Students turn mine waste into tie dye


By Denise Allabaugh (Staff Writer)

Published: April 17, 2012

NANTICOKE - Sixth-graders from Leo E. Solomon Plains Elementary School plan to recycle acid mine waste from area streams and turn it into chalk and tie-dyed T-shirts.

About 60 students visited sites affected by abandoned mines on Monday in Newport Township, Nanticoke and Hanover Township - places where the water is lifeless and orange, where the strong smell of sulphur remains.

Thanks to a $2,000 grant the school received from PPL's Empowering Educators grant program, two solar-powered kilns will be built out of wood and recyclable materials and used to reclaim, dry and recycle iron oxide in the streams.

The school is working together with Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation on the project. The kilns will be built at the school at the EPCAMR office in the Earth Conservancy building in Ashley, said Mike Corcoran, elementary science coordinator for Wilkes-Barre Area School District.

Corcoran said the project's goals are to show students local streams negatively impacted by abandoned mine drainage and to teach them what they can do to help. After collecting and drying the iron oxide from the streams in a kiln, the students will create chalk and wear the T-shirts they tie-dye on their sixth-grade class trip, he said.

"We would like to see living things in our streams, which makes them healthy. This isn't healthy," Corcoran said, as students removed iron oxide from abandoned mine winter in the Honey Pot section of Nanticoke. "This stuff is not in our textbooks. Getting the kids out to see this first-hand is fantastic because when you talk about things that impact us locally, you don't see that in a national textbook."

Robert Hughes, executive director of the Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation, told students removing the iron oxide prevents it from draining into the Susquehanna River.

"This is neat because it's energy conservation plus water-resource protection and recovery of iron oxide for some good," Hughes said.

dallabaugh@citizensvoice.com, 570-821-2115

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Scott K
"Watch Your Top"

Interesting on one hand. On the other hand I see this as a "green" / "treehugger" tirade. "OH! My! Look how mean and nasty Coal Mining is." "We have been hurting the environment" . 12 y/o skulls full of mush, only know what is feed to them and can't make reasoned choices.

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I don't have all the answers.
I don't even know all the questions!

They have been doing this for a while. I still have my shirt from back in 2005.

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Dunder Mifflin, the people persons paper people.