Wheeling is a city on the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia that was once a center of industry and commerce amid the growth of fossil fuel industries in the state, especially coal. But the prospect of sustainable wealth and growth has left us today with only a legacy of ruins, pollution and the loss of biodiversity not just around the city, but Appalachia as a whole. Exploring areas close to these sites and buried layers of the past has revealed the presence of runoff containing metals such as Iron and other acidic compounds going into streams and ultimately in the Ohio river. This runoff is known as acid mine drainage. Acid mine drainage forms from water flowing into abandoned mining sites that have pillars of FeS2 (pyrite) as well as exposure to atmospheric water vapor forming iron hydroxides and hydronium which lowers the pH of streams past natural conditions. The reactions are as follows: 2 FeS2 + 7O2 + 2H2O →2Fe2+ +4SO42-+4H+ 4Fe2+ +O2 + 10H2O →4Fe(OH)3 + 8H+ Analysis will be performed with techniques such as nitric acid digestion, AA spectroscopy, and electrometric pH analysis. I hope that this data will contribute to our growing knowledge of the scars left of Appalachia by industry long gone.

Chemical analysis of metal contaminates in the freshwater of Wheeling

251st National Meeting (2016)

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