The Orange Pigeon Creek In Southern West Virginia-What's going on?

Added: 2026-05-08

[00:00:01]Hello everybody and welcome to the channel. I'm Leo here and I am in Delbarton West Virginia today. I've brought you guys out here before. That's it right there.

[00:00:14]And I am at the mouth of Ragland, West Virginia. That's how you go up into Ragland right there. It's a old coal mining community.

[00:00:24]And well, I guess Delbarton is too technically. You know, they both are but Unfortunately, [clears throat] guys, I have some bad news today.

[00:00:33]You know, usually we're showing you, you know, relics from the past, old historic sites, things like that. Well, this is this sort of concerns an old relic from West Virginia's past as well.

[00:00:48]Uh coal mines are certainly West Virginia history, that's for sure.

[00:00:53]But uh anyway, just get right to the point here.

[00:00:57]We've had uh within the last 48 hours, we've had basically an old coal mine has more or less blown out and flushed a whole bunch of contaminated water down the creek here and for miles it's going to be you know, pretty well wrecked. We thought it would be a good idea to kind of come out here and show you this and you know, some of you who may not even live in coal, you know, mining communities, you know, may not know anything about this kind of stuff, might find it very interesting.

[00:01:33]And uh you know, it's a little bit of a I don't know if the word ecological disaster is the right word to use, but at least on a small scale anyway, it, you know, it's going to seep into water wells and that sort of thing eventually.

[00:01:50]But I got a little bit of information uh for you guys uh right off the bat.

[00:01:55]The orange color that um from preliminary reports, it's an old coal mine. The railroad was doing some work and something happened, not really sure. We're going to go try to find out. We're going to go see if we can follow it here in a minute.

[00:02:09]But something happened and a bunch of old water from inside a coal mine got released into the creek, into the stream.

[00:02:17]But the orange color uh is primarily caused by iron oxide rust when pyrite, iron sulfide, commonly found in coal seams is exposed to air and water during or after mining. It creates a chemical reaction.

[00:02:36]The acid dissolves heavy metals from the surrounding rock including iron, manganese and aluminum.

[00:02:44]Yellow boy as is what it's called as the acidic water flows into a creek and becomes less acidic, the dissolved iron precipitates out of the water.

[00:02:58]It turns into a Hang on, I've got this wrote down. This I'm not a mine expert. Um it turns into a solid orange yellow sediment that coats the rocks and stream bed.

[00:03:14]Is it dangerous for humans? Well, it's generally not safe to drink or play in.

[00:03:20]This is according to or, you know, what we found. The water can be highly acidic and contain other toxic heavy metals like lead or arsenic even if they aren't visible.

[00:03:33]For the environment, the yellow boy sediment smothers the bottom of the creek killing the bugs, microinvertebrates, invertebrates, excuse me, that fish eat and destroying the spawning grounds. In recent context in April of, you know, this year, 2026, in the last few weeks, West Virginia has seen increased activity regarding mine drainage according to Google.

[00:04:02]Uh flooding and blowouts. Heavy rains can cause uh things to blow out and water pressure will build up inside an abandoned mine and literally burst right out through the hillside.

[00:04:16]But if you do see something like this and, you know, a sudden change, what you do is you report it to the West Virginia DEP.

[00:04:24]Their emergency uh number is 1-800-642- 3074 and they track these discharges to determine if a treatment system has failed or if a new blowout has occurred.

[00:04:40]Now, according to local news, the DEP and the West Virginia Office of Abandoned Mine Lands are on the scene.

[00:04:49]And the DEP noted that the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources has been tasked with the biological analysis in the area while the Department of Health has been notified about public water systems concerning the issue. City water have been notified of the issue, of what's going on here, to expect this, that it's it's headed their way basically.

[00:05:18]But like I said, it's it's one of those things, you know, there's there's not really a whole heck of a lot when you get these situations, you know, I I've seen these red creek beds before.

