Blog Post
Tax Savings Tip: Donate Your IRA Withdrawals to Friends of the Cheat
Donating part of your required withdrawals from an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) to a charity like Friends of the Cheat can help you save on taxes. This strategy is called a Qualified Charitable Distribution (QCD). Here’s how it works: When you turn 70½ years old, you must start taking money out of your IRA each year, called Required Minimum Distributions […]
Read MoreNew Funding and Partnerships Blossom for FOC Work on Public Lands
by Madison Ball, Conservation Program Director “I love it when a plan comes together.” This A Team reference aptly describes the series of events that has led to new funding, partnerships, and work for Friends of the Cheat on public lands in our headwaters. With the absorption of the former Shavers Fork Coalition, our organization began looking to our headwaters […]
Read MoreBuilding Bridges: Friends of the Cheat Completes First Aquatic Organism Passage Project
by Madison Ball, Conservation Program Director “Out of the AMD and into the AOP” is our latest phrase here at FOC. While acid mine drainage (AMD) remediation will always be at the heart of our restoration efforts, FOC has been expanding our work to include new types of restoration. Aquatic Organism Passage (AOP) is a restoration strategy that improves the […]
Read MorePlant Something.
by Sera Janson Zegre I was surprisingly skeptical at first. Even with my fresh-out-of-grad school lens of possibility, I remember reading through a grant application from Friends of the Cheat (FOC) with doubt. FOC saw a future for an abandoned industrial site along the Cheat River; they envisioned a beautiful educational access point for river and trail recreation for future […]
Read MoreCasey, Colleagues Introduce Bipartisan Bill to Clean Up Water Pollution from Abandoned Mines
For Immediate Release – March 30, 2022 Washington, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senators Bob Casey (D-PA) and Mike Braun (R-IN) introduced the Safeguarding Treatment for the Restoration of Ecosystems from Abandoned Mines (STREAM) Act with U.S. Representatives Matt Cartwright (D-PA-8) and David McKinley (R-WV-1). Acid mine drainage (AMD)—the release of highly acidic water from abandoned mines— is one of the largest sources […]
Read MoreNASA DEVELOP Team partners with FOC to assess Flood Risk and Changing Climate specific to Preston and Tucker Counties
For FOC’s Cheat River Restoration program, we often have to focus our efforts on being reactive to negative impacts to the Cheat; cleaning up after abandoned mine lands has been the meat of our restoration work for more than two decades. This year, however, we were given a rare and unique opportunity to be proactive in planning our restoration efforts, which was afforded to […]
Read MoreFriends of the Cheat Receives $1.1 million from Appalachian Regional Commission’s POWER Initiative for Mountaineer Trail Network
Today, Friends of the Cheat was awarded $1.1 million by the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) on behalf of the Mountaineer Trail Network Recreation Authority. The goal of this project is to formally launch the Mountaineer Trail Network as a collection of the best non-motorized trails in the eastern United States for bikes and boats. Friends of the Cheat and its […]
Read MoreAML Program Fee Collection Expires Sept 30
Tomorrow marks a frustrating day for FOC staff and other organizations working to remediate acid mine drainage (AMD) impacted streams and rivers. On September 30, the Abandoned Mine Land (AML) fee collection expires, and halts a majority of the future funding FOC and WVDEP could use to treat AMD sources in the Cheat River watershed. The Abandoned Mine Lands reclamation […]
Read MoreMuddy Creek AMD Blowout
Update – March 8th: Since our original sampling Thursday evening when pH was 3.65, FOC has pulled several sets of Water Quality (WQ) samples in Muddy Creek and the Cheat River downstream of Muddy. On Friday, we deployed our Muddy Creek live reading sonde, which reports live water quality data to FOC staff remotely every ten minutes. Since then, we […]
Read MoreFish Tails Tell the Tale
In June, I joined two Friends of the Cheat staff members to cast lines into the Cheat River at the mouth of Muddy Creek, hoping to catch a bass, trout, walleye, or maybe even a musky. Truth be told, I think we were hoping to catch any sort of fish since Muddy Creek and the section of the Cheat River […]
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