East Branch Rausch Creek is a

tributary A tributary, or affluent, is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem (or parent) river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean. Tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drainage ...

of Rausch Creek in

Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania Schuylkill County (, ; Pennsylvania Dutch: Schulkill Kaundi) is a county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. It is located in the heart of Pennsylvania's Coal Region and is part of Northeastern Pennsylvania. As of the 2020 census, the popula ...

, in the United States. It is approximately long and flows through Porter Township and Hegins Township. The watershed of the creek has an area of . The creek is impacted by metals, pH, and siltation due to

abandoned mine drainage Abandoned mine drainage (also known as AMD) is a form of water pollution involving water that has been polluted by contact with mines, typically coal mines. Although it is sometimes called "acid mine drainage", not all abandoned mine drainage i ...

and

resource extraction Extractivism is the process of extracting natural resources from the Earth to sell on the world market. It exists in an economy that depends primarily on the extraction or removal of natural resources that are considered valuable for exportation w ...

. It drains an area between two mountains: Good Springs Mountain and Big Lick Mountain. There are also two mine pools in the watershed. The main land use in the watershed of East Branch Rausch Creek is deciduous forest. However, disturbed land is the second-largest land use and accounts for the significant majority of the

sediment Sediment is a naturally occurring material that is broken down by processes of weathering and erosion, and is subsequently transported by the action of wind, water, or ice or by the force of gravity acting on the particles. For example, sand an ...

loading in the creek. As of 2001, there are seven active mining permits in its watershed.

Course

East Branch Rausch Creek begins in a valley on a mountain in Porter Township. It flows north for a few tenths of a mile before turning westreceiving an unnamed tributary from the

right Rights are law, legal, social, or ethics, ethical principles of Liberty, freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal system, social convent ...

and then northwest, soon crossing a road and entering Hegins Township. Here, the creek begins flowing in a roughly westerly or west-northwesterly direction through a larger valley for several tenths of a mile before heading in a southwesterly direction. After a short distance, it crosses a road and turns west for a short distance before turning west-northwest. Several tenths of a mile further downstream, the creek joins West Branch Rausch Creek to form Rausch Creek.

Hydrology

Reaches of East Branch Rausch Creek are designated as impaired waterbodies. The causes of impairment in these reaches include

siltation Siltation, is water pollution caused by particulate terrestrial clastic material, with a particle size dominated by silt or clay. It refers both to the increased concentration of suspended sediments and to the increased accumulation (temporary or ...

, metals, and pH, while the sources include

and resource extraction. The average discharge of East Branch Rausch Creek near its mouth was measured to be per day. The pH of the creek near its mouth ranged from 4.5 to 6.8, with an average of 5.75. The concentration of

alkalinity Alkalinity (from ar, القلوي, al-qaly, lit=ashes of the saltwort) is the capacity of water to resist acidification. It should not be confused with basicity, which is an absolute measurement on the pH scale. Alkalinity is the strength of ...

ranged from , with an average of . The

iron Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in f ...

concentration in East Branch Rausch Creek near its mouth was found to range from , with an average of . The

manganese Manganese is a chemical element with the symbol Mn and atomic number 25. It is a hard, brittle, silvery metal, often found in minerals in combination with iron. Manganese is a transition metal with a multifaceted array of industrial alloy use ...

concentration ranged from . The concentration of

aluminum Aluminium (aluminum in American and Canadian English) is a chemical element with the symbol Al and atomic number 13. Aluminium has a density lower than those of other common metals, at approximately one third that of steel. It has ...

ranged between , and averaged . The aluminum load requires a 95 percent reduction to meet the creek's

total maximum daily load A total maximum daily load (TMDL) is a regulatory term in the U.S. Clean Water Act, describing a plan for restoring impaired waters that identifies the maximum amount of a pollutant that a body of water can receive while still meeting water quali ...

requirements, while the iron load requires a 94 percent reduction and the manganese load requires a 78 percent reduction. The acidity load requires an 84 percent reduction to meet its total maximum daily load requirements. The annual load of

in East Branch Rausch Creek is . By far the largest contributor is disturbed land, which accounts for per year. Other contributors include

deciduous forest In the fields of horticulture and Botany, the term ''deciduous'' () means "falling off at maturity" and "tending to fall off", in reference to trees and shrubs that seasonally shed leaves, usually in the autumn; to the shedding of petals, aft ...

