Colcom Foundation Targets Pennsylvania’s Acid Mine Drainage Legacy
Pennsylvania’s streams still carry the marks of its industrial past. Coal mining left behind acid mine drainage, a form of pollution that has contaminated hundreds of miles of waterways across the state. Cleaning it up requires hundreds of millions of dollars in remediation spending.
Colcom Foundation’s Pennsylvania grantmaking addresses environmental problems rooted in this history of fossil fuel extraction and heavy industry. Water quality sits near the top of that list.
Restoring Streams for Aquatic Life
One of the foundation’s grantees, the Foundation for Pennsylvania Watersheds, leads statewide acid mine drainage remediation. Its work aims to restore aquatic ecosystems so they can once again support aquatic life. Acid mine drainage ranks among the most severe water quality problems the state faces, which makes this remediation a natural fit for the foundation’s priorities.
This focus reflects a broader priority. Colcom Foundation‘s regional funding emphasizes restoring aquatic ecosystems degraded by historical industrial activity, along with creating large, contiguous tracts of protected land.
A Wider Set of Local Projects
Stream remediation is one piece of a larger effort in western Pennsylvania. The foundation funds local nonprofits working on water quality improvement, habitat protection, land conservation, invasive species removal, native tree planting, riparian buffer establishment, and community green space creation.
Riparian buffers are strips of vegetation along stream banks, and they tie land projects directly to water quality goals. Native tree planting and invasive species removal often happen on the same sites, giving restored areas a healthier mix of plants.
Private funding plays an important role here. Pennsylvania’s environmental nonprofit sector relies heavily on private foundation support to sustain restoration work beyond the reach of state and federal regulatory programs. Colcom Foundation is one of multiple funders in that space, alongside public agencies, individual donors, and other foundations.
Colcom Foundation pairs this regional work with a national mission: fostering a sustainable environment to ensure quality of life for all Americans by addressing the causes and consequences of overpopulation. The Pennsylvania grants show what that mission looks like on the ground, one watershed at a time. See related link for additional information.
Find more information about Colcom Foundation on https://www.privateequityinternational.com/institution-profiles/colcom-foundation.html