suggests, say the authors, that adult wild trout now use the river’s main stem to move up and down the basin, then swim up tributaries and pioneer new populations.

Both the diversity and abundance of macro-invertebrates—foundation of the food chain—improved in the river and tribs between 2009 and 2019.

Meanwhile, the chemical properties of pH, alkalinity, acidity, and concentrations of dissolved toxic metals all improved in the headwaters and, logically, in the river downstream.

“The results of this project demonstrate the cumulative impact of numerous, strategic restoration projects in headwater areas and tributaries of a large river,” wrote the study authors.

They also made recommendations to keep this exciting momentum going. These include protecting and maintaining existing projects, continued collaboration among partners, and securing funding for future inventory and treatment of mine drainage sites in the West Branch watershed.

The bad news from the outdoors can be overwhelming. But if you find yourself asking, “Why get involved? Why support stream restoration efforts with my time or money?” The West Branch Susquehanna, flowing through Pennsylvania’s heart, from a despairing past toward an inspiring future shows why.