[music playing] FEMALE NARRATOR: Coming up on Keystone Stories, Pennsylvania waterways.

[music playing] [audio logo] Support for Keystone Stories comes from Tom and Sara Songer of the Torron Group in State College, a proud supporter of programming on WPSU.

More information at torrongroup.com.

The Rockwell Foundation, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, supporting the arts, science, technology, and education.

A proud supporter of local programs on WPSU.

Center County Historical Society with support from Happy Valley Adventure Bureau.

Andy and Chris Bater.

The following endowments and viewers like you.

Thank you.

[audio logo] Welcome to Keystone Stories.

Nearly 3% of the State is covered in water, accounting for over 46,000 square miles.

Pennsylvanians depend on this resource for nearly everything, and there has always been a delicate balance between humans and water.

[water rushing] Water, as we know, is essential.

We need water to survive.

Pennsylvania has approximately 86,000 linear miles of streams.

It's second most in the United States, second only to Alaska, which, if you think about it, is a huge deal.

And when people came over to colonize Pennsylvania, they found all those 86,000 linear miles of streams, and they're like, hey, we need these to actually create our towns, our big cities.

But rivers don't always want to play nice.

They don't just stay inside their channel.

They're meant to flood the floodplains.

Sometimes when it floods, it can create terrible situations property loss, infrastructure damage.

It's very hard for cities to adapt, and so we have to be prepared for that.

FEMALE NARRATOR: In early America, rivers were the primary method of transportation.

But as the nation expanded westward, their limitations drove the construction of canals to move people and raw materials.

In North Central Pennsylvania, at a settlement called Lock Haven, the State built a canal system that joined the Susquehanna river and Bald Eagle Creek to link logging areas to sawmills downriver.

So they would cut it on the mountain.

In the spring when the snows melted, the river would rise from the snow melt.

And they would bring the logs down the river, and the logs were branded with the name of the sawmill they were headed for.

Because the lumber industry was so big, the city grew.

A lot of the big houses were owned by lumber people.

And they would bring in architects from Philadelphia to build their houses.

And there were some beautiful houses in town.

FEMALE NARRATOR: Lock Haven's location on the river helped fuel the city's growth, but its relationship with the Susquehanna can only be described as love hate.

The hate part came from floods.

[chuckles] There were a lot of floods.

FEMALE NARRATOR: The young city endured devastating floods as the West Branch of the Susquehanna repeatedly inundated huge portions of the city.

KATHY ARNDT: Floods were coming like every 7 to 8 years.

1889 was one of the biggest.

FEMALE NARRATOR: In 1889, after days of torrential rain, the massive log boom broke loose with a great roar, sending logs and debris downstream.

It took out every bridge between Lock Haven and Northumberland, except for the Jay Street Bridge.

That covered bridge remained, but it was the only one that survived.

Then the next one was 1918, and that was an ice flood.

I have pictures of the street right beyond my house of the ice piled up on the house that's still there.

FEMALE NARRATOR: St.

Patrick's Day, 1936.

In the midst of the Great Depression, the Susquehanna rose 11 feet over flood stage and submerged most of the city.

The most recent devastation came with Hurricane Agnes in 1972.

It was up-lapping my second floor in my house.

We stayed in the house up to the point that our lights started arcing, and my father said, we're out of here.

[chuckles] And we signaled a boat and crawled out our bedroom window, onto our porch roof and into a boat, and went to Dunnstown and stayed with friends.

FEMALE NARRATOR: This time the flooding led to a serious decline in Lock Haven's industrial economy.

Industries were nervous about staying in town, and that was the impetus to get talk about the dike levee going.

These 100-year floods are now becoming decadal.

So instead of having a large flood every 100 years, it's every 20 years.

It's every 10 years.

It's a never-ending struggle.

Cities have to adapt to these pressures, which leads to more and more need for civil engineers to develop ways to live with water directly adjacent to where we've developed.

And it's not as easy as, let's just pack up and move, because we're talking about a city.

We're talking about people that lived in a house maybe their whole entire lives.

FEMALE NARRATOR: Civil engineers determined that they would need to build a floodwall that virtually surrounded the city, and many houses near the shorelines would have to be removed.

Talk got stronger.

As we got closer to the time when it was decided to actually build it, the town divided.

We had the anti-levee group and you had the pro-levee group.

People on the hill didn't see the need for it.

Some people were against losing the view of the river.

And I said, well, the view of the river is beautiful as long as it's not on my first floor.

