Interest in Mariaville’s ‘black gold’ spreading

A short distance from Mariaville Lake, the former cattle farm had enough of it to keep Kowalk in business for decades. Only his version of black gold isn’t exactly the type pumped from the ground.

Kowalk discovered a marshy area just south of Mariaville Road contained vast tracts of peat, a substance formed by the natural decay of organic matter in acidic and low-oxygen conditions. When dry, peat is used as a soil supplement to improve a variety of poor growing conditions — helping retain moisture, improve drainage or balance soil pH.

Kowalk’s product was popular with Capital Region gardeners. For years, his mixtures of peat humus, composted cow manure and sandy loam soil served commercial and residential clients alike.

“I thought it was great stuff,” said David Chinery, an educator with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Rensselaer County, of the peat he used for his vegetable garden several years ago.

But the quality of product isn’t the only distinguishing facet of Mariaville Peat. The 98 acres of peat mine is the only one of its kind in the Capital Region and the largest operating across the state. (The state Department of Environmental Conservation identifies 27 peat mines across New York, but only a dozen that are considered active. Among those 12, only four are permitted by the agency, including Mariaville Peat.)

“In Schenectady County, it’s a pretty unique asset,” Chinery said.

Now, Mariaville Peat is taking a step into the modern age. The operation that supplied peat for close-to-home clientele will be exporting the product in bags of top soil being sold throughout upstate New York.

Kowalk sold his 260-acre farm to Gro Max, a Hudson-based company that operates two of the state’s other permitted peat mines in the Columbia County towns of Gallatin and Ghent. The company purchased the property for $900,000 last June, after undergoing a five-year review with the state.

Craig Doleski, the peat mine’s supervisor and facility manager, said the goal is to maintain the local business Kowalk maintained while expanding to include a retail component. Gro Max sells bags of soil mix to retailers such as Agway, Lowe’s and Home Depot.

Soil sales account for more than $1.5 million for the company, Doleski said. Now, Kowalk’s sizable peat bog will be contributing to those figures.

“We’re trying to get into bulk and commercial to get the numbers up,” he said.

glacial times

Peat bogs are common in areas with a cooler climate. Most of the peat sold in the Northeast originates from the vast peat mines in Canada created by the Laurentide ice sheet, a massive glacier that covered a large swath of North America more than 20,000 years ago.

Upstate New York is riddled with peat bogs, but few are excavated. In the Adirondacks, the retreating glacier carved hundreds of ponds and shallow lake basins in the landscape that were conducive to the growth of sphagnum moss, a primary component of peat.

“The peat is basically sitting on top of dried-up lake beds,” said Don Rodbell, chairman of Union College’s geology department.

Over thousands of years, the growth and decay of the moss creates enough organic material to transform the body of water into a bog. Cooler weather allows the moss to decay slowly at the bottom of the bog, while new moss forms an top of the stagnant water.

The new moss blocks heat and inhibits oxygen from reaching the submerged organic matter. As a result of this anaerobic decay, the bog slowly becomes acidic.

Eventually, the amount of accumulating organic material forms spongy layers. This slow decay process creates a geological record that can serve as a critical resource for researchers to study changes in the environment over the course of millennia.

“They’re great resources,” Rodbell said. “They provide continuous record of geological time. Anything that falls on them tends to stay there.”

Mariaville Peat’s bog is largely composed of humus, meaning that the decomposition process has basically ceased. Doleski said roughly 90 percent of the area is considered humus, which sells for about $36 per cubic yard.

tricky business

Pulling peat from the bog, however, is no piece of cake. Even though much of the area being mined by Gro Max appears to be solid ground, workers are never more than a few poorly placed steps away from plunging into the stagnant water beneath the peat.

Kowalk used logs and drainage tiles to build a road through the massive peat mine, but workers still need to guide excavators onto the mat itself to reach the material. And this can be tricky with a 35-ton excavator with a swinging 60-foot boom, Doleski explained.

“If you go out there, you can feel it shake,” he said, gesturing an area that will be mined by the company later this summer.

Mining activity must wait until the late spring or early summer because saturated bog becomes too difficult to navigate. Once it dries out, workers must guide the excavator onto 16-foot wide platform that helps stabilize it on the spongy surface.

Still, the excavator tends to move about somewhat erratically. But with nine years of experience, Doleski has become accustomed to it.

“It moves you up and down,” he said of the bog. “It’s sort of like a water bed.”

Excavated peat is left to dry in mounds along Route 159. Once most of the moisture is removed, it’s fed through a machine that can shake out rocks and other unwanted matter. The material is then blended with sand, manure and such to create mulch, top soil, garden mix or compost. These products range in price from $23 to $36 per cubic yard.

Peat is remarkably versatile as a soil additive, explained Chinery of the cooperative extension. In sandy soil, peat helps retain moisture and nutrients.

In more impervious soils, such as clay, it helps loosen the soil for better drainage and aeration.

“It’s a very good amendment for those type of things,” he said.

The mine in Duanesburg has been used since the 1940s but has plenty more peat to excavate. Doleski anticipates his company will be able to excavate the site for more than a half-century without exhausting the supply.