EPCAMR

05/30/2026

If you follow, like, and love us on social media, please donate to EPCAMR during the upcoming “NEPA Gives” fundraising campaign on June 4 and 5. During this 24-hour fundraising blitz, even a $10 or $20 gift can help to unlock matching grants and win additional cash prizes for EPCAMR. Simply go during next week’s campaign to nepagives.org, search for our EPCAMR page, and hit the “Donate” button. Your contribution will allow our nonprofit to continue operating across the region’s coal communities to improve landscapes and lives.

05/28/2026

You may want to put this on your Fall Calendar!

05/28/2026

Yesteday was the 64th Anniversary if you want to call it that of the tragic Centralia Mine Fire in the Borough of Centralia. Take a view of the interview completed by the New York Post and our colleague, David DeKok. PS. It's still burning.

05/28/2026

Where’s the watershed now? When did Nanticoke Creek get its name is still to be discovered. An interesting bit of mining history was discovered by Bobby Hughes today when he was teaching his intern Carolyn Phillips how to scan mine maps with his colleague Maria Gereda. They received a colored Charles Ashburner Plate Map from the US 2nd Geologic Survey from January 1884 for a portion of the Wyoming Basin (Wyoming Valley), Luzerne County, in the area of Warrior Run, Nanticoke City, and Hanover Township from a collection borrowed from Jimmy Bach, from the Shickshinny. Historical Society. We are scanning a few maps for him and providing the Society with digital copies of the maps for him to catalog in the Museum for the public.

For those who are familiar with Warrior Run Borough Information, most residents might be familiar with the headwaters of the Nanticoke Creek being located up along Holly Street and Tomko Avenue with a major portion of the initial flow of cold clean water coming from Najaka Pond to the northeast and the other unnamed tributary that runs along Tomko Avenue through the neighbor neighborhood before coming to the confluence above the bridge.

The watershed starts above the coal measures in the Pottsville Conglomerate and Mauch Chunk Red Shale geologic setting at the top of the mountains. As it begins to flow down the mountain it interfaces with the Llewelyn geologic Formation that is where the coal-bearing strata and anthracite mining has historically occurred, even as far back as 1884 and possibly earlier.

Earth Conservancy is working a a major stream channel restoration project on the Nanticoke Creek headwaters in this area half way down Holly Street where the stream has historically lost the majority of its base flow to the underground mine workings of the Bottom Red Ash coal veins and other coal veins that were intercepted through World War 1, just past the peak of the mining industry in 1917. Streams were routinely moved and rerouted. Some were in wooden flumes, while others were diverted to concrete trapezoidal channels to keep the water from flowing into the mines. We are monitoring the flow and chemistry of this area currently for the Earth Conservancy and have completed an entire watershed assessment report for the Nanticoke Creek and the Warrior Creek, and two additional watersheds (Solomon’s Creek and Newport Creek) several years ago. An entire Story Map is available of that project that was completed under a Small Watershed Grant funded by the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation on our website.

What’s very interesting and ironic is that this series of map photos from the Ashburner Plate Map shows the headwaters of “Nanticoke Creek” as “Warrior Run” back when it was originally mapped. There was a “Holland Tunnel” too and not the one that leads in to New York City. We wonder when the tunnel was built and if it was named before or after the Anthracite mining tunnel.

You can see from the maps that Leuder’s Creek joins up with Warrior Run Creek just off of Front Street in the Hanover Section where a former railroad line was also located. Leuder’s Creek has been restored and the confluence of the two headwater streams are located along the southern border of Clark’s Cross today. Espy Run is also another tributary to Nanticoke Creek that meets up much further down in the watershed and flows down from the reclaimed and restored lands that flow downstream from the Hanover Reservoir past the SafeLight Industrial Building of Dziak Drive and crosses Middle Road (S. Valley Parkway) south of Birchwood and then over towards the LCCC Office of Plant Management along Kosciousko Street before crossing under a bridge below the Hanover 9 Industrial Park where Spreetail is located and behind Lexington Village Apartments.

Multiple coal veins were mined in this area and the colors on the map describe each of those coal veins. The map also shows some interesting structural features on the land known as anticlines and synclines where the geology rises and falls underground like a roller coaster.

EPCAMR and many others have always thought that Warrior Run Creek runs through the mountainside along Sugar Notch Borough and through the Industrial Park, then down behind the baseball field before crossing Middle Road and flowing towards the Hanover Crossings Marsh, which outlets to it before it flows behind Caremark and down towards behind the Hanover High School and former Sans Souci Amusement Park. It crosses the Sans Souci highway near the UGI entrance to the floodplain area next to the brick manufacturing company and across from the car dealership and entrance to the Waste Management Transfer Station on the property of the former Loomis Coal Breaker and Colliery.

The more you know!

05/27/2026

We have high hopes, but know that the costs of monitoring and sampling is also high and not currently in place across our AMD impacted watersheds across PA and Appalachia.

05/23/2026

Some food for thought from BlueCoal360. The mapping is incomplete, however, and much work remains to be done. We’ve worked on a number of mine pool mapping efforts and continue to do so when funding is available. It needs to become a priority for the State if it’s good to become an alternative renewable energy source. Read the previous post about the PA Legislative Guidebook about environmental concerns and issues to better understand what needs to happen to move forward.

05/23/2026

Download this 2026 PA Legislative Guidebook that is hot off the presses pulled together by the Choose Clean Water Coalition, Coalition for the Delaware River Watershed, and PennFuture with a grant made possible through the Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds (FPW) and is intended to support outreach and education pursuant to water quality impacts, funding needs, and pollution policy concerns. Have these conversations about these issues with your local legislators and Congressmen, Congresswomen, and Senators.

Bobby Hughes, had significant input in writing the chapter on Abandoned Mine Lands and AMD (p. 26-28) and the chapter on concerns and precautions that should be considered when dealing with Data Centers (p. 37-39). Many other organizations contributed to the guidebook.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5942af072994ca6253840fc1/t/6a06264c502e7a1c57e9f52e/1778787918233/Web+CCW+PA+Legislative+Briefing+Book+2026.pdf

05/22/2026

Welcome back Carolyn! It's going to be a cool, cool, cool, Summer! Special thanks to Earth Conservancy and King's College, Pennsylvania for selecting her for the 2026 EC Summer Internship Award and for allowing her to intern with us for the next 12 weeks!

Carolyn M. Phillips, a native of Luzerne County and Sophomore in Environmental Science at King’s College, Wilkes-Barre, has started her participation in a summer internship position with EPCAMR. She will continue working as our Watershed Outreach Grant Research Specialist over a 12-week period dur...