By Amy Felegy for Arts Midwest.
Broadcast version by Terri Dee for Ohio News Connection reporting for the Arts Midwest-Public News Service Collaboration
Each eight-by-eight feet, two giant paintings look almost like sun eclipses. Chunks of coal fill a circle in one; pigments smear the canvas.
You wouldn't know just by looking at them, but those paintings created by John Sabraw contain paint sourced from longstanding pollution in a nearby stream.
"Iron oxide sludge," says Sabraw an art professor at Ohio University. "All orange and crusty."
Gross ... for a water body. But, beautiful for oil paint.
Sabraw is part of a network of researchers, scientists, and artists cleaning up Sunday Creek in southeastern Ohio, reworking that sludge into usable paint.
The area is part of more than 6,000 miles of streams throughout Central Appalachia that are far from crystal clear, caused by historic acid mine drainage.
Though much of the mining happened more than a century ago, Michelle Shivley says Ohio is still dealing with their environmental legacies. She's a director at True Pigments, a 2018-founded company working to restore seven miles of clean water and welfare along Sunday Creek.
"We still have streams that run orange, coming out of these holes in the ground that are connected to abandoned coal mines," Shivley says.
This particular Sunday Creek segment sees more than two million pounds of iron each year (that's around 13,500 five-gallon buckets every month!), causing high amounts of acidity and metal content in the water.
"The fish, the bugs, all those things that are typically in a stream or river, those things just can't survive in those kinds of conditions."
A branch of the U.S. Department of the Interior partially funds the project, which starts with extracting stream pollution and ends with filling paint tubes.
In between, Sabraw tests pigment for quality and consistency, and frequently takes his students out to the creek. The pigments are a huge part of his art practice.
"As I'm working with these pigments ... I just feel more connected to these kind of primal materials that make up our earth."
Pollution into Solution
Still, Shivley says all this effort hasn't meaningfully improved Sunday Creek water quality. It's why her team is designing a full-scale acid mine drainage treatment facility-and a bonus pigment production facility-expected to open next year.
The goal: Increase jobs in the area and help local stream life thrive.
"How can we use these abandoned mine land spaces and reclaim them," Shivley says. "And then transform them into something that can help with the transition for coal communities from a very extractive industry, energy driven economy, to something different that will carry them into the future in a meaningful way?"
She thinks her team has the answer.
The Process
- Pump water from underground mine pool (some stretching as large as 23 miles)
- Aerate water/remove carbon dioxide at treatment facility
- Use hydrogen peroxide to oxidize the iron, iron falls off
- Clarify water and stabilize pH
- Discharge clean water back into Sunday Creek
- Bring iron sludge to pigment production facility to de-water and dry it
- Sell the pigment! Works just the same as any pigment you pick up in any art store
Amy Felegy wrote this story for Arts Midwest.
Disclosure: Arts Midwest contributes to our fund for reporting on Arts and Culture, and Native American Issues. If you would like to help support news in the public interest,
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Legislation to provide legal immunity for pesticide companies has been introduced in state capitols across the country and lawmakers in Boise could soon join them. Research, including from the University of Idaho, has shown a link between agricultural chemicals and cancer rates in adults and children.
Irene Ruiz, executive director, Idaho Organization of Resource Councils, says pesticide manufacturers know they're selling something potentially harmful.
"To throw the responsibility on a small farmer or on a pesticide sprayer or on other folks, that's just not a fair thing to do. And for them to absolve themselves from this liability is not a good thing in the long run," she contended.
A poll from September found 90% of Idahoans oppose legally shielding pesticide companies. In 2024, lawmakers introduced a bill to provide legal protection for companies that fail to warn people about health and safety issues from pesticides, but the bill died in the Senate. The sponsor of the legislation says potential lawsuits create uncertainty for farmers and ranchers.
But Ruiz said there isn't enough warning about these chemicals and their impacts, and added it is not clear how many people have become ill from pesticides.
"I used to be a farm worker, and I know some of the ills that I have comes from pesticides. My family and friends and people that I know have long term effects from that, and there needs to be better ways and better resources and better studies to help us understand if we are getting harmed by pesticides or how to prevent them in a better way," she explained.
Ruiz said pesticides are also an issue in rural areas, where the chemicals can drift from fields to nearby homes and schools.
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A new report shows U.S. companies tackling oil and gas pollution are seeing solid and strong economic growth. Pennsylvania's methane mitigation industry is boosting the economy and job market, ranking among the top five states with 51 employee locations.
Marcy Lowe, principal with Datu Research, says manufacturers and service firms in the industry help oil and gas operators reduce methane emissions by providing leak detection, measurement and mitigation equipment. She adds that natural gas is mostly methane, a potent greenhouse gas that drives global warming.
"These manufacturing and service firms play a really important role in getting a handle on climate change, since they're all about reducing emissions of methane, which is much more powerful in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide," she explained.
The report states that the number of U.S. companies in methane mitigation is growing fast, and in 2024, there were 268 companies, up 24% from 215 in 2021.
Lowe said significant industry growth is driving economic change across the country. In Pennsylvania, that growth is centered around Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, where many companies are located. She added the jobs are stable and pay well, particularly in client-focused service sectors.
"In our interviews with companies, they tell us that these jobs have upward mobility as well, where someone might start with the company on the assembly line and end up with a much higher paying job, with much more responsibility for the future of the company," she continued.
Leak-detection technology leads manufacturing, with 55 companies reporting its production. Lowe says in Pennsylvania, firms such as Heath Consultants are driving innovation with both tech and services. Nationwide, efforts are growing to replace gas-releasing pneumatic devices with electric or solar-powered alternatives, while reducing venting and flaring to cut methane emissions and fight climate change.
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A recent report revealed the Shell petrochemical plant in Beaver County has failed to deliver the promised economic benefits since its announcement more than a decade ago.
New findings from the Ohio River Valley Institute showed the plastics plant has not brought and economic boom, and promised jobs have not materialized.
Eric de Place, research fellow for the Ohio River Valley Institute, said Beaver County's economy has performed worse than Pennsylvania as a whole, as well as the nation and even its own past benchmarks.
"Its economic performance is actually declining over time," de Place reported. "Since Shell announced that plant, what's happened is they've lost population, they've lost GDP, they've lost jobs, they've lost businesses."
De Place pointed out local residents were promised an economic renaissance with thousands of jobs and increased tax revenue when Shell built its petrochemical plant, leading Pennsylvania to give the company $1.6 billion in subsidies. He stressed it is important for community members to demand accountability and question why Shell continues to receive taxpayer support.
Shell contends its complex has created nearly 500 jobs. De Place countered Beaver County saw a short-term boost during the Shell plant's construction, with thousands of workers on-site. But since operations began, the promised economic gains have not happened.
"Clearly in the data, Shell is employing a few hundred people at the plant now. Those are real jobs, but what we're looking at is the net effect," de Place explained. "Sure, you add a few hundred jobs in one place but what happens to the rest of the economy during that time? And what happens is, it's actually declining."
De Place noted the plant produces tiny plastic pellets called nurdles, which are the building blocks for many plastic products, including disposable items such as grocery bags. Essentially, it transforms fracked gas into the raw material for plastics.
Disclosure: The Ohio River Valley Institute contributes to our fund for reporting on Budget Policy and Priorities, Climate Change/Air Quality, Energy Policy, and Public Lands/Wilderness. If you would like to help support news in the public interest,
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