Not that it truly comes as a surprise, but it always hurts when those close to you finally face reality and make a change from tradition.

Sometimes, tradition can be expensive.


Consider the choice faced by county commissioners in Schuylkill County, who are considering a proposal to replace the heating system in their prison and county courthouse with natural gas.

Why? Because it's cheaper.

Seems like a no-brainer right? It would be if this weren't Schuylkill County.

Everything but the milkshakes in Schuylkill County is made from coal and event those have a touch of the ambient coal dust that fills the air. The heart of Pennsylvania's "coal regions," coal is the only game in town -- anthracite coal to be exact.

Called "black diamond," anthracite coal is harder and burns cleaner than its more sulphuric cousin, bituminous coal.

It gets that way by being deeper under the mountains, and thus being under more pressure. This, however, makes it even harder to get to and thus more expensive and more dangerous to extract.

And in Schuylkill County and its environs, they have paid a bittersweet toll for the resource that defines them. Since 1870, more than 30,000 people have died to bring those black diamonds to the surface.

Without that sacrifice, America would be a different place.

Pottstown and Phoenixville and Royersford all would be different places.

Coal was the foundation of the Industrial Revolution that transformed us from a backwards oddity in Europe's shadow, to a world power whose "white fleet" of battleships sailed round the world under Teddy Roosevelt's order, signalling to all that there was a new kid on the block.


Closer to home, it was that coal -- filling canal boats that came down the Schuylkill River Navigation toward Philadelphia, and later in the cars of the Reading and Pennsylvania railroads -- that transformed our towns from the farmer's markets they were into the industrial hubs that defined them.

Without anthracite, there would have been no Bethlehem Steel, no Phoenix Steel, no Glasgow Iron Works or Doehler-Jarvis.


Anthracite was the choice of those industrial boilers and furnaces. It burns hotter because it's sulphur content is low, meaning it makes less of the sulphur-based gas that forms acid rain.

That's good.

But it also has a higher carbon content, which means it is no slouch in the production of carbon dioxide when it's burned.

In these days of global warming, that's bad.

I have a piece of "black diamond" sitting on my desk that I picked up at a mine during a visit to Schuylkill County several years ago while covering one of the first Schuylkill Watershed Congress meetings.

I keep it there in recognition that this rock made us. It warmed our homes and fueled the jobs that fed our families.

True, that should not be taken lightly, but it also should not be carried as a burden into a dead-end future based on an outdated and unhealthy technology.

Time, like the river that cleaned the coal and carried the boats that carried it to market, has moved on. Those industries no longer define us -- nor should the rock that fueled them.

Nowhere is that lesson having more trouble taking hold than in Schuylkill County, where James J. Rhoades, a Republican state senator, has objected to considering the use of natural gas to power the courthouse and prison.

"Heritage should account for something," he told The New York Times for a June 10 article.

He's right. And it does. But heritage is not a plan for the future.

Fossil fuels are finite.

Period.

They are undoubtedly our heritage, but there is much doubt about whether they can sustainably represent our future.

Eventually, we will run out, either because of the difficulty of obtaining it, or because the market makes it too expensive to use.

We are long past the time when we should have begun working on alternatives, the next wave of energy.

Before coal, we burned wood and the forests fell.

Then, after coal, we burned oil and have ever since.

But we are now living in the age of oil's decline and anthracite's last gasps should serve as a warning of what's to come. And because we've put off recognizing this reality for so long, we have just about missed the opportunity for a smooth transition.

Instead, the blinders we've worn as a nation have guaranteed us a rocky road over the next few years.

We should let Schuylkill County's example be a lesson to us all. It makes no sense to cling tenaciously to an industry -- promises of "clean coal" aside -- for which we can no longer afford the environmental price, anymore than we can afford a gallon of gasoline.

And we are paying the price of transition as we stagger through the wrenching ups and downs in search of alternatives like ethanol and geo-thermal and solar in an atmosphere of crisis instead of the calm starting eight to ten years ago might have allowed.

As the gas price crisis gets worse, each mistake we make in the field of alternatives becomes much more costly and seems to undermine its viability out of proportion to the technical problem it represents.

Surely, oil encountered technical problems along the way, but it was allowed to perfect its technology while the world chugged along happily on coal power, each mistake just part of the process of perfecting the process.

