"Pipeline Poses Hidden Threat To Trout in Pennsylvania"

"PARRYVILLE, Pennsylvania — On the last weekend in April, Tyler A. Frantz, an elementary school teacher from Annville, Pennsylvania, drove about an hour into the Pocono Mountains to learn more about trout, an animal that tells the story of two energy booms in his state’s history.

The colorful fish, which need cold, clean freshwater to survive, were devastated in Pennsylvania during the coal boom of the early 20th century. For decades, old mines leached acidic poisons into thousands of streams. After many years of work and millions of dollars spent on stream rehabilitation, trout have returned to some of these waters, including Swatara Creek in Frantz’s eastern Pennsylvania hometown of Pine Grove, which when he was a boy ran barren and the color of rust.

“It makes you realize what can happen if people aren’t careful,” he said while taking a break from fly fishing for rainbow trout on Pohopoco Creek. The creek sits just downstream from a proposed crossing by the 36-inch-diameter PennEast pipeline, which activists say could cause sedimentation — sloughing of dirt, silt and grit into streams that can kill trout just as as mine acid can."

Nate Schweber reports for Aljazeera America May 5, 2015.