Water Resupply - The Wilderness Loop 05/05/2016

I've been working with the mining and surface stream data for The Wilderness Loop of the Buckeye Trail (North Country concurrent partially), which consists of the Road Fork, Whipple and parts of the Belle Valley and Stockport Sections.  I've got data that might make the situation better than it has been.  What I've mean is that I've identified streams that are probably not contaminated with heavy metals.  And so far, my data can support 10 mile continuous hikes, except present day RF 04 - 10.  That's 13.82 miles where I can't get public access to the few surface streams that I believe are uncontaminated.  This area, which is northwest of Caldwell of Noble County is, or was heavily mined and the only two remedies that I can see now are if the section gets a private water or camp host, or an in-person trip down OH-78 reveals the presence of a convenience store that wouldn't show up on a Google map or search (sometimes this happens).

Surface Streams Mining Contamination

Over the last week or so, I've been working with these overlays trying to determine stream contamination from mining on The Wilderness Loop - Buckeye Trail (North Country Trail partially concurrent).  This image is an overlay of the National Hydrography Dataset from the US Geological Survey (USGS) with mining data from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources with the route of the Whipple Section - Buckeye Trail/ North Country Temporary Connector.  I've also been using a USGS topo overlay to predict the likely path that hard metals (such as mercury) would take to get into the watershed.  Those things can't be filtered by typical hiker water purification units.  When opened in Google Earth, they just become layers.

This idea isn't mine.  Credit for this one goes out to the Buckeye Trail Association's maintenance supervisor.  And it wasn't until recently that I had the capability to put it all together.  This data is for The Wilderness Loop only and been on the "to do list" for a while.

Is every stream contaminated?  Well, I'm not a scientist, so I don't want to make such statements. I noted the location of every stream.  Many of them are probably perennial.  I marked the ones with mines along, or on one of their branches in red.  Even in on a hand GPS, some won't read the icons, so their names read that "Do Not Filter Here."

In a nutshell, there are certain places the hiker shouldn't filter water from.  They are:

AEP Recreation Land
Little Muskingum River
(including the Clear Fork Little Muskingum River)
The West, Middle and East Branches of the Duck Creek
Road Fork Section, Pts. 04 - 07 (present day map & guide)

According to my data, Whipple 13 - 24 (10/2010 map & guide) can be a hit or miss... mostly miss.  In any event, if the hiker assumes the risks involved. And they'll need data like mine to plan where they're going to filter water.  Concerns about mining and it's effect on surface streams have been going on since before the trail in this area was born.