I've witnessed in a major change from
the way things were then until now in
terms of water quality
we have areas that are clearly showing
signs of improvement
the bugs that live in the streams the
macro invertebrates and the fish the
numbers have coming back to pre mining
and free money conditions plus the water
quality back to where it was pre mining
to one reason that that bugs are
important to us the bugs are the low end
of the food chain so if we have good bug
populations that's a good indicator that
the overall health of the stream is good
Emma me has helped us develop a science
plan that is investigating water quality
conditions and causes for water quality
problems in the watershed so that we can
use the best science we have to come up
with solutions from our field staff is
routing inspectors to make sure as a
mind is operating they would meet those
those levels and once they're finished
mining there's a extensive amount of
land reclamation that the companies must
do to restore the areas in a way that
would be compatible with the stream
quality and the stream health
we mined almost five miles of high wall
pre-existing high wall there so you went
through areas that were mine previously
and you reclaim those so you took away
the eyesore of a of a high wall there
plus the streams had been tilted in and
we would reestablish those streams and
use the natural technique as we work to
remind sites and restore the streams
what we generally see our begin to see
his improvements in water chemistry and
in improvements in sedimentation in the
string we try to control every
everything that has the possibility of
leaving that permit sediment wise we try
to to keep it in our sediment ponds and
just preventing in y'all fight impacts
protecting water quality is really
important and no one agency or
organization can do it by themselves and
we want to leave the land in as good or
better shape than we found it and make
improvements any place that we can if
we've recovered about seven streams and
that that total length of recovery is
probably 40 miles or so it's exciting to
me to see the recovery of our natural
environment
you