Outdoors-Insider by Deborah Weisberg

Williams Run: A Water to Watch
Makes Top 10 in America List

by Deborah Weisberg

South Sandy Creek Watershed Association vice president Valerie Tarkowski shows PA Association of Conservation District's Justin Griebel plans for Williams Run
photo by Deborah Weisberg

(Irwin Township) Williams Run wends through State Gamelands 39 in Venango County---a densely-wooded tract that blazes with the rich colors of autumn.Hunters who venture into this forested valley would never guess that Williams Run is practically dead---the consequence of old strip mines that ravaged nearby farmland.

That is about to change, though, as work nears completion on a $1 million project to backfill the mine and sweeten Williams Run through limestone beds and settling ponds at its headwaters. Restoring Williams will allow a population of wild brook trout now isolated on an unnamed tributary to expand into Williams, which has the cold water brookies need to survive. The run feeds South Sandy Creek, which merges with Sandy Creek, a stocked trout destination on the Allegheny River.

“Williams is the only problem in a generally good watershed,” says Valerie Tarkowski, of the South Sandy Creek Watershed Association.“Once we clean up Williams, it will benefit everything the water feeds, from fish to aquatic insects. It will release the trout on a trib we call East Branch to at least the lower reaches of Williams. That will push the trout, which are already at the westernmost part of their native range, a little further west.”

Anglers could eventually see brook trout on South Sandy, too, according to Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission biologist Al Woomer. "South Sandy already has a low level of wild trout. An improved Williams should populate it more," he says. "The main stem of Sandy is a little too warm, so the brook trout probably wouldn;t go that far. We'll just continue to stock it." To read complete story, click here: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08293/920843-358.stm