The Quakake Tunnel (also known as the Meadow Tunnel or the Beaver Meadow Tunnel) is a mine

drainage tunnel A drainage tunnel, called an emissary in ancient contexts, is a tunnel or channel created to drain water, often from a stagnant or variable-depth body of water. It typically leads to a lower stream or river, or to a location where a pumping stati ...

Carbon County, Pennsylvania Carbon County is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the population was 64,749. The county is part of the Northeast region of the commonwealth. The county borders Lehigh and Northampton counties in the state ...

, in the United States. The tunnel is several thousand feet long and has a discharge of thousands of gallons per minute. It was the subject of an

Operation Scarlift Operation Scarlift (also known as Project 500 or The Bond Issue Program) was a program carried out by the Pennsylvania government in the 1960s and 1970s. Its mission was to repair environmental damage caused by abandoned mine lands, acid mine draina ...

report. The tunnel is a major contributor of acid mine drainage to the

watershed Watershed may refer to: Hydrology * Drainage divide, the line that separates neighbouring drainage basins * Drainage basin, an area of land where surface water converges (North American usage) Music * Watershed Music Festival, an annual country ...

of the

Lehigh River The Lehigh River () is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed April 1, 2011 tributary of the Delaware River in eastern Pennsylvania. The river flows in a generally southward ...

Description

The Quakake Tunnel is located in Packer Township near the border between

Carbon Carbon () is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol C and atomic number 6. It is nonmetallic and tetravalence, tetravalent—meaning that its atoms are able to form up to four covalent bonds due to its valence shell exhibiting 4 ...

and Luzerne counties. The tunnel is located to the south of the borough of Beaver Meadows. It is approximately in length. The mouth of the tunnel is at Wetzel Creek and its waters ultimately enter the

Delaware River The Delaware River is a major river in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States and is the longest free-flowing (undammed) river in the Eastern United States. From the meeting of its branches in Hancock, New York, the river flows for a ...

. The tunnel's direction is mainly north and 60 degrees west and the other end of the tunnel is in

coal mine Coal mining is the process of resource extraction, extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its Energy value of coal, energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to Electricity generation, generate electr ...

workings belonging to the Lykens Vein. It drains part of the Spring Mountain coal workings as well as the Beaver Meadow and the Coleraine coal workings. The mouth of the Quakake Tunnel is slightly over above

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an mean, average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal Body of water, bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical ...

. The upper end of the tunnel is not significantly higher. The Quakake Tunnel is one of four sources of

acid mine drainage Acid mine drainage, acid and metalliferous drainage (AMD), or acid rock drainage (ARD) is the outflow of acidic water from metal mines and coal mines. Acid rock drainage occurs naturally within some environments as part of the rock weatherin ...

in Carbon County and one of eight in the watershed of the Lehigh River.

Geology

The portal of the Quakake Tunnel is in severely fractured red

shale Shale is a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock formed from mud that is a mix of flakes of Clay mineral, clay minerals (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g., Kaolinite, kaolin, aluminium, Al2Silicon, Si2Oxygen, O5(hydroxide, OH)4) and tiny f ...

. Timbering is required to support the tunnel at this location. Other varieties of rocks are found deeper into the tunnel.

Sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

belonging to the

Pottsville Formation The Pennsylvanian Pottsville Formation is a mapped bedrock unit in Pennsylvania, western Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio, and Alabama. It is a major ridge-former in the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians of the eastern United States. The Pottsville ...

is found from above the mouth of the tunnel to above the mouth of the tunnel. From this area up to from the tunnel's mouth, the tunnel is mostly in conglomerate rock. There are few fractures in the rock in this part of the tunnel. From , , and , there are more conglomerates. Other rock types found deeper than include red shale, gray shale, and

sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

. There are

coal seam Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extrac ...

s at the upper end of the Quakake Tunnel. The Quakake Tunnel is collapsed in places. Historically, there was also debris in the tunnel. A number of minor

thrust fault A thrust fault is a break in the Earth's crust, across which older rocks are pushed above younger rocks. Thrust geometry and nomenclature Reverse faults A thrust fault is a type of reverse fault that has a dip of 45 degrees or less. I ...

s are also found within the tunnel. A synclinal axis occurs at from the mouth and an anticlinal axis occurs at from the mouth. The tunnel is at the southeastern edge of the Jeansville Coal Basin. The water of the Quakake Tunnel comes from surface water that flows through broken strata and abandoned strip pits.

