The creeks flowed a lifeless blend of yellow and orange...

[1-Old-Man]

9. The color comes from the iron, but it was always there ....

PreNote just for background information: There are at least a dozen abandoned coal mines within 1 mile of me right this minute, as I sit in my living room. There is not one creek that harbors life within that same mile. No fish, no bugs, no algae on the rocks, nothing. Some of the creek's channels are discolored, some are not, but they are all dead.

In mining the coal a great deal of burdening material has to be removed first. Most of it is sandstone and part and parcel of that sandstone is pyrite, the stuff we sometimes call fool's gold. Pyrite, when leached by water, releases sulphur and the resulting material is a weak sulfuric acid. It is the reaction of that acidic material with the iron in the water that causes the color, the red and orange and yellow slime that precipitates out onto the creek's bottom.