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The Montgomery Herald S ERVING THE UPPER KANAWHA V ALLEY Montgomery, West Virginia Wednesday, July 24, 2013 50 cents Index Calendar Classified Opinions Church Sports News Community Obituaries STEVE KEENAN/THE MONTGOMERY HERALD (2) The National Boy Scouts Jamboree wraps up today and over 40,000 Scouts and Venturers will heading away from Fayette County’s Summit Bechtel Family National Scout Reserve and back to their homes around the country and around the world. Earlier this week, more of them took the opportunity to fly across the sky on one of Jamming at the Jambo Venturers Above, Joe Nowack, from combined Venturing Crew F406, examines a photograph- ic negative Monday at the Up- per Kanawha Valley Technolo- gy Community Building. At right, Les Thomas discusses the best way to view and handle the nega- tives the Venturers were working with Monday. STEVE KEENAN/THE MONTGOMERY HERALD (4) Chris Heimrich, left, shows a negative to Mylan Cook. CHERYL KEENAN/THE MONTGOMERY HERALD (2) Boz Howard, 14, second from left, of Troop A401 of Dayton, Ohio, takes a bucket of limestone from C.J. Destefani, 14. Howard passed the bucket on to Logan Copsey, left, 13, to dump into the hydro generator. The limestone starts the process of leaching the metals (iron and aluminum in this in- stance) from the water of Morris Creek in a series of five pol- ishing ponds created by the Morris Creek Watershed Associa- tion. Pictured to Destefani’s left is Erick Detweiler, 15. Logan Copsey, 13, of Troop A401 of Dayton, Ohio, dumps a bucket of limestone into the water at the hydro generator. See CREEK on 2

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The Montgomery HeraldSERVING THE UPPER KANAWHA VALLEYMontgomery, West Virginia Wednesday, July 24, 2013 50 cents

Index

Calendar 8Classified 10

Opinions 4Church 5

Sports 9News 2-3, 6-7

Community 8Obituaries 5

STEVE KEENAN/THE MONTGOMERY HERALD (2)

The National Boy Scouts Jamboree wraps up today and over 40,000 Scouts and Venturers will heading away from Fayette County’s Summit Bechtel Family NationalScout Reserve and back to their homes around the country and around the world. Earlier this week, more of them took the opportunity to fly across the sky on one ofthe Summit’s ziplines, and to row along Goodrich Lake.

Jamming at the Jambo

Venturershelp preservelocal history

BY STEVE KEENANSTAFF WRITER

MONTGOMERY — Thethree groups that comprisedIllinois-based Venturing CrewF406 found themselves upclose and personal with someUpper Kanawha Valley histo-ry Monday.

Venturing is a youth devel-opment program of the BoyScouts of America for youngmen and women who are 14years of age (or 13 years of ageand have completed the eighthgrade) and under 21 years ofage. According to www.scout-ing.org, Venturing’s purpose isto provide positive experiencesto help young people matureand to prepare them to becomeresponsible and caring adults.

Venturing crews were in-volved in the National ScoutJamboree for the first time in2013.

Prior to commencing theirhands-on work on Monday aspart of the community serviceinitiative undertaken by theCitizens Conservation Corps

of West Virginia and the BoyScouts of America, the Ventur-ers took in a slide show fromLes Thomas, president of theMontgomery Historical Com-mittee. In the presentation,Thomas displayed a variety ofphotographs and discussed lifein Fayette and surroundingcounties in years past.

After the presentation, theVenturers and their leadersadjourned upstairs in the Up-per Kanawha Valley Technolo-gy Community Building to un-dertake a project in which theyhelped catalogue photographicnegatives of the late H.W.“Sonny” Glenn, Jr. Glenn, whodied in 2004, owned GlennStudio and, as an active pro-fessional photographer formore than 50 years, helpeddocument life in the Valley.

Using funds available froma grant from the FayetteCounty Commission, theMontgomery Historical Com-mittee purchased the nega-tives and is in the process oforganizing them and eventual-ly making them available tothe public, Thomas said. It willallow the committee to show“things of historical signifi-

cance to our community,” hesaid. “The Boy Scouts havehelped us tremendously.”

