Section 3

Ms. Kuhn brought in a whole bunch of pictures about acid mine drainage and made us research the topic on the Web in technology class. (Click here to see some sites we visited) It turns out to be a big problem here in Pennsylvania because when they mined coal they disturbed the earth and left piles of coal leftovers exposed to the air. Now when it rains, the water mixes with the metals and the water becomes acidic and runs off into the steams and onto the farms and changes the pH of the soil. This can also happen when the water runs through the tunnels they dug in the earth to mine the coal. There’s a lot of acid runoff from that too. It’s a very important problem Aunt Kayla! Ms. Kuhn thought it would be a really good idea for us to go out and do some field experiments at Lehigh Gorge Park and see the effects that different pH’s have in the soil and the streams. (Click here to view a map of the sample sites) Of course, since it basically meant a day off from our other classes we were all for it.