Signs of life are beginning to show in a once-dead Venango County stream being cultivated as a wild trout fishing destination.

Just two years after the South Sandy Creek Watershed Association spearheaded a $2 million abandoned mine drainage remediation project on Williams Run, biologists are finding seven species of forage fish where none existed before, including mottled sculpin and black-nose dace.

"They're pollution-sensitive, which indicates water quality is improving. They're also regarded as companions to brook trout, which is another encouraging sign," said Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission biologist Al Woomer. "It's a little early to tell, but we're hopeful that, within a couple of years, wild brook trout will find their way to the lower portion of Williams Run from a healthy population on a feeder stream."

Locals call the feeder stream East Branch. Because it escaped mine drainage, wild trout thrive there, but they're isolated from other parts of the watershed by pollution from abandoned mines.

Chuck Woods lives on the 450-acre property that belonged to his grandfather, who sold coal rights to his land more than 60 years ago.

Woods had been trying for decades to have the state backfill a dangerous, 30-foot-high wall from an old strip mine and treat mine drainage, but it wasn't until the South Sandy Creek Watershed Association was formed six years ago that improvements began to take shape.

The group assembled a team of stakeholders that included the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's Bureau of Abandoned Mine Reclamation and the Fish and Boat Commission, and secured funding for construction of limestone treatment beds to neutralize mine drainage that seeps into the headwaters of Williams and several tributaries.

Valerie Tarkowski, project manager for the South Sandy Creek Watershed Association, said improvements in water quality have been dramatic, with Williams showing a pH level of 6 (7 is considered normal).

"We're thrilled -- cautiously thrilled," Tarkowski said. "Our goal was to get fish to the stream and we've done that. Now we have life depending on us and we have to finish what we started, which is restoring the watershed enough that brookies will return to the main stem of Williams Run and South Sandy Creek."

South Sandy flows into Sandy Creek, a stocked stream on the Allegheny River that is especially popular with anglers on opening day of trout season. Sandy Creek will continue to be stocked, because it is too warm to sustain a wild fishery, Woomer said, but Williams Run and parts of Sandy Creek should eventually support natural reproduction of trout.

There is more work to be done. Tarkowski has applied for another $900,000 to treat a 20-acre former strip mine site that had been backfilled with mine spoil half a century ago, and sends acidic runoff into an unnamed Williams Run tributary.

"Our plan is to amend the soil with alkaline material so the groundwater will be neutralized," Tarkowski said.

"Our contractor did core borings 40 feet down to the mine pit to see how much 'bad' material there is, and how much amending we'll have to do."

The restoration of the watershed is up to Mother Nature, too. Despite water quality improvements, an iron-rich mine substance known as "yellow boy" deposited during previous decades still coats most of the run. It will disappear slowly.

"Yellow boy smothers invertebrate life," Woomer said. "Over time, the yellow boy will get loosened up and scoured out, but until that happens, you won't see insects. Without insects, you won't have wild trout."

The creek is otherwise trout friendly, he said.

"The water is cold and there's real nice habitat for brook trout -- nice little pools and places for them to be."

It also is ideal for anglers, since public access is practically guaranteed. About 90 percent of Williams Run wends through State Gamelands No. 39, an area densely forested with black cherry and other tree cover that keep the stream cool through summer.

The restoration of the watershed has captured the attention of the National Fish Habitat Action Plan, which named Williams Run one of America's 10 waters to watch in 2008.

"We chose this project because the work is cost effective and will have dramatic results," said spokesman Ryan Roberts, who revisited the watershed project recently with other stakeholders.

"We also chose it because the run is on the Allegheny River, which is an important waterway for anglers and close to a metropolitan area, Pittsburgh."

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