“This project is very impor-tant,” said Venturer BeckyGreen, a member of Crew 343from Mt. Zion, Ill. “My familyis actually big into genealogy.

“This seems very valuable tome. It gives a little window in-to people’s lives.”

About the Jamboree itself,Green said, “It’s been a lot ofwalking. It’s been a great ex-perience. Everyone seems ex-cited to have girls there.”

The aspect she’s most takenfrom the Jamboree was the“teamwork” Scouts and Ven-turers have learned. “We werekind of all thrown together atthe campsite” and had to fig-ure out the best way to pro-ceed with the tasks facingthem.

For more information on theMHC project, e-mail Thomasat [email protected] orleave a message for him at304-442-5181 (city hall).

For more on the historicalcommittee’s work, see a futureissue of the Herald.

— E-mail: [email protected]

Above, Joe Nowack, fromcombined Venturing CrewF406, examines a photograph-ic negative Monday at the Up-per Kanawha Valley Technolo-gy Community Building.

At right, Les Thomas discusses the best way toview and handle the nega-

tives the Venturers wereworking with Monday.

STEVE KEENAN/THE MONTGOMERY HERALD (4)

Chris Heimrich, left, shows a negative to Mylan Cook.

Jason Piske, left, Kevin Har-rington and Thomas Coatesuse a light table to look moreclosely at an image.

BY CHERYL KEENANEDITOR

MONTGOMERY — Scoutsfrom Troop A401 of the MiamiValley Council in the Dayton,Ohio, area got more than theybargained for when theyjoined volunteers from theMorris Creek Watershed As-sociation on Monday.

“This is much more thanspending all day on the end ofa shovel,” said ScoutmasterJody Malone. “They’re gettingan education. We’re seeingsome of the effects of mining.It’s more than just the work.”

Since 2002, the MorrisCreek Watershed Associationhas been working, as a groupof volunteers and with otherconservation groups and stateagencies, to clean up the ef-

fects of mining on the water ofMorris Creek, a tributary ofthe upper Kanawha River.

“This creek was dead,” saidMike King of the MCWA.“There was no life in it.”

Today, the creek boastsbrown trout throughout itslength, and brook trout in oneportion.

Monday the Scouts of TroopA401 were aiding in the effortto bring the creek back to itsformer vibrant state.

Scouts worked first onmaintenance of native treeslike American chestnut plant-ed along Morris Creek, thenmoved on to watershedrestoration projects includingplacing limestone fines intoan acid mine drainage site,

Scouts help return life to Morris Creek

CHERYL KEENAN/THE MONTGOMERY HERALD (2)

Boz Howard, 14, second from left, of Troop A401 of Dayton,Ohio, takes a bucket of limestone from C.J. Destefani, 14.Howard passed the bucket on to Logan Copsey, left, 13, todump into the hydro generator. The limestone starts theprocess of leaching the metals (iron and aluminum in this in-stance) from the water of Morris Creek in a series of five pol-ishing ponds created by the Morris Creek Watershed Associa-tion. Pictured to Destefani’s left is Erick Detweiler, 15.

Logan Copsey, 13, of Troop A401 of Dayton, Ohio, dumps abucket of limestone into the water at the hydro generator.

See CREEK on 2

Page 2: News feature 3a mh 20130724 a001

The Montgomery Heraldwww.montgomery-herald.com2 ■ Wednesday, July 24, 2013

placing rocks along thecreek, and repairing K-dams with new supportlogs.

The work at the seriesof five MCWA settlementponds seemed more likefun to some of the Scouts.

“Is this really helping?”asked 14-year-old JimmyBasner as he and his fel-low Scouts tossed lime-stone into the creek.

When told the lime-stone helped leach themetals, mainly iron andaluminum in this sec-tion, from the water, heand his mates redoubledtheir efforts.

The Scouts earlier hadinspected a hydro gener-ator and set up a bucketbrigade to dump in thelimestone. One thousandpounds of limestone isloaded into the genera-tor, powered by the out-flow of old mines, everytwo weeks. Once in thewater, the limestonedoes its work, causingthe metals to drop out in-to a series of five polish-ing ponds. “It’s just achance for the metals tofall out before we put(the water) back in thecreek,” said Rob Jackson,MCWA VISTA worker.