[chuckles] FEMALE NARRATOR: In 1990, the pro-levee group prevailed and work started two years later.

In 1994, the floodwall was completed.

It's a commanding structure built to withstand a 200-year flood, meaning a flood event that has a 1 in 200 chance of happening in any given year.

And it has already proven its worth.

We've had some floods come from within.

Water would have been three to four feet in town, except the dike levee kept it out.

FEMALE NARRATOR: But in building this giant wall, has Lock Haven turned its back on the river?

Not at all.

The levee boasts a paved riverwalk, where people walk, jog, and enjoy expansive views of the Susquehanna.

KATHY ARNDT: You see dog walking.

And they have benches up, and they have historical markers on the way.

FEMALE NARRATOR: And built right into the flood wall is a 2500-seat amphitheater and a floating stage, which hosts the summer concert series.

KATHY ARNDT: The summertime concerts are a big draw, and people are in the stands and the houseboats line up behind the stage and become part of the show.

And just sitting there watching the sun go down while listening to great music is always a good thing.

FEMALE NARRATOR: And then there's the Lock Haven Labor Day Regatta.

[engines revving] The annual powerboat racing festival, an exciting tradition that's been kept alive for 54 years.

[engines revving] I've been involved now for-- this is going to be my 42nd year.

[background chatter] Some of my friends, they've been coming for years.

I know the one family-- the Jennings family, they're on their fourth generation, and I knew all four generations.

I remember when the oldest, Alex, and they're all Alex's.

Him and his boy, Alex, and then his boy.

Now his boy.

They come every year.

They come every year.

I love this place.

I've been coming here since I was 16.

I'm 67 right now.

So that's almost 50 years.

[background chatter] It's a great place to come and have fun.

And everybody is a family here.

It's just not our family.

It's everybody.

Everybody likes each other.

My favorite thing was winning the dash for the cash.

And then my son, back-to-back-to-back wins.

Three times in a row.

Nobody's been able to beat it, dash for the cash yet.

It gets better and better and better every year.

They have already fixed everything on this-- to make it easier for everybody, all the way down to get in and out of the water.

FEMALE NARRATOR: After 54 years, the success of the event and the layout of the venue has earned the Regatta quite the reputation.

In 2019, the American Power Boat Association recognized Lock Haven as being the best race site in the whole US for that year.

That's a very, very nice award.

It's a package deal.

Listen to the band, watch the racing, down and get something to eat.

Kids can go drive-to rides.

Four days of the Lock Haven and Labor Day regatta, because you gotta regatta.

FEMALE NARRATOR: Together, the levee and the Lock Haven Regatta symbolize Lock Haven's complex relationship with the Susquehanna river.

The levee represents the need for safety and control against the unpredictable nature of the river.

They got it built, and it's done.

Now everybody can feel safer and hopefully it brings more people into the town.

That's what you want people to stay here because it is a beautiful place.

FEMALE NARRATOR: And the Lock Haven Regatta represents an embrace and an appreciation for the river's many lessons and gifts for recreation and prosperity.

[engines revving] [audio logo] Back when the coal mining industry was at its peak, Pennsylvania was a powerhouse.

But today, pollutants remain.

Fortunately, scientists are finding ways to undo the damage with a little help from mother nature.

[audio logo] MALE NARRATOR: In the massive coal fields of Pennsylvania, scars from the mining industry can be seen along its rivers and streams.

At its height, coal mining fueled the Industrial Revolution, but it also left behind thousands of mines that continue to pollute the environment with acid mine drainage.

BILL BURGOS: The coal mine drainage is a challenge because so many of the operations that created the problem have gone bankrupt and aren't there anymore to deal with it.

And they've generated a pollutant source that could last for thousands of years.

MALE NARRATOR: Penn State professors Bill Burgos and Jennifer Macalady are part of a transdisciplinary research effort to find and develop more effective remediation.

We have a team of people that includes engineers, hydrologists, microbiologists to do this important job that we have to clean up acid mine drainage.

The legacy of the coal mining operations has, basically, taken rock that was stable under a certain condition and now exposed it to air and water leading to these reactions that produce this drainage.

MALE NARRATOR: This is the air shaft of an abandoned underground coal mine.

The orange water coming out of the ground is highly acidic and steeped with toxic heavy metals, principally iron, aluminum, and manganese.

What happens in coal mines is the pyrite or the iron sulfide minerals that are associated with the coal, get oxidized to form sulfuric acid and that sulfuric acid dissolves rocks around it and gives you the iron, aluminum, and manganese.

