Coal-Mine Hollow Fill and Settling Pond Influences on Headwater Streams in Southern West Virginia, USA

Abstract

The influences of coal-mine hollow fills and associated settling ponds in three headwater streams were assessed in southern West Virginia, USA. Fill drainage waters had elevated conductivities and metal concentrations, compared to a regional reference. Benthic macroinvertebrate richness was not affected consistently by the hollow fill drainages, relative to a regional reference, although a more tolerant community, lacking in Ephemeroptera taxa at most locations, was evident. Collector-filterer populations were elevated at monitoring stations directly below the settling ponds, indicating that the ponds' presence influenced macroinvertebrate community structure by means of organic enrichment. Corbicula fluminea growth was enhanced in monitoring locations directly below the settling ponds, also an apparent result of organic enrichment. Results of acute water column toxicity testing with Ceriodaphnia dubia, sediment chronic toxicity testing with Daphnia magna, and in-situ ecotoxicological assessments with C. fluminea demonstrated no mortality or toxic influence at most of the sites tested below the ponds. The settling ponds appear to serve as sinks in collecting some, but not all, trace metals.

Cumulative impacts of mountaintop mining on an Appalachian watershed

“…2 C and F). One possible explanation for this difference in solute export is that Se, Sr, and N mobility decline following mine reclamation while exports of pyrite and carbonate weathering-derived solutes (especially SO 4 2− , HCO 3 − , Ca 2þ , and Mg 2þ ) continue to be exported at high concentrations even decades after surface mines have been reclaimed (19). Because these weathering-derived ions are the dominant source of high conductivity in draining streams, our data suggest that current reclamation strategies will have limited success in reducing ionic stress for downstream organisms.…”

Physical habitat and water quality correlates of crayfish distributions in a mined watershed

“…, HCO 3 -, and SO 4 -, has been linked to the reduction or extirpation of macroinvertebrate populations (Cormier et al, 2013c). Macroinvertebrate tolerance of elevated conductivity differs among taxa (Hartman et al, 2005;Merricks et al, 2007;Pond, 2010). However, few studies have examined the influence of elevated conductivity on crayfish distributions, and species-specific tolerances of crayfish to conductivity are unknown.…”

Assessing causation of the extirpation of stream macroinvertebrates by a mixture of ions

“…The Watershed Assessment Database (WABbase), which was obtained from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, is described by Cormier et al [1] and was used to derive the conductivity benchmark. Additional information sources were used, including (1) toxicity tests from peer-reviewed literature [7]; (2) information on the effects of ionic mixtures on freshwater invertebrates from standard texts and physiological reviews [8][9][10][11][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]; (3) a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) Region 3 data set from Gregory J. Pond, which includes the original data found in Pond et al [6] and data collected for a Programmatic Environmental Impact Assessment [24]; (4) data on the composition of Marcellus shale brine from Amy Bergdale, U.S. EPA Region 3, based on analyses by drilling operators; (5) data from the Kentucky Division of Water database [2]; and (6) geographic and related information from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection and public sources [1,2].…”

“…Potential sources for a mixture of ions HCO À 3 /CO 2À 3 plus SO À 4 greater than Cl À in the region include surface and underground coal mining, effluent from coal preparation plants and associated slurry impoundments, effluent from coal fly ash impoundments, scrubbers at coal-fired electric plants, and demineralization of crushed rock [7,23,24,27]. In particular, high-conductivity leachate has been shown to flow from valley fills created during coal mining operations [6,18,24]. In contrast, mixtures are more likely to be dominated by Cl À when they are associated with winter road maintenance [28,29], brines from natural gas and coalbed methane operations [30], treatment of wastewater [31], and human and animal waste [23,32].…”