Upstream of the pol-ishing ponds, the waterbears a distinct orange

hue, a testament to thelarge amount of iron re-maining from the aban-doned mines. After thelimestone does its work,however, the wateremerges looking clearand sparkling.

The hydro generator it-self, driven by the waterfrom the abandonedmines, also completelypowers a mobile com-mand center onsite, do-nated to the MCWA byHomeland Security.

“It powers everythingin here,” King said fromthe center. To prove hispoint, he offered tocharge a Scout’s cellphone.

When he got the phoneback, Scout Craig Ian-

nacchione, 17, was sur-prised. “It was at 31 per-cent charged and it’s upto 65 percent in 20-25minutes! That’s crazy,”he said, and then added,“I want one (of the hydrogenerators)!”

Iannacchione said hisphone would have taken2 to 21/2 hours to chargesimilarly at home.

“If we were going to behere for another halfhour, my phone would befully charged,” he said,as he walked away to tellother Scouts about thestrength of the water-powered generator.

Jackson told theScouts similar aban-doned mines exist allover southern West

Virginia.“This is an untapped

resource right here,” hesaid. “They could be put-ting power back into thegrid all over southernWest Virginia.”

The hydro generator isa joint project of MCWAwith Marshall Universi-ty, WVU Tech and theDepartment of Energy.

Boz Howard, 14, wasamong the Scouts whoenjoyed the educationalaspect of his service proj-ect.

“It’s very interesting,”he said. “I really expect-ed just to be working, butit’s very educational aswell.”

— E-mail: [email protected]

CREEK▼

CONTINUED FROM 1

The hydro generator, using water from abandoned mines in thearea, powers a mobile command unit for the Morris Creek Water-shed Association.

CHERYL KEENAN/THE MONTGOMERY HERALD (3)

The orange color created by the iron is readily visible in this pol-ishing pond.

Rob Jackson,VISTA workerfor MCWA, ispictured withScoutmasterJody Malone

with TroopA401 of the

Miami ValleyCouncil.

Division of Tourism launches webpage to showcase state’s wineries, distilleries and breweriesSOUTH CHARLES-

TON — The West Vir-ginia Division ofTourism has launcheda new landing page onits website devoted toshowcasing the Moun-tain State’s wineries,distilleries and brew-eries.

The landing pagecan be accessed atwww.wvtourism.com/spirits . The site pro-vides a listing of spiritmakers organized bygeographic region,with detai ls on theproducts producedand, in some cases,tour hours and tast-ings.

“Spirits are a grow-ing part of the agri-

tourism market herein West Virginia,”Tourism Commission-er Betty Carver said.“We want to encouragepeople who are inter-ested in this particularsubject to vis it themakers of these hand-crafted spirits andlearn more about whatthey have to offer.”

West Virginia ishome to a collection ofwineries, each with itsown distinctive blendof wines and styles —from traditional redand white varieties, todessert wines and spe-cialty wines. Many of-fer tours of their vine-yards as well.

“We appreciate the

commitment and hardwork involved in thedevelopment, nurtur-ing and creation of thissegment of our econo-my and the posit iveimpact it has on WestVirginia’s tourism in-dustry,” said KeithBurdette, Secretary ofCommerce. “The own-ers and crafters ateach of these business-es take great pride inoffering outstandingproducts with its ownWest Virginia signa-ture that appeals to avariety of tastes.”

The Mountain Statehas several breweries— many of which alsooffer a full restaurantmenu — that produce

seasonal and year-round craft -brewedbeers. In addition tofantastic manufactur-ers to visit, connois-seurs can f ind WestVirginia craft beers atspecialty shops, barsand restaurants.These beers are pro-duced with seasonal,locally-produced ingre-dients by talentedbrewmasters.

Disti l leries are anup-and-coming area ofthe market in WestVirginia. The makersuse locally grown in-gredients to produce avariety of spir its —from vodka, gin andbourbon to art isanfruit cordials.

Foodies and spiritlovers can visit thewebsite www.wvtourism.com/spirits and click on

the state map to findwineries, breweries anddistilleries located nearthem.

For more informationon tourism or to order afree 2013 West VirginiaOfficial State TravelGuide, visit the WestVirginia Division ofTourism online atwww.wvtourism.com ofcontact 1-800 CALLWVA.