Schuylkill Headwaters Association is installing three rain gardens totaling 4,000 square feet at Silver Creek AMD Treatment System in New Philadelphia.
The organization was at the site Thursday and will be finishing the work today in conjunction with volunteers from the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps team.
Sierra Gladfelter, New Ringgold, outreach coordinator for the organization, said Thursday afternoon that Schuylkill Headwaters applied to host a team for 11 days and that the volunteers who sign up for the national service program are ages 18 to 24.
"They sign up for 10 months of living together on the road doing volunteer and direct service projects for nonprofits and organizations within a certain region," Gladfelter said.
Ryan Abdelnour, Roanoke, Va., team leader for the AmeriCorps NCCC Atlantic team, said that there are seven people on his team from all around the country who travel together for the entire year.
While they get to do a lot of environmental projects, they have also helped with Hurricane Sandy cleanup.
"We get a small living stipend to pay our cellphone bills and other stuff," Abdelnour said. "It's a really great program with a lot of good learning experiences."
While the team arrived Sunday, they have been working at Tuscarora State Park doing trail maintenance and will be working at Hawk Mountain Scout Reservation next week, but their big project is the rain gardens.
"In essence, it is a series of ponds which run the water containing iron oxide through limestone berms to raise the pH and allow the metals to settle out," Gladfelter said. "The site is in the process of being converted to a recreational park, thus the rain gardens will address some of the runoff of the bank along the trail and also educate the public on stormwater. The rain gardens themselves involve planting several thousand plugs, small plants, of wetland species within three gardens."
She said that they have about 3,000 wetland plants of 16 different species that are all native to the area.
Since there's a lot of runoff that comes from the road when the site was built, Gladfelter said it was seeded with native wetland grasses and plants, but many didn't take because there's hardly any organic material after the land is mined and "gets churned up," it's mostly coal gravel.
"The goal with this is that we're introducing topsoil and mulch and that will add some nutrients," she said.
Since there are 16 different plant species that were planted, Gladfelter said her research before starting the project determined that the plants had different root systems and some can take more or less water, so they broke the plant locations down by zone.
"Where water would flow, it's a lot of reeds, rushes and hedges," she said. "They'll help slow down the water flow and help it infiltrate down."
There are also middle zone plants and on the upper bands and berm, there are plants that can tolerate drought.
"Later this summer, it'll get dense and spikey with some of the root systems going 3 and a half to 4 feet deep," Gladfelter said. "A lot of these plants are on the high bands to help with erosion."
Cardinal flowers, which are red when they bloom, were also picked since Headwaters tried to pick some plants that had bright colors for the people who come to use the trail to enjoy.
"It's been a good project," Abdelnour said. "Usually, we're with a sponsor for six to eight weeks, but it's shorter this year."
The plants were bought from Aquascapes Unlimited in Pipersville since Gladfelter said they couldn't get these native plants in this quantity anywhere locally.
The first rain garden that was planted Thursday is about 1,500 square feet, while the others are 1,400 and 1,200 square feet.
All of the bare patches in between the gardens are being seeded with grasses.
The last part of the project will be eight signs that describe the system, how each of the ponds and gardens work, how acid mine drainage is created and the history of mining in the area.
"The team has been doing some great work," Gladfelter said. "There's the potential for there to be wetland species all the way down here. We're just trying to add some nutrients and expand the diversity so we attract more wildlife. Since they built the site here, it's improved the wildlife and waterfowl that use it."