Standing at the bank of a clear pool, Hazel Powless and Alma Lowry stared at the white waters falling from fifty feet above them.The waterfall, one of the Fellows Falls of the Tully Valley, feeds the main tributary to Onondaga Creek. Relentlessly flowing, the water rushed over rocks and moss.For the first time since the Onondaga Nation reacquired 1,000 acres of land, a group of four — two lawyers and two members of the Nation — trekked to the waterfall.The winding walk to the bank followed portions of a sometimes-steep logging road, its path covered in damp, yellow-brown foliage and strewn with fallen branches. Joe Heath, the Onondaga Nation’s legal counsel, leaned on his walking stick alongside Powless and Lowry on the water’s muddy bank. For years, Heath and Lowry, an environmental lawyer, worked with Powless, a member of the Haudenosaunee Environmental Task Force, to fight for the reacquisition of more than 1000 acres of their ancestral lands from Honeywell International. They had walked these acres but always under a Honeywell employee’s supervision.This was the trio’s first visit to this waterfall since finalizing the land transfer earlier this month. “It hasn’t sunk in,” Heath said. Lowry and Powless agreed.A fourth member accompanied the hiking party but had leapt rocks across the creek to scramble up a large boulder and stand directly beneath the waterfall. Brad Powless spent fifteen minutes staring at the cascade. Credit: Mike Greenlar | Central CurrentCredit: Mike Greenlar | Central CurrentCredit: Mike Greenlar | Central CurrentCredit: Mike Greenlar | Central CurrentOverhead, mist and spray splashed a moss-adorned rock face adjacent to the fall. Hidden within that damp refuge resided dozens of Chittenango ovate amber snails. This increasingly endangered species is native only to Chittenango Falls, but the Onondagas are collaborating on an on-going project to create a second habitat for the rare snails at this waterfall.Brad Powless eventually hopped back to rejoin the group, flashing a beaming smile while describing the waterfall’s roar. The steady rumble expressed the power of these waters, which represent a crucial resource for the Onondaga Nation and natural life alike. A council member and Hazel’s cousin, Brad is the son and grandson of former Onondaga Nation chiefs Irving Powless, Jr. and Irving Powless, Sr.In a 2011 tribute to his grandfather titled “Fishing with Grandpa,” Brad Powless detailed how the effects of salt mining had transformed the Creek his grandfather loved to fish – whose waters contained so many fish, the elder Powless thought he could cross by walking on their backs – into something murky and unrecognizable.Downstream, native brook trout have struggled in the warmer, polluted waters of the Onondaga Creek. These headwaters, though, have the cold, clear water essential for a thriving brook trout population, and the nation is already working to restore this species that was historically the main fish for Onondaga fishermen.Powless was optimistic about returning the brook trout to their former abundance. Walking back from the waterfall, he recalled fond childhood memories of fishing with his grandfather, former Onondag Tadodaho Irving Powless, Sr.“We’d have to go off the nation to go fishing, because we couldn’t fish at home anymore,” Powless said. “Probably, my grandfather had been here before, he was following the stream up here.”Soon, these headwaters could become the nearby fishing locale Powless lacked as a kid. “They’d probably be so happy about this,” Powless said. “Both my dad and my grandfather.”Sunken land: Signs of Allied’s extraction lingerThough the acres through which the group hiked looked pristine, they were not entirely unperturbed – a faint specter of Allied Chemical’s presence remained beneath the towering trees and giant, decades-old grapevines.Not far from the waterfall, the group walked past a large salt-brine pipe, a relic from the company’s mining here which stopped sometime in the 1920s or 30’s. By that time, Heath maintains, the company knew the toll its mining was taking on the land and the bedrock beneath.Credit: Mike Greenlar | Central CurrentCredit: Mike Greenlar | Central CurrentSalt mining continued throughout the Tully Valley until the late 1980s, when Allied became Honeywell and switched its stated focus away from mining and toward environmental cleanup.But by then, the irreversible damage had long been done. The salt mining created extensive cavities in the Valley’s bedrock that water seeps into and occupies. Heavy rain pushes the water above ground through several mud boils, which can span 30 feet wide.The process sends 20 tons of silt into the Onondaga Creek every day. Brad Powless said that even if the Nation managed to stop the sediment flow today, it would take 30 years to flush the existing silt out of the creek.“Before the mudboils, the creek was the center of the community. Picking spots on it with names, people would leave fishing poles down there,” Heath said. “They lived on the creek, swimming. And all that’s been taken.”On the reclaimed acres, no mud boils belched their silt, but the salt mining did leave a lasting impact on the land. Lowry said that land surveys from before and after Allied’s mining in this area reveal the land’s surface had sunk about 10 feet. The disparity in the land’s elevation demonstrates the effects of a comparatively short period of mining.Though slightly sunken, this land was safe.Elsewhere in the Tully Valley, where salt mining continued for the better half of a century, the land has not been so resilient. The mud boils have rendered hundreds of acres of land unstable and unsafe, all while muddying the creek.After walking past the brine pipe, the leaders remarked on how Allied’s rebranding into Honeywell in the late 1980s seemed to have distanced the company from its pollution of Onondaga Creek and Lake.“Their strategy of taking the Honeywell name really worked well, because everybody knows of Allied as the one that polluted them,” Lowry said.Later, Heath found a plastic “NO TRESPASSING” posted by Honeywell, threatening legal consequences for anyone hunting, fishing, or walking the land. When Heath tugged the yellow sign from the tree, he revealed an earlier posting underneath. This sign bore Allied’s name.Heath yanked the Allied sign off, too.Joe Heath holds posted signs he took down on the 1000 acres of Onondaga Nation Land. Credit: Mike Greenlar | Central CurrentA new era of healingWith the land transfer finalized, Hazel Powless believes the land itself can now begin to heal.The Nation has already been facilitating this healing process for years.Powless described planting sycamore trees with a youth group on this land years ago when it still belonged to Honeywell. The group planted the trees along the water’s edge to increase shade and help keep the tributary cool, because brook trout prefer cold water.Signs of the healing were here, Powless said. She’s seen herons and beavers on this land, indicators of the land’s health.“If they are here, that’s what we kind of go by,” Powless said.Powless and other Onondagas have noted mushrooms and valuable medicinal plants in abundance here, which will allow them to continue traditional foraging and medicinal practices and pass them onto the next generation.Apart from restoration, Powless insisted on the value of just leaving the land alone. To that end, the Onondagas want to protect the land, and this area in particular, from becoming a frequented hiking or bushwhacking ground for those not involved in its restoration.“If the nation invites people on the property, I think they want to do it in a defined way,” Lowry said.Leaving the land alone doesn’t mean no one will visit it. Rather than taking her youth group to Adirondacks for rustic camping educational trips, Powless said she can now teach her students here. The area is full of places as beautiful as this one, according to Powless, and brims with possibilities.Standing at the water’s edge and watching Brad across the creek on a boulder beneath the waterfall, Powless and Lowry felt relief and excitement for the Onondaga nation.“The land will heal itself,” Powless said. “That’s what we believe.”Joe Heath, Hazel Powless and Alma Lowry stand in front of one of Fellows Falls. Credit: Mike Greenlar | Central Current read more of central current’s coverage What is Prop 1? 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