Acid Mine Drainage: "Harvest of Anguish"

"PLAINS TWP. -- Gregory Price stands near a pipe gushing putrid acid mine water into a pit on what had been a family farm and seethes.

'That’s 7,146 gallons a minute. And there are two pipes,' he says.

The 59-year-old son of a farmer drives his GMC Jimmy along the muddy edge of a neighbor’s plowed acres to the far end of the same pit, trudges through riparian lowlands blighted by a Japanese Knotweed infestation, and points to a breach in a low earthen dike that lets the acrid 'yellow boy' mine water gush frantically through an ever-eroding, winding path straight to the Susquehanna River, where it clings to the east bank, choking vegetation."

Mark Guydish reports for the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader May 21, 2011.