Ohio Rivers Now Colored Orange, What’s Making It Look Like Paint?

Known for its forests, hiking trails, and rolling hills, Southeast Ohio is considered a haven for outdoor adventurers, yet, through the landscape are innumerable orange-stained streams, shaded by the iron oxide pollution that has percolated into them from abandoned coal mines.

Such streams are polluted with poisonous sludge called acid mine drainage or AMD; the overflow of highly acidic wastewater from underground mines produces one water coming into contact with exposed mining rocks, a CNN report specified.

The United Nations has described AMD as one of the most severe long-term environmental consequences of mining, and it impacts coal mining sites worldwide, from South Africa to the United Kingdom.

Essentially, the pollution can be so poisonous to fish and other creatures that it leaves some waterways empty of aquatic life.

River Clean-Up

Rivers can be cleared by neutralizing the acidity of AMD, although it may be costly. However, two professors at Ohio Univesity have come up with an approach to financially back the reavers' clean-up through the extraction of iron oxide, a substance typically used to make pigments, and transforming it into a first-grade paint.

Coal was an essential part of the economy of Ohio and the state before, and the state generated roughly 2.3 million tons from its underground mines from 1800 to 2010.

But before 1977, when the United States introduced the Surface Mining Control, and Reclamation Act, mines that were not needed anymore were frequently abandoned.

Consequently, many of the mines have turned polluters, with AMD, detailed in a ScienceDirect report, impacting 1300 miles of Ohio streams, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources reported.

Turning Rivers Into 'Artist-Quality' Paint

Environmental engineer and Ohio University professor Guy Riefler has been working to solve the problem for the past decade and a half.

He explained it is a "nuisance and an eyesore and an embarrassment really to the pollution." And since it is a poor site, he added, it does not get the attention it deserves.

Riefler came up with the idea of extracting iron oxide from the contaminated water and turning it into the color pigments, which could be sold to fund further AMD's clean-up. However, he did not know enough about paints to identify what made them of good quality.

The two started to work together to transform extracted iron oxide into "artist-quality paint." The pair's collaboration has helped take the notion from an interesting tiny science project to something larger, as Riefler developed a small-scale process for the neutralization of the acidity of polluted streams and extract iron oxide particles, which he explained, are the predominant metal pollutant in the acid mine seeps of Ohio.

Stream Water Acidity

According to the director of project development of True Pigments, Michelle Shively McIver, every minute, a thousand gallons of water are coming out of this abandoned mine. It is a lot of iron, not to mention acidic. She added that very little life could live in a place that looks similar to this.

Once the treatment facility starts operating, True Pigments aims to extract roughly two million pounds of iron oxide each year and clean up seven miles of stream, beginning from Sunday Creek to the opening of Hocking River, MacIver explained.

The NGO reported a previous remediation project of Rural Action AMD that neutralized the stream water's acidity on the west branch of Sunday Creek and saw around 17 native fish species return two years after.

Lastly, True Pigments is confident its facility will lead to a similar result in the Sunday Creek watershed. MacIver explained that they hope that these animals will continue swimming upstream once the chemistry is fixed there. That will be good for the whole watershed.

Related information about the Acid Mine Drainage is shown on Boat of Knowledge Ohio University's YouTube video below:

Check out more news and information on Pollution in Science Times.