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another fine example of continous disclosure by pst


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http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=485



International Forum to Take up Acid-Pollution Problem

November 29, 2004 — By Mike Joseph, Centre Daily Times
STATE COLLEGE, Penn. - Penn State scientists and ClearWater Conservancy will convene an international conference of acid-pollution experts to offer their knowledge to state officials facing decisions on the pyrite cleanup at an Interstate 99 construction site at Skytop.

The principal organizers, two retired geological science professors, said they scheduled the Dec. 20-21 conference on short notice to provide the information before the year's end, when the state departments of Transportation and Environmental Protection expect to decide how to proceed with the cleanup.

"Part of what we're trying to do is educate," geologist David Gold told ClearWater Conservancy officers Wednesday. "Other parts of the world have been looking at these issues for 150 years, and they have got solutions ... We'd like PennDOT and DEP to be aware of these other alternatives."

Gold and geochemist Hu Barnes have invited experts from Japan, Australia, Virginia and elsewhere to address what they hope will be an audience that includes as many PennDOT and DEP decision-makers as possible. They did not ask the state agencies to help sponsor the conference because they want it to be apolitical, they said.

Barnes said the presentations in a 200-seat auditorium in Penn State's Hosler Building will focus on practical applications of current understanding. He said organizers want the conference to get down to the business of airing and explaining effective solution options. Informal discussion sessions are planned between presentations.

"We're looking at people worldwide and they're the best in the business," Barnes said. "It's a technical meeting, it's not entertainment and the time is pretty short." I-99 road builders in 2003 unearthed nearly a million cubic yards of pyritic rocks at Skytop and dumped it in spoil piles and fill areas.

The scope of the environmental hazard this created was first made public by the Centre Daily Times in February.

PennDOT and DEP have spent the year trying to keep the sulfuric acid runoff from the pyrite out of area streams and groundwater while working to devise a permanent solution to the problem.

A ClearWater Conservancy member, who was not identified, donated several thousand dollars for travel and lodging for conference participants on the condition that the 700-member environmental organization agree to join Penn State's geosciences department as co-sponsor.

ClearWater's officers voted to do so Wednesday, saying it was in keeping with a decision by the full 24-member board in March to ask PennDOT to engage a panel of local professionals as part of the technical review process in evaluating solutions.

In addition to local professionals, a Japanese expert on grouting processes for pyritic sites is expected at the conference. In Japan, highway excavations are often made through volcanic geologic structures, which feature ore-like veins of pyrite similar to what road builders encountered at Skytop.

One of the major unanswered questions facing PennDOT and DEP decision-makers is how to stop acidic runoff from bleeding out of the 250-foot-high wall, known as a cut face, left by the road excavation. Barnes said the Japanese have handled similar problems well.

"They have enormous experience and we should tap it," he said. "That's what we want to do." Also planning to attend is David McConchie, geology professor at Australia's Southern Cross University and a director of the Australian company Virotec, whose environmental engineering work includes neutralizing acid, trapping trace metals, preventing leaching and promoting vigorous plant growth on once-acidic soil.

McConchie said Wednesday that acid formation from pyrite is Australia's biggest environmental problem by far.

He said he plans to bring and discuss the Australian government's recently published assessment criteria, the result of 10 years of research in evaluating acid-rock drainage. He also will talk about acid controls.

"I'm here primarily as a problem solver," McConchie said from Virotec's Golden, Colo., office.

Others from outside the area planning to participate include J.D. Rimstidt, chair of the geological science department at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Martin Schoonen, vice president for research in the geological sciences at State University of New York-Stony Brook. From closer to home, Ryan Mathur, Juniata College geology professor, will also attend.

"We thought we'd have a major problem because of the (Christmas week) schedule, but we have not had anyone turn us down," Barnes said. "They all thought this was important enough and they'd like to participate."

Source: Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News



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http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/special_packages/i99/10641102.htm


Posted on Fri, Jan. 14, 2005





State has plan for I-99 cleanup

By Mike Joseph

[email protected]


State road builders on Thursday set forth a general environmental cleanup plan that would allow Interstate 99 construction at Skytop Mountain to resume this summer, would open the four-lane highway from Grays Woods to Port Matilda in 2006, and would cost perhaps $25 million.

"We could be removing rocks this summer," state Department of Transportation district executive George Khoury told two dozen engineers and geologists trying to eliminate the threat of water contamination five miles west of State College.

The plan, