January 2004
 

The Upper Paint Creek Watershed would like to inform you of our progress with the watershed this past year of 2003. The Raleigh County Route #7 and Fayette County Route # 23 acknowledged as Paint Creek Road has been our main objective. We have met with various agencies and with their help have submitted an application to designate the Paint Creek Road from Tamarack to the Kanawha River as a West Virginia State By-ways. The application was signed on December 23,2003 by Watershed President Howard Hughes and Vice President Henry Meredith and OSM/VISTA Volunteer Brenda Hughes.

Brenda Hughes, OSM/Vista worker who maintains our office has been a major part of our involvement. We feel that she plays a vital role in our success. We have been performing a puppet play for local schools with a theme of litter control. Brenda wrote the play and created the puppet theater using paper and cardboard boxes to create the stage.   By explaining to young children the importance of correct disposal of litter we feel this is making a substantial impact. The play is fun but also makes them aware of the litter problem and how it affects everyone in our modern society. 

     We have monitored the stream of Paint Creek taking metal and fecal coliform water samples. With volunteer help from surrounding communities we have performed several cleanups along the roadway and stream. The watershed area has benefited from our efforts. During our spring Make It Shine clean up with the help of 45 volunteers we were able to collect 300 bags of trash, 19 bags recyclable aluminum cans, 90 tires and with a total of 6800 lbs. We used volunteers from Community Service Work Program to pickup Paint Creek during the summer months and well into the fall, which consisted of weekends and weekly contribution to the cleanup efforts. We contributed hours on the weekends to the Mossy Church Neighborhood Crime Watch clean up in September.

     The watershed is currently working on acquiring land from the West Virginia Turnpike and private owners to develop a park and hiking trail. This park would take in several scenic views adjacent to Paint Creek. The hiking trail consist of a rock cliff 150 feet high and would include an area referred to as a min-gorge by the white water rafters. The area includes many native wild flowers and several stands of 100 year old hemlocks.. The park should be protected as a natural scenic attraction and we feel it would make a great tourist attraction for this area of Southern West Virginia.