So we know some of the metals to look for.

The other things that we look for are things like sulfate.

We measure the pH.

We measure the alkalinity.

So the challenge is to make acid mine drainage able to support life again.

And in order for it to support life, we have to raise the pH.

And we have to get metals to fall out of solution to become precipitates that we can then dispose of safely.

MALE NARRATOR: In current treatment systems, acid mine drainage is commonly run through limestone channels to neutralize the acidity and remove heavy metals.

The problem is that the limestone becomes coated with iron particles and rendered ineffective needing to be replaced.

But the science and engineering team may have found a biological answer near the source of acid mine drainage in a place called the kill zone.

When you are traveling over landscapes in Pennsylvania that are affected by acid mine drainage, you often will see pretty large kill zones where there's no vegetation, there are dead trees, not much life, but the color is often very red.

And that red color is, actually, a result of treatment.

It's the result of iron being oxidized and being immobilized in what we're calling an iron mound.

What we find is a whole community of organisms that are together accomplishing this task of removing iron from solution while the pH remains low.

And that community contains a really quite beautiful assemblage of organisms that harvest light.

Organisms that produce oxygen.

Organisms that cycle iron.

Organisms that recycle organic matter.

What we would like to see in the future is a combination of the existing types of passive treatment, in which we use natural microbial communities of the sort that are creating iron mounds.

Those communities can remove most of the iron at a low pH.

And so that is really a magical ability that we can use as a component of passive treatment to improve their efficiency.

MALE NARRATOR: But even finding and getting to the many sources of pollution is going to be a challenge.

To that end, Penn State faculty and students work with stakeholder citizen groups like the Moshannon Creek Watershed Association.

Little Beaver on-- Doctor Burgos contacted us, and so they came and they sampled the watershed.

It's a mix of small tributaries, and then there's a number of mine discharges that are sampled as well.

So we got a chance to learn more about one of our tributaries, where we felt like we needed to learn more.

MALE NARRATOR: Looking at Moshannon Creek tributaries like the veins of a leaf, you can see the area to the west is adversely affected by acid mine drainage.

The students are working to identify where to target future cleanup efforts.

[shouting] And what you need to do is break that leaf up into sections, measuring flow and measuring chemistry at different spots across the leaf to figure out and spatially identify where the worst pollutant sources might be coming in.

And then ideally, if there is assistance that we can provide with helping in growing greener grant for remediating some of these sources, that's what we want to do in the future.

[audio logo] Pennsylvania has 13 designated rivers.

How many do you think you could name?

These next stories come from the Our Town series, and we'll introduce you to three of them.

My story is about the Clarion river.

[adventurous music] I'm not a native.

I've only been here for 45 years.

I taught at the University for 27 or 30 years, retired, and then now I do a lot of things around the river.

We own some property around the river.

We have some rentals and do some dock rentals and things like that.

You can look at Clarion River a couple of different ways.

You can look at the upper Clarion and the lower Clarion.

The entire Clarion River runs for about 80 miles, but about 50 miles of it runs from Ridgway, Pennsylvania, to the Clarion Dam.

14 miles of that is the backwater which we would refer to as the lower, the Clarion Lake, and then the upper is a free flowing waterway that people use to float, to kayak, to fish.

We have many eagles that nest on the river and their apparent everywhere.

You see a lot of wildlife deer, bear.

The eagles are probably the most notorious for people to want to see.

The river is special, and it's always been special for a variety of reasons.

This river right now is the hub of Clarion, in my opinion.

It's special because people gather there, whether it's the spring when they're getting ready to get their docks out, get their boats in shape, fishing on the river starts.

So it moves right into summer fairly quickly, where families coming to the river.

You have people that we refer to as Muppets coming up from different areas, water ski, to fish, to swim, to jet ski.

So the river is a really busy place in the summer.

My favorite thing would be just visiting with family, visiting with friends.

And the grandkids, watching them on the jet skis or fish.

We do a lot of fishing off the docks.

There's a lot of activity to see, wildlife and people life.

This is my home.

I've lived here longer than any place.

In my mind, it's the river that attracts people.

And it's the river that should be the attraction because you don't have another like it.

And the Clarion River makes this place special.

I'm here to talk about the West branch of the Susquehanna river and all it has to offer.

Well, there aren't too many communities that have a world class river running through it.

There's Raftsman dam just below Whitmer Park.

You have 2.5 miles you can paddle upstream, turn around, and come back.

You have fitness.

You have wildlife viewing.

