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Directions to Driving Tour Stop #7
Return on PA Route 403 North for 8.0 miles to Benson. The community park sits to the right along the Stonycreek.
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Latitude: 40.1142
Longitude: -78.9258
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Driving Tour Stop #8
Oven Run and a companion stream, Pokeytown Run, were river killers. Due to abandoned-mine drainage (AMD), these streams were as acidic as vinegar and laden with dissolved iron and aluminum that destroyed all life in the Stonycreek River for miles below their outflow.
Local conservationists organized as the Stonycreek-Conemaugh River Improvement Project (SCRIP) and tackled Oven Run as one of its first projects in the early 1990s. Spearheaded by SCRIP, a coalition of groups – including county, state and federal agencies – obtained $5 million in funding to passively treat six sites. A series of settling ponds and wetlands remove the metals and return the streams to a near-neutral state. The dramatic result has been restoration of aquatic life throughout the Stonycreek River.
On an interpretive trail here you can learn how wetlands and settling ponds remove 800 to 900 tons of acidity, 200 tons of iron and 200 tons of aluminum each year at these six sites and resurrect the life-giving water from killer mine discharges.
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