What Schuylkill County is going through now is merely a microcosm of what the rest of the nation faces.

Their proposed solutions -- protectionist laws that banned natural gas pipelines from crossing their borders, requiring that all public buildings use coal in order to preserve local jobs -- are not for the long-term.

They are a denial of the coming changes, not necessarily natural gas but definitely not coal, based on fear of any change.

Times change and we have to change with them.

The Brave and Bold: Those who braved the waters of the Perkiomen Creek on the first-even Perkiomen Creek Sojourn.

About this time of year, I always get jealous.

I get jealous because it's Sojourn Time and now, this year, a brand new one has been added to the local schedule, so now I have two things to be jealous about.

My schedule and familial duties prevented me from going on the first-ever Perkiomen Creek Sojourn, May 17, but now that I've ready Crystal Gilchrist's press release about the event, as I've said, I'm jealous.

Gilchrist is the executive director of the Perkiomen Watershed Conservancy and it was her organization that sponsored the jaunt as a way to boost awareness about the creek and its watershed.

And it would appear, judging from what she wrote and the weather reports for the day before, that one of the things the kayakers became aware of is how to handle themselves in high water.

It's pretty and it's vital but the Perkiomen Creek is also the largest tributary of the Schuylkill River and it's not to be taken lightly.

In fact Gilchrist's release notes that nine of the 31 people who signed up decided their respect for the creek was too great to try their hand at mastering discharge rates of 1,000 cubic feet per second.

For the mathematically challenged (put me at the head of that line), allow me to provide here the graphic picture provided by Crystal. -- "When the USGS gage indicates that the water is discharging at 1,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) that means that 1,000 packages of water, one foot wide by one foot high by one foot deep are passing a given discharge point on the creek every second. Where the creek is wide, there is space for these 1,000 packages to spread out and pass the discharge point side by side. But where the creek is restricted in width, the cubic foot packages of water must pile on top of each other and speed up in order to get the same 1,000 cubic feet of water past the discharge point in a second. In these locations, the water is moving very quickly and with great force."

In other words: "Weeeeeeeee!!!!!!"

Understand, this can be dangerous. In 2000, the year I muddled through the Schuylkill River Sojourn (seven days, not seven hours!) a man and his son drowned trying to paddle the Perkiomen.

However, that is the same year I learned that it is much more fun to paddle a fast-moving watercourse than to struggle against the wind and current to log just a few miles and a desperate need for shiatsu massage.

I hope the folks at the conservancy do another sojourn next year and I hope this year's sponsors -- Keenan, Ciccitto and Associates in Collegeville -- found it rewarding enough to continue to foot the bill.

If they do, no doubt everyone will come to the same realization as the folks at the Schuylkill River Sojourn, which is celebrating it's 10th anniversary this year -- that one year can be the opposite of the next.

In 1999, it was so hot and the water so low on the Schuylkill (sponsored by the Schuylkill River National Heritage Area) that there was more carrying of canoes than paddling.

The next year, when I went, it rained so much I was shivering, but there was little wading and the swift water carried us to our camp sites hours ahead of schedule.

If you want to get a taste of what a sojourn is like, this year's Schuylkill flotilla paddles June 7 through June 14 and arrives in the greater Pottstown area June 9. If you're curious, join the paddlers when they land for the entertainments planned for them and talk to them about the trip. Believe me, they are always willing to talk about it -- often breathlessly.

On June 9, stop by Allegheny Aqueduct Park on River Road in Gilbraltar and you can also hear presentations, starting at 7 p.m., about historic exploration or surviving in challenging conditions.

On June 10, they'll arrive in Pottstown's Riverfront Park and from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., you can hear a free performance by East Side Dave and the Mountain Folk Band.

If birds of prey are your thing, mark June 11 on your calendar when a presentation of live birds of prey will be offered by Antonia Davis of Mill Grove at St. Michael's Pavilion in Mont Clare, starting at 7 p.m.

According to Sue Fordyce at the heritage area, this year's sojourn may be among the biggest, with "hundreds of people every day."

It's great to see these events taking hold and taking off. As someone who has paddled the Schuylkill and the upper Delaware, I can tell you it provides a whole new perspective on these great resources right in our own backyards.