At Aylesworth Creek Lake, trout thrive and officials celebrate

Borys Krawczeniuk, The Times-Tribune, Scranton, Pa.
Updated ·3 min read

Apr. 11—ARCHBALD — Overlooking Aylesworth Creek Lake on Tuesday, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey and other officials touted newly available federal tax dollars meant to clean up poisonous abandoned mine drainage.

Along the lake's rocky shoreline, retiree Dave Yarema and other anglers enjoyed the results of federal tax money spent long ago to neutralize acid mine water.

Yarema, 66, cast his line into a lake stocked for the second time this year with trout, not especially worried about catching one.

"I just like to fish and to be outside," the Old Forge resident said.

The setting was meant to convey a message: bills like the ones Casey and U.S. Rep. Matt Cartwright pushed through Congress last year to help trout fishing and local economies thrive.

Casey and Cartwright's Safeguarding Treatment for the Restoration of Ecosystems from Abandoned Mines (STREAM) Act addressed a flaw in President Joe Biden's infrastructure funding law. Congress tucked their bill's flaw-fixing language into a large spending bill passed in December, a Casey spokeswoman said.

Previously under the infrastructure law, abandoned mine land cleanup money couldn't be spent to address acid mine drainage, Casey said. Abandoned mines produce toxic water that pollutes rivers, creeks and other streams.

The STREAM Act allowed states to set aside up to 30% of their allocation for drainage. Pennsylvania is awaiting federal Office of Surface Mining approval to do just that, said Patrick Webb, director of the state Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation.

The infrastructure law provides Pennsylvania about $3.7 billion of the more than $11 billion appropriated for mine reclamation. The state still has 180,000 acres of abandoned mine land that needs addressing and more than 7,000 miles of streams affected by mine drainage.

Casey said the drainage fixes will improve property values, restore fish to lakes and streams, create jobs and "improve quality of life in every coal community."

Bernie McGurl, executive director of the Lackawanna River Conservation Association, pointed to what money like this can do.

In the 1960s, before treatment, an attempt to stock the lake with trout ended disastrously: acid mine drainage killed them all, McGurl said. In the 1990s, the late Rep. Joe McDade fought for federal money to install an acid mine drainage treatment system "back up in the woods, about a half mile from here," he said.

"So that's helping to buffer the water here and it's doing a good job because we can sustain the fish here," he said.

Casey ceremoniously tossed two buckets of trout into the lake, and state Fish and Boat Commission Executive Director Tim Schaeffer threw in another.

A football field away, dozens of people with fishing lines waited for the real stocking: a commission tanker truck with hundreds of trout from state hatcheries.

For Yarema, it was a dream day, warm temperatures, plenty of sun. He used to tell himself, "My God, if I ever make it to retirement I'm going to fish more."

"I like to fish when they're stocking them, because you have a better chance," Yarema said.

Contact the writer: bkrawczeniuk@timesshamrock.com; 570-348-9147;

@BorysBlogTT on Twitter.