Scout clears portage trail around dam

By Rob Scott
The Daily Item

October 06, 2008 07:42 am

— SHAMOKIN DAM — A Boy Scout has completed a project that gives boaters a path around the dam at the Sunbury Generation power plant where a 19-year-old man drowned this summer.
Zach Herman, of Troop 417 in Mount Pleasant Mills, needed to complete his Eagle Scout project before he turns 18 next month. But when his original plan — cleaning up one of the campgrounds on Byer’s Island, a 2.5-mile island by the dam — fell through, he had to come up with something else, and fast.
Zach had heard about the drowning and how the Susquehanna River Trail Association, in cooperation with the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, had developed a plan to build a trail on the island to allow boaters to get around the dam.
Bruce Bishoff, secretary for the trail association, said the group operates three campsites on Byer’s Island and had been planning to put a trail in for some time, long before the drowning.
Little progress had been made on the project until Zach got involved.
Keith Smalley, co-president of the association, said in August that the path was on the group’s “to-do” list, but it was difficult to complete because those involved were all volunteers.
Zach said the project — including getting the necessary approvals from Sunbury Generation, the Bureau of Forestry and the trail association — came together in just a few weeks.
“For a project like this, I would have figured it would probably take longer. (The support for the project) helped it come together as fast as it did,” Zach said.
Vladyslav Mitrenko, a Ukrainian national who, along with his brother, had been staying with a family in Selinsgrove, drowned Aug. 3 when the canoe he was in with his brother and two others was pulled into the churning water near the dam and capsized.
Zach thought the tragedy probably had something to do with how quickly things came together.
In just a few hours Saturday afternoon, Zach and a group of volunteers, including several fellow Scouts and their fathers, cleared a 6-foot-wide, 400-foot-long path through the forest.
Bishoff said the trail association maintains a log book on Byer’s Island that visitors can sign as they make their way along the river, but it’s difficult to say for certain how many boaters pass through there.
Nevertheless, the trail should make it more convenient and safer for boaters, he said.
n E-mail comments to rscott@dailyitem.com.

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