(From The Republican Online Newspaper http://www.therepublicannews.com/)
Many hands made for light – if slimy – work behind Crellin Elementary School on Monday, as 12 grade school students donned waders to stock 250 rainbow and brown trout into Snowy Creek. The activity was part of an ongoing project by the school, the wider Crellin community, several government agencies, and volunteer organizations to reclaim and redevelop a former coal tipple and stockpiling station located adjacent to the school.
"They were slimy," fifth-grade stocker Kenzie McCauley reported of his wiggly charges, as stockers and stream bank bystanders compared notes on who was doing more wiggling – the fish or the kids. "I thought they were going to jump out on the grass," said third-grader Maddie Welsh.
McCauley and Welsh – along with fellow stockers Heather Frick, Ashley White, Georgie Powers, and Jordan Landis of the kindergarten class, first grader Alex Butina, second graders Amy White and Ashley Green, third grader Sara Miller, fourth grader Kiana Alexander, and fifth grader Daniel Adams – earned their stocking duty posts by excelling in each of the school's behavior traits since the start of the year. Those traits include respect-fulness, trustworthiness, responsibility, dependability, and now "fish-stockability."
The stockers plied their new trade at a site which is part of a nine-acre tract formerly used to facilitate coal shipments from Crellin via the B&O Railroad siding in Hutton. Through a cooperative and dedicated effort over the past couple of years, what was once a busy and noisy industrial site (long abandoned) is in the process of being turned into an environmental "living classroom" for the school, including an arboretum, functioning wetland, vernal pools, and a nature walk and stream access for ecological study. The outdoor environmental classroom covers six acres, while a new playground completed last year occupies the remaining three acres of the tract.
And as Monday's stocking event showed, the site is going to be busy and noisy again in a different way, as the reintroduction of a trout population set off a chorus of excitement among the entire student and faculty body at the school gathered on the stream bank, and a number of parents and other adults who had joined them for the fish frolic.
"This was the happiest fish stocking I've ever witnessed," said Maryland Department of Natural Resources Western Region Fisheries manager Alan Klotz. "The children have been studying the environment for months, and have been involved in the site reclamation from the beginning by picking up garbage when the project started, right up to today's stocking. Now they're actually getting some hands-on experience with restoring the stream, and they were very excited."
The children were not the only ones drawn into the event, as Klotz noted that residents downstream from the school could be seen with fishing poles in hand waiting to play their part in the "put and take" stocking, made possible by the efforts of the Crellin school, the Crellin Parent-Teacher Organization, DNR's Fisheries Service, the Maryland Department of the Environment's Bureau of Mines and Office of Surface Mining, the Garrett County government, the Canaan Valley (W.Va.) Institute, and the Youghiogheny Watershed Association.
A $100,000 grant issued through the Office of Surface Mining's Watershed Cooperative Grant Agreement Program and obtained by the Garrett Community Action Committee on behalf of the Yough River Watershed group has played a large part in the remediation and reclamation project, which was contracted out to Kiddy Construction.
The ongoing stewardship and clean-up of the creek and the surrounding tract of land has resulted in a new playground and hiking and biking trails for use by the school and the entire Crellin community.
Another station downstream of the school was also stocked on Monday, adding up to a total of 500 trout taking up residence in Snowy Creek. Crellin school principal Dr. Dana McCauley, who waded right into the creek along with her students, noted that the day's events fulfilled some longstanding hopes for the area, as it gave the residents and their children a safe, clean place to enjoy the outdoors.
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