I would like to start off with wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Hard to believe that 2008 is gone! It’s been a busy year for our chapter and 2009 looks even busier. We start the year off with a full complement of officers and directors. Matt Marusiak is our new vice president and Dave Henniger and Eric Wilson are new directors. We also made some changes to our meetings with the hope more people will come out and get involved.
Fly Tying
We will again host a beginner’s fly tying class at the DuBois YMCA. The class will begin in January. We will also have an advance class that will run at the same time. The cost this year is $30.00 for members and $60.00 for non-members of either the YMCA or Allegheny Mountain. George Kutskel will have the beginner’s, and the advance class by Eric Wilson; in addition we will have many others on hand to give one-on-one help to those who need it. If interested call George.
Banquet News
We have changed locations for this year’s banquet. We are now going to the DuBois Country Club. The date has stayed the same April 4th. Another change is that this year we are going to break from tradition and have a buffet dinner instead of a sit down. The cost of a sit down would have required us to raise the price and we felt it better to keep the price where it is and get a better crowd. Kim Lanich will be handling the reservations and another mailing will be going out along with our raffle tickets. Mark your calendars now so that you save the date.
Sandy Lick Creek News
Work continues on the mine cleanup at the DuBois Mall. We had Dr Jon Deitz come to our September board meeting with a different approach to treating the discharge. After this meeting we felt to be fair and make the best possible decision on how to treat this discharge we needed to get some education. Several of us made two trips to look at the different systems that have been installed and how they were working and any problems that have been discovered since the systems were put on line. In early October we traveled to just outside of New Stanton to see a maelstrom oxidizer in action. It was the first time any of us had seen a live version of this treatment and we were impressed. The flow was about the same as that at the mall, and the pH was also similar. When the water left the pond it was clear with little to no iron and we were told that in one of the stream surveys they had found brown trout just downstream.
Just a couple of weeks later we made the trip to Latrobe to see a small bubble system. It was very evident that it could start to drop the iron, but the pond was too small to have it dropped out before it enters the stream.
There also seemed to be issues with the iron clogging the pipes producing the bubbles, meaning that would take more effort to maintain. The air pump was about the same size but was very loud and could be a problem at the mall as well. I put together a power point presentation on the various systems at the November board meeting and it was agreed that we proceed with the maelstrom oxidizer. Members that attended the site visits were Dr Colson Blakeslee, Sam Sleigh, Orwin Srock, Matt Marusiak, and I.
The next phase was to write a cost benefit analysis. After several tries we decided that it was beyond the scope of any of us so we applied for and received a technical assistance grant through National TU.
Once all this is put together Dr Blakeslee and myself will be going to Hawk Run and put the finishing touches on the Growing Greener Grant. Hopefully we can start to move dirt sometime by summer.
In other news, if you look behind the cinema at the mall you will notice a log pile. Due to not having our permit until late September we felt it best to wait till this summer to get started on the project which starts at Shaffer Rd and goes upstream about 200yds. I have spoken with the Fish Commission and we have a date, Saturday August 1st at 8 AM.
We are also going to apply for yet another technical assistance grant for do a per work inventory of the macro invertebrates in the stream so we have a base line to see how the stream recovers after we remove the iron. This should be very interesting to watch how nature goes about reclaiming this creek.
In late September Samantha Kutskel, a fishery student at Mansfield University, came home and was finally able to electro fish the creek. A large crowd was on hand to see for themselves what was in the creek. We advertised on the radio since we had canceled this just a few weeks earlier. We caught many different species of fish including several young of the year pike. No trout were caught, but because of the deep water we couldn’t shock where the trout would most likely be. The low water made the iron really noticeable. It will be nice when we get it out of the creek. We had several children put their boots on and give a hand. There is no question that the larger trout could find more than enough to eat with the large number of small suckers and carp we caught.
Cooks Run
Our October meeting was on the results of the technical assistance grant to study Crowley Run a tributary of Cooks Run. Bob Hedin and Neil Wolfe were on hand to go over what they found when they did the assessment. It doesn’t look like the discharges on this stream can be treated passively. Becky Dunlap from National TU was on hand with her intern Samantha Kutskel and Clinton County Conservation District intern Megan Kepler to go over the work they did on both Rock and Camp Run which we have done work on in the past. It was a very informative evening unfortunately not many members came out.
The Bureau of Abandon Mines has put out the bid for the collection of the water coming from the Fran site. This is the first phase toward getting something built to treat the discharge from this site and reclaim 6 miles of stream.
State Council news
Chapter board member Ken Undercoffer has finally passed the torch to Dave Rothrock as the new council president. Ken has served 2 different terms as president and I think has served longer than anyone in that position. Ken is now going to work on brook trout projects, which is his passion. Thanks Ken!
Dr Colson Blakeslee wins the Distinguished Service Award from National TU as well as Outstanding Coldwater Conservationist from State Council. Doc’s children and grand children were able to come to the meeting and share the event that was featured in the State Council newsletter. George Kutskel received the Inky Moore award for distinguished service to council. While Allegheny Mountain Chapter is not all that large of a chapter we still are one of the most active chapters in the state.
Back the Brookie plate
As also shown in the newsletter was a front license plate to help support brook trout projects. We have a supply of these, and are being sold on a first come first serve basis. If interested just come to the next meeting and I will sell you one. These are going fast as I’m handling the states orders and response has been very good, and it looks like the first run will sell out. The chapter pre ordered 30, so you may have to wait till state council reorders if you miss out now. The cost is $20.00.
Trout in the Classroom
All our schools received their eggs in early November. The DuBois Middle School did have a problem and all their eggs died in an accident. We were able to get new eggs to them thanks to council’s new intern Emily Gates. Emily also was in the area to give a program to the Brockway High School.
Next years grant program is now underway and already DuBois Catholic Schools have expressed interest in this program next year. Thanks to Eric Wilson for volunteering to help with TiC so we can keep growing it. If you have any other school districts in mind the grant round closes Feb 1st.
Changes in Meetings
As I stated earlier there are some changes coming to our membership meeting. We have for at least the last 30 years held our monthly membership meetings in Big Run and DuBois every other month. Attendance in Big Run has been mostly DuBois Area people so we are going to have the February, March and May meetings in DuBois at the YMCA. Board meetings will continue to switch back and forth. We hope this change will increase the attendance at our monthly membership meetings. We really would like to see some new faces at our meetings, as it’s hard to bring in people to talk to 7-10 people most of which are board members. We have some good topics to cover over the next few months so please mark your calendars now.
Here is the tentative agenda for our meetings:
January 6th Board Big Run
January 14th Membership Meeting Big Run “Hope for Troubled Waters” AMD projects and how they are cleaning up PA waters
February 3rd Board Meeting DuBois Nursing Home
February 11th Membership meeting DuBois YMCA
Marcellus Shale and the fisherman. DON’T MISS
March 3rd Board meeting Big Run
March 11th Membership meeting DuBois YMCA
Fly Tying Roundtable (ask the experts or learn a new pattern or two)
March 31st Board Meeting DuBois Nursing Home
April 4th Banquet DuBois Country Club
May 5th Board
May 13th Membership Meeting DuBois YMCA
“Cleaning up the Sandy Lick Creek.” A complete up date to what is happening on the AMD project
We try and keep our membership meeting informational and conduct all business at our board meetings. All members can attend the board meetings as well.
We will be selling raffle tickets several times at the DuBois Mall and we can use all the help we can get if you can help out and have not contacted me in the past PLEASE call me.
Don’t forget fly tying starts in January at the DuBois YMCA.
Allegheny Mountain Chapter of Trout Unlimited 
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