The Jeddo Mine Tunnel is NOT a modern engineering marvel. Far from it. It’s more than a mile of underground shafts and drains much of the old anthracite mine workings underlying the city of Hazleton in southern Luzerne County, Pa. And the Jeddo releases an average of 45,000 gallons a minute of aquatic-life killing coal-tainted water into the Little Nescopeck Creek. The Little Nescopeck to the east and south of the Jeddo is a fine and small brook trout stream. After a more than two-mile run to the west and north the Litle joins Nescopeck Creek and kills its aquatic life, including whatever trout were released into its water by the Fish and Boat Commission and still swim more than four miles downstream of Nescopeck State Park and the best remaining habitat in the watershed.
The whole things eventually flows into into the Susquehanna River at Berwick, Columbia County, Pa. In recent years, state officials and the Hazleton City Authority have considered using water from the tunnel for drinking purposes. In early 1989, however, the authority ruled out the possibility, saying that filtering the highly acidic sulfur-laden water would be too expensive.
In the early 1970s, the state considered a plan to seal the tunnel and create three lakes in the Milnesville area as part of a showcase mine reclamation project. The proposed recrational development fell through. In 1984, a Montoursville sought federal approval of a plan to study the possibility of constructing a hydroelectric power plant at the mouth of the tunnel. That project also never materialized.
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