Red Barn @ Mason Dixon Park

Preserving & Promoting Mason-Dixon History and Culture

Friday, August 21^st, 7 pm to 9 pm – Native American flute music blended with other musical instruments.  Cody BlackBird Band, Mason-Dixon Historical Park, 79 Buckeye Road, Core, WV 26541.  $10 adults, children free under 12. This location is on Dunkard Creek, Monongalia County, WV at Brown’s Hill and Greene County, PA.

Saturday & Sunday, August 22^nd & 23^rd, 10 am to 5 pm – POW – WOW & Cultural Festival, Native American arts and culture; regalia, drumming, singing, story telling; style crafts, jewelry, clothing.  Auctions at 2:30 pm.  Native American fry bread, Indian tacos, other foods and drinks. $5 adults, children free under 12.

Contact: Phyllis Bruce on 304-662-6496 (leave a message).

See also an article from last year: Mason-Dixon Line celebrated on 250th anniversary

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The Future Looks Brighter for Dunkard Creek

From the Editorial, Washington PA Observer-Reporter, August 10, 2015

Six years ago next month, toxins from an algae not common to Southwestern Pennsylvania killed fish, mussels, salamanders and other aquatic life along a 30-mile stretch of Dunkard Creek in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

The algae was later identified as golden algae, which state and federal environmental agencies investigating the kill described as an organism normally found only in southern coastal waters with high levels of salt and minerals. The agencies agreed what created the conditions for the algae to thrive in Dunkard Creek were the very high levels of chlorides and other contaminants from mine water discharges at Consol Energy’s Blacksville No. 2 Mine.

Last week, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission reported it had reached a tentative settlement in a lawsuit it filed in West Virginia for damages it claims were caused by the mine’s polluted discharges. Though Consol was named in the suit, the liability has been assumed by the Murray Energy Corp., which in December 2013 purchased Consol’s northern West Virginia mines.

Details of the agreement were withheld pending finalization of the settlement. However, in stories published on the proposed agreement, John Arway, Fish and Boat Commission executive director, said any money that may be included in the settlement will be used to help further the recovery of the creek. The creek is coming back, he said, and any money received through the settlement would be used to hasten its return.

As part of an earlier settlement for Clean Water Act violations with federal regulators, Consol also had agreed to pay a $5.5 million civil penalty and construct a water treatment plant to treat chlorides discharged from its mines in northern West Virginia, including the Blacksville No. 2 coal mine.

That treatment plant in Marion County WV went on line in 2013 and should help ensure another fish kill, at least from golden algae, won’t happen again. It also will help ensure any money invested in the creek won’t go to waste.

All of that should be good news to local fishermen, who once reported catching 40 and 50 inch muskellunge in the waters of Dunkard Creek before the September 2009 fish kill.

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Subject: Dunkard Creek Fish Kill and Recovery, August 11, 2015

I have just read the Editorial from the Washington PA Observer-Reporter about Dunkard Creek and the settlement pending for damage from the 2009 algae bloom that killed over 40,000 fish and thousands of other creatures.

The article is reminiscent of catching big muskie in Dunkard Creek. Well, the fact is that BIG muskie are thriving at this time in Dunkard Creek’s feeder streams. The rapid reappearance of adult muskie (36 inches and up) is explained by WV-DNR as “they came up from the river.” As many as nine of the big fish have been identified in a half-mile stretch when the water was low and clear, 30 miles upstream from the Monongahela River.

Initial fish population recovery was fast and the fishing was good even a couple of years after the kill. It was easy to catch bass and bluegill. But now the muskie seem to be keeping those populations in check. WV-DNR should promote Dunkard Creek as a muskie stream.

See the interesting and comprehensive historical summary on the Dunkard Creek fish kill entitled “What Killed Dunkard Creek?”

Betty Wiley, Dunkard Creek Watershed Association

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NOTE: Marcellus shale drilling and fracking continue on hilltops overlooking Dunkard Creek. Dunkard Creek continues to be at some risk from such operations.  Marcellus shale drilling pads in Monongahela County include the Beach, Boggess, Campbell, Coastal, Eddy, Jenkins, Kassay, Statler, and Yost Pads with multiple wells present in most cases. The WV-DEP Office of Oil & Gas maintains an on-line database for these natural gas wells.

Also, the Dunkard Creek water quality continues to be spoiled by the legacy underground & surface coal mines that contribute acid mine drainage, i.e. sulfuric acid dissolved in the water and ferric hydroxide as a finely divided suspension resulting in a yellow-orange precipitate which can be seen along the lower (eastern) section as the flow joins the Monongahela River in Greene County, Pennsylvania.

On the Mason-Dixon Line

One new Pad located above Marion County line north of Fairview

From an Article by David Beard, Morgantown Dominion Post, March 25, 2014

Northeast Natural Energy, which operates two Marcellus shale wells at the Morgantown Industrial Park, has applied to drill four more horizontal gas wells in Monongalia County.

Two proposed wells, called Yost Heritage 5H and 9H, would be located on a pad above the Marion County line north of Fairview along WV Route 218, Daybrook Road, according to information from the WV Department of Environmental Protection.

The other two, called Beach 6H and 10H, lie just east of Pentress and south of WV Route 7. If approved, this would make four total wells permitted for the Beach pad. Beach 2H and 4H were permitted earlier this month.

Daybrook Road connects Fairview to Blacksville. The land surface is owned by Yost Heritage Inc, whose president and vice president are David and Dennis Yost, according to information from the secretary of state’s office.

Yost Heritage Inc. also has applications in to WV-DEP for two horizontal wells, neither Marcellus, on a nearby pad: Yost Heritage 1, targeted for the Fifty-Foot formation; and one Yost Heritage H1, targeted for the Benson formation.

Northeast’s two wells at the Morgantown Industrial Park are producing gas, as are two on its Statler pad east of Blacksville on the north side of WV Route 7. Northeast has permits for three more wells on the Statler pad.

NOTE: Some 20,000 fish plus the entire mussel population of Dunkard Creek were killed by a “golden algae” bloom in September of 2009.  Given water pollution from the Federal No. 2 (Eastern Associated), Blacksville II (Murray Coal Co.), many surface mines and closed mines plus the Shannopin mine and others, this stream runs high in total dissolved solids and other pollutants. Now we find that WV and PA continue to permit shale drilling and fracking in the Watershed, on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line.  The recent huge fire at the Chevron pad in Greene county was within this Watershed.