A Win for Clean Water in the Yough Watershed
The Mountain Watershed Association and Youghiogheny Riverkeeper Eric Harder won a ruling that could protect 11,000 acres and local water supplies from mining.
Good news for anyone who drinks, fishes, or paddles the water around here. The Mountain Watershed Association has won a fight to protect it.
Earlier this month, a state hearing board sided with the association and its Youghiogheny Riverkeeper, Mountain Watershed Association, in a long-running case over coal mining. The board ruled that the state was wrong to throw out the group’s petition to study whether some 11,000 acres in the Youghiogheny watershed should be kept off-limits to mining. Now the state has to take that study seriously.
Why does that matter here? Because the land in question sits in our watershed, and the mining the association is fighting could have drained aquifers and put more than 100 private water supplies at risk, according to the experts who studied it. Clean water is not a given. Somebody has to stand up for it.
That somebody, more often than not, is the Mountain Watershed Association. Eric Harder and his whole crew have spent years on this, filing the petition, fighting the appeal, and refusing to let it go. It is patient, unglamorous work, and the rest of us are better off for it.
So here is a thank-you to Eric and the team. The next time you fill a glass from the tap or wet a line in the Yough, you have people like them to thank.