Hydrology

The discharge of the Quakake Tunnel is greater than the

discharges that feed

Hazle Creek Hazle Creek is an American tributary source stream of the Lehigh and Delaware Rivers in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States. Description A source stream via Black Creek in Carbon County originates in southern Luzerne County on ...

at Stockton. The load of

acidity An acid is a molecule or ion capable of either donating a proton (i.e. hydrogen cation, H+), known as a Brønsted–Lowry acid, or forming a covalent bond with an electron pair, known as a Lewis acid. The first category of acids are the ...

in the tunnel is also greater than the aforementioned acid mine drainage discharges. The tunnel causes Wetzel Creek to be acidic as far downstream as its mouth. Between 1979 and 1980, the pH of the discharge of the Quakake Tunnel ranged from 3.4 to 4.6, with an average of 3.9. The total concentration of

ranged from 66 to 110 milligrams per liter, with an average of 80 milligrams per liter. Between 1979 and 1980, the concentration of

aluminum Aluminium (or aluminum in North American English) is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Al and atomic number 13. It has a density lower than that of other common metals, about one-third that of steel. Aluminium has ...

in the waters of the Quakake Tunnel ranged between 5.5 and 17.0 milligrams per liter and averaged 9.8 milligrams per liter. The

calcium Calcium is a chemical element; it has symbol Ca and atomic number 20. As an alkaline earth metal, calcium is a reactive metal that forms a dark oxide-nitride layer when exposed to air. Its physical and chemical properties are most similar to it ...

concentration ranged from 6.0 to 39.8 milligrams per liter, with an average of 14.1 milligrams per liter. The

iron Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's o ...

concentration ranged from 0.18 to 0.97 milligrams per liter, with an average of 0.83 milligrams per liter. The concentration of

sulfate The sulfate or sulphate ion is a polyatomic anion with the empirical formula . Salts, acid derivatives, and peroxides of sulfate are widely used in industry. Sulfates occur widely in everyday life. Sulfates are salts of sulfuric acid and many ...

s ranged from 80 to 200 milligrams per liter, with an average of 144 milligrams per liter. Between 1973 and 1974, the discharge of the Quakake Tunnel ranged from 10.1 to 33.6 cubic feet per second, with an average of 21.3 cubic feet per second. The water temperature ranged from , with an average of . Between 1979 and 1980, the average water temperature of the tunnel's discharge was . As of 2008, the discharge of the tunnel is over 6000 gallons per minute (13.37 cubic feet per second), making it the largest abandoned mine discharge in the watershed of the

History

The Quakake Tunnel was constructed for the purpose of draining water from

deep mine This list of deepest mines includes operational and non-operational mines that are at least , which is the depth of Krubera Cave, the deepest known natural cave in the world. The depth measurements in this list represent the difference in elevati ...

s via gravity. A prototype installation of a treatment system for the Quakake Tunnel was constructed in 1978 and 1979. The Quakake Tunnel was cleared of debris by the

Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is the agency in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania responsible for protecting and preserving the land, air, water, and public health through enforcement of the state's environmental laws ...

at some point in the past. After this, it was possible to access the tunnel between its lower end and its upper end for the purposes of mapping it. A study once suggested that it was possible to place a seal in the tunnel between from its mouth. The treatment of the Quakake Tunnel ranks third in priority among eight

discharges in the watershed of the Lehigh River.

References

External links