( per year),

cropland Agricultural land is typically land ''devoted to'' agriculture, the systematic and controlled use of other forms of lifeparticularly the rearing of livestock and production of cropsto produce food for humans. It is generally synonymous with bot ...

( per year), high-intensity urban land ( per year),

mixed forest Temperate broadleaf and mixed forest is a temperate climate terrestrial habitat type defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature, with broadleaf tree ecoregions, and with conifer and broadleaf tree mixed coniferous forest ecoregions. These for ...

( annually),

coniferous forest Conifers are a group of cone-bearing seed plants, a subset of gymnosperms. Scientifically, they make up the division Pinophyta (), also known as Coniferophyta () or Coniferae. The division contains a single extant class, Pinopsida. All exta ...

( per year), and hay/pastures ( per year).

Geography and geology

The elevation near the

mouth In animal anatomy, the mouth, also known as the oral cavity, or in Latin cavum oris, is the opening through which many animals take in food and issue vocal sounds. It is also the cavity lying at the upper end of the alimentary canal, bounded on ...

of East Branch Rausch Creek is above

sea level Mean sea level (MSL, often shortened to sea level) is an average surface level of one or more among Earth's coastal bodies of water from which heights such as elevation may be measured. The global MSL is a type of vertical datuma standardised g ...

. The elevation near the creek's

source Source may refer to: Research * Historical document * Historical source * Source (intelligence) or sub source, typically a confidential provider of non open-source intelligence * Source (journalism), a person, publication, publishing institute o ...

is above sea level. The watershed of East Branch Rausch Creek is situated between Good Springs Mountain and Big Lick Mountain. The headwaters of the creek are in a large abandoned

strip mine Surface mining, including strip mining, open-pit mining and mountaintop removal mining, is a broad category of mining in which soil and rock overlying the mineral deposit (the overburden) are removed, in contrast to underground mining, in which ...

. There are two mine pools in the watershed of East Branch Rausch Creek: the Good Spring No. 1 Pool and the Good Spring No. 3 Pool. The former discharges into the creek via the Orchard Airway at an elevation of above sea level and has discharges ranging from per day, with an average of per day. The latter mine pool does not discharge into the watershed of East Branch Rausch Creek, but instead discharges via the Tracy Airway into the watershed of Good Spring Creek, a tributary of

Swatara Creek Swatara Creek (nicknamed the Swatty) is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed August 8, 2011 tributary of the Susquehanna River in east-central Pennsylvania in the United Sta ...

Watershed and biology

The

watershed Watershed is a hydrological term, which has been adopted in other fields in a more or less figurative sense. It may refer to: Hydrology * Drainage divide, the line that separates neighbouring drainage basins * Drainage basin, called a "watershe ...

of East Branch Rausch Creek has an area of . East Branch Rausch Creek is entirely within the

United States Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, ...

quadrangle of Tower City. There are approximately of streams in the watershed. The headwaters of the creek are about two miles (three kilometers) from the village of Good Spring, via State Route 4011. The dominant land use in the watershed of East Branch Rausch Creek is

forest A forest is an area of land dominated by trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, and ecological function. The United Nations' ...

ed land. Of the of land in the creek's watershed, is occupied by deciduous forest. Disturbed land is the second-largest land use, accounting for . Cropland occupies , mixed forest occupies , and deciduous forest occupies . A total of in the watershed is high-intensity urban development, and are hay/pastures. The drainage basin of East Branch Rausch Creek is designated as a Coldwater Fishery.

History

East Branch Rausch Creek was entered into the

Geographic Names Information System The Geographic Names Information System (GNIS) is a database of name and locative information about more than two million physical and cultural features throughout the United States and its territories, Antarctica, and the associated states of ...

on August 2, 1979. Its identifier in the Geographic Names Information System is 1173763. As of 2001, there are seven permitted mining operations in the watershed of East Branch Rausch Creek. Only two of them have an NPDES permit, and only one of those two has an active discharge.

References