Just along Dead Man's Curve, you see a few houses, but then you're back into the trees and you can't even tell there's civilization around you in some of these spots in that 2.5-mile area.

Elliot's Park is a private park started by John Crissman and Carol Turner.

Elliot was John's dog.

John went through a serious illness.

Elliot the dog was by his side and was a great comfort to him, and he carved out an access along the river for the public to use.

It's a great place for people to stop and rest, to launch a canoe to fish from.

Through our business McCracken's Canoe Sales and Rental, Clearfield Paddling Club, we have a passion for other people.

The Special Olympics event-- this is four years in a row now.

We started out with 8 athletes.

I believe there were 28 this year.

Jeremy's an autistic boy.

The first year and his parents were just petrified.

Jeremy, when you see him, that's what you see on land.

He gets in the kayak the first year.

Pretty soon, he's singing row, row, row your boat.

And he's telling Dan the guy he's in a boat with, Dan's paddling, take me here, take me there.

And his parents are just astounded.

[sighs] And they said, he just has never reacted like this to anything.

And he's been back every year.

West branch of the Susquehanna river has had a lot of great designations over the year.

In 2006, it was named river of the year for Pennsylvania.

Between 2005 and 2010, it was named most endangered river and most improved river, different years.

In 2011, it became part of the National parks river trail system.

2012, it was named as one of the top destinations in the world to come visit.

We're ranked with Costa Rica, Mammoth Park in California, Belize.

So that was a really exciting thing to happen for this area.

I'm here to talk about The Little Juniata River and its importance to Tyrone.

The Little Juniata River, which is now an excellent trout stream, was badly polluted for over 100 years through paper mills and other means.

But in recent years, our organization, The Little Juniata River Association, has really gone after those sources of pollution, including streambank erosion in the headwaters, including wastewater management, which is now under pretty good control.

The Little Juniata begins in the city of Altoona.

Our headwaters are our most damaged waters.

When it turns east in Tyrone, just east of town, it starts to pick up huge springs, and those springs then create the trout fishery.

So what we have now is a class A wild trout stream for 14 miles.

It's the longest catch and release water in Pennsylvania.

It's beginning to be more and more of an advantage from the standpoint of the economics of the area.

Very few towns have their class A wild trout stream flowing right through town.

And in many cases out west, in particular in some eastern cities and small towns, the trout stream is the center of commerce.

It brings many people to visit and much activity and much attention.

Tyrone is sitting right in the middle of the river.

There's 15 miles of river upstream and 15 miles of river downstream, so it is ideally situated.

It's our goal to keep it that way and make it even better.

And that's what our organization tries to do.

It's also the only eastern trout stream that is really accessible by train.

So you can get on a train in Pittsburgh with your equipment and get off here and fish the river and take the train back home.

I wish somebody would actually do that sometime.

[audio logo] Raystown Lake is the largest lake in Pennsylvania and was opened in the early 70s.

The dam that was built to contain the lake was originally used for flood control and now brings in over 1 million visitors per year for recreation.

[music playing] [water sloshing] FEMALE NARRATOR: There's so much to do on Raystown Lake.

I'll start at the northern end of the lake.

You can float the Raystown branch of the Juniata river, whether it's on an inner tube, a canoe, or kayak.

You can hike to Hawn and ride an hour overlook.

And those are some of the most stunning views of Raystown lake.

You can go eagle watching at the top of the Raystown Dam where the pagoda is, and there are some stunning views there as well.

There are also 2 public recreation areas.

Seven Points Recreation Area being the largest.

They have 7 different campgrounds, hence the name seven points, large public beach that has a concession stand and water trampolines, lakehouse adventures.

There's also Seven Points Marina where you can rent a houseboat, a pontoon boat, a fishing boat.

You can rent canoes, kayaks, stand-up paddleboards and paddle around the lake from Rothrock Outfitters.

There's the Allegripis trail system, where you can mountain bike.

It's an award winning trail system.

One of the other public recreation areas is Tatman Run.

That's a smaller beach.

It includes a playground and a picnic pavilion, boat launches.

There are seven different boat launches at Raystown Lake.

They're free to use.

You can launch any kind of boat.

Pontoon boat, houseboat, fishing boat.

So there's just so much to do.

One of my favorite things about living here is the sense of community, and how much we take pride in our area, and we want to see people enjoying the outdoor recreation opportunities and the small businesses that are in the area.

[audio logo] Thanks for watching.

See you next time on Keystone Stories.

[music playing]