[00:05:31]A lot and never really, you know, I knew it was pollution and never really knew the process behind it, you know, the the acid gets in the water and it, you know, and as it dissipates it does this. I didn't know all of that, you know, so that's something new for me too.

[00:05:48]But it's just a shame because there, like I said, there's not really a whole heck of a lot that you can do. You know, take out every single rock, what are you going to do?

[00:05:58]But when I first got here, I noticed Now, this is just happened.

[00:06:02]Like I said, this is like 48 hours old and you can see where the two creeks here meet.

[00:06:09]When I first got here, there was a a duck going by and there was a a big turtle sitting right here.

[00:06:20]But as soon as I went to get the camera and came back, he was gone.

[00:06:25]So, you know, there's all kinds of, you know, wildlife in here and this goes on down and flows into where Elk Creek is.

[00:06:33]When I was a little kid, we used to fish in there. I fished in this stream when I was little. Not this far up, but just a few miles down that way.

[00:06:44]But here in a second, we're going to head back up into Ragland and basically follow the red and see if I can't find, you know, this site, you know, I look for deer tracks right here.

[00:07:00]You know, so all kinds of, you know, wildlife, you know, use use the water, drink it.

[00:07:06]And, you know, there's all kinds of wells and all sorts of things downstream, so you never know what the repercussions of something like that can be.

[00:07:15]You know, it's a it looks as though it's going to cover a a fairly large area.

[00:07:21]Don't really know yet, but you know, like I said, it's still very early preliminary stages at this point.

[00:07:29]But we just wanted to kind of come out here and see what's going on and show this to you guys, you know, this is this is most definitely West Virginia history. This is an old coal mine from 100 years ago.

[00:07:43]And, you know, we're not we're not typically a news agency, you know, we're not we're not here to point fingers or anything like that. There's going to be plenty blame game and finger pointing going on here in the near future without us jumping in.

[00:07:59]Uh the way I see it, you know, personally, half of the people involved probably in the cases like this, you know, I don't know about this one, but in cases like this, half the people involved aren't even around anymore.

[00:08:14]It's 100 years ago from, you know, the company's not around, the executives aren't around, the person who did the work isn't around. You know, you got half of the people involved, they're not even alive anymore. They died 50 years ago.

[00:08:31]So, you know, it kind of becomes a who who to point your finger at eventually.

[00:08:38]And, you know, but I'm sure there will be EPA fines and all sorts of, you know, things happening in the near future because of it.

[00:08:49]But like I said, it's just a strange thing to a and to to a point who is to blame. You know, do you blame the coal company executive from 100 years ago?

[00:09:02]The guy who closed it up, the guy who, you know, did the work to the the railroad, the current owners, the previous owners who didn't, you know, could have whatever.

[00:09:14]Like I said, there's just plenty blame plenty finger pointing to go around, so we'll we'll we'll let someone else deal with that.

[00:09:23]We're just here to show you show you the incident itself. Show you what's going on.

[00:09:29]And just wanted to, like I said, bring you guys out here. Look at that.

[00:09:37]It's everywhere.

[00:09:39]It's everywhere and I'm sure as I go back up, it's going to be much worse as we go.

[00:09:45]But I don't know how far I don't know how far up through there this goes. I've seen, you know, we've seen a couple other posts, people posting stuff on Facebook.

[00:10:00]Just thought I'd go up through here and just kind of show you guys some of Ragland and we'll follow the red water.

[00:10:09]I talked to a couple guys down there and uh they said that you should be able to see it. Said it's on the left. Said it looks like a big red waterfall.

[00:10:23]This is These are old coal camps, by the way.

[00:10:45]A lot of them you can see are older coal camp houses and mixed in with the new ones.

[00:10:55]Red water.

[00:11:02]I brought you guys up in here before to do videos telling you old stories.

[00:11:13]See the creek anywhere.

[00:11:19]See a bunch of people there.

[00:11:26]Hello.

[00:11:28]What y'all doing?

[00:11:30]Trying to get some save something?

[00:11:32]No, what we're doing is we're just doing looking for any any sort of dead aquatic life. Right now, we're biologists for the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources.

[00:11:41]>> I figured you were. Yeah.

[00:11:44]I figured you were. Well, good good luck, guys. How far on up is it where it Um it's it's directly upstream there about approximately uh 50 to 200 m or so. Okay. Thank you.

[00:12:00]Thank you. And thank y'all. You know what I mean.

[00:12:05]Y'all have a good day. You too.

[00:12:07]They said you know There it is.

[00:12:38]That was it.

[00:12:40]Let me find a place to get out of the way.

[00:12:46]I'm almost up to it. I had to go up and turn and come back down here and park where the state is have their vehicles.

[00:12:56]But you can see the creek is red here.

[00:13:01]The whole stream red all the way up and down.

[00:13:06]Can't really get to it that well because of all the, you know, vegetation, but you can see it. You can see the red.

[00:13:18]But the spill the it looks like I'm guessing it's kind of like you know, you have this fluid underground you don't even really realize it's there or that much of it.

[00:13:32]And I don't know.

[00:13:35]Next thing you know, it's gone, I guess.

[00:13:38]Just gets away.

[00:13:40]I don't know if it came out like all at once in one big gush or a steady stream, but it looks it looks slimy like I kind of got a little bit of a close look at it.

[00:13:55]We can see the creek right up here.

[00:14:19]You can see red through the weeds is all I can see is just that rusty red.

[00:14:30]It's right over there.

[00:14:32]I can hear it.

[00:14:46]Look at that.

[00:14:48]It's on the weeds here.

[00:14:52]All the way up here.

[00:15:00]It's a mess, ain't it?

[00:15:06]See a big slide right there. Right there is where it happened at.

[00:15:10]And you can see where it came down the hill flooded the railroad tracks and a big waterfall one right here and another one over there. I'm sure it came down that hillside all over the place.

[00:15:24]But everything over there is that rusty red, the trees leaves, everything down by the water is that same rusty red color.

[00:15:46]See a little bit there.

[00:16:10]Look at that one's been there a while, ain't it?

[00:16:18]Look at that. You can see the red all the way down through there. They've got barricades up to try and catch it, but Now, look how slimy that rock looks over there.

[00:16:30]Mine must be back there somewhere.

[00:16:39]It's a mess.

[00:16:43]That's stuff like this, you know, you can't really like I said, there's not really a whole lot you can do after the fact. The only thing you can really do is learn for the future.

[00:16:55]That's about the only thing you can do in a situation like this.

[00:16:59]And it's like an like an oil spill which covers, you know, a larger area, obviously, but still yet, it's not like you can go clean every grain of sand on the beach.

[00:17:13]But not a good report today, guys.

[00:17:25]Sometimes it's interesting stories, interesting people interesting places in hillbilly country.

[00:17:35]But today today it's that.

[00:17:58]I'm very curious to see if they're finding any animals, any, you know which I'm sure something like that is going to wipe out a bunch of the aquatic life.

[00:18:19]I don't see any minnows.

[00:18:24]I don't see a single minnow in there.

[00:18:32]They're fenced.

[00:18:37]But look at that. It just looks like orange mud sludge.

[00:18:44]It looks looks disgusting, doesn't it?

[00:18:49]It really does. It looks disgusting.

[00:18:52]Huh.

[00:19:04]And I'm going to look around a little bit more.

[00:19:07]Check that out, though.

[00:19:09]Just look at that.

[00:19:15]Everything here covered in it.

[00:19:38]I'd be kind of curious to talk to the DNR guys just to see what they found.

[00:19:43]Think I'll give it a shot.

[00:19:46]It's worth a try, right?

[00:19:49]And they may not talk to me. They may, they may not.

[00:19:52]Worth asking. You won't know till you ask, will you?

[00:19:57]Okay. Well, I have a little bit more information. I'm about um 500 yd, maybe 4 500 yd down from where the where the spill actually occurred.

[00:20:10]And I've been talking to uh one of the DNR uh DNR biologists named Nate. And I asked him if he'd be on video. He said, "Uh You can." He said, "If you insist, I can't, you know, you legally I have the right, but it's a personal matter. I'd rather not be on camera." You got it.

[00:20:27]That's not a problem. That is not a problem. But uh he's They They got some really seem to have some really knowledgeable people on scene.

[00:20:36]Uh seemed like a really good guy. He's from Elkins.

[00:20:40]And uh yeah, they seem to know what they're talking about. But so far he said that they've only got a small bag of species, animals, you know, aquatic life, that sort of thing. Which is a good sign.

[00:20:56]Uh they said, you know, the good thing about this river here or this stream system here, this watershed is the mountains that the creeks get up. He said, "If this were Cheat River, he said it would kill everything for miles."

[00:21:10]So, they said, "At least that's that's some some good news." And he seemed to be fairly optimistic that within a few years it will recover somewhat. Maybe.

[00:21:25]You know, not but not guaranteed. But like I said, he said the fact that it's in the mountains in a mountainous area with steep valleys and the river the creek water's going to get up substantially rather than raising a few inches when it floods here and there.

[00:21:44]You know, these come up several feet because of the deep valleys.

[00:21:47]That should in theory help and dilute it and wash it on down into the Tug River.

[00:21:54]Which is also not good.

[00:21:56]So, you know, there there really is no there really is no good outcome. You know, there's no good outcome to this.

[00:22:05]You know, there's going to be miles of this particular stream that it may support some life, but nothing like what it did 48 hours ago.

[00:22:20]So, yeah, there will be some there will at least be some ecological damage, but they said that uh that they found um the way they're finding them that uh and I didn't even occur to me that predation, you know, the crayfish will eat on the other fish that you can, you know, get an idea of about how long they've been dead. And he said that uh there there does seem to be there is some evidence of some that are dying dying off because of the spill.

[00:22:53]But it does look to doesn't look to be extreme at this stage. So, at least that's a good sign. That's a good sign at least.

[00:23:04]But you know, like I said, there there really is no good outcome to it. You can't you can't unscramble an egg.

[00:23:12]And that's basically what we're doing here. You They're just trying to do the best they can to mitigate the damage and keep an eye on it and maybe learn for the future. Like I said, we don't usually do news, but we wanted to bring you guys out here. You know, it's definitely hillbilly domain with the coal mine.

[00:23:45]Just a couple feet off the road here.

[00:23:48]But it is, like I said, it is a coal mine. And that is absolutely West Virginia hillbilly.

[00:23:55]And I would imagine that some of you who do not live in mining communities, who don't ever have to deal with this, might be kind of curious, might be interested to see exactly what happens in situations like this.

[00:24:09]And you know, what the procedure is and ecological events like this that like I said, there there really are no procedures.

[00:24:19]Let it go.

[00:24:33]Definitely a mess though, isn't it?

[00:24:37]Great big long long long mess.

[00:24:55]Anyway, guys, we'll see y'all next time. Hopefully, the next story will be a little bit better circumstances.

[00:25:06]Until next time though, guys.

[00:25:09]Video out.

[00:25:19]Well, I did find one other thing.

[00:25:21]I'm way downstream. I'm down below Bill Barton now. It's right up there.

[00:25:27]And it's red all the way down through here.

[00:25:31]All the way down.

[00:25:38]It's a pretty place, isn't it?

[00:25:46]Hopefully someday she will be again.

[00:25:50]I fished in this creek when I was a little kid.

[00:25:55]Still got ducks. Once Once there ain't nothing in there for them to eat, probably won't be a whole lot of ducks around.