Iron Oxidation Winter Melt Off 2_28_2021

The bright orange staining is from iron oxidizing bacteria found all over Pennsylvania anywhere there is mining and gas drilling activities. It is produced by iron ore or Iron nodules in the ground that ground water comes into contact with and the bacteria feeds on the iron particles in the water. Often you will see fuzzy mats of the bacteria growing until heavy rains wash it away down stream. Above this section of stream up where the ground plateaus there was a strip-mine decades ago. Today further up the hill on the the saddle ridge is a Marcellus gas well and under where we walk are several horizontal gas well bore holes used for fracturing the Marcellus Shale Layer and releasing the gas trapped inside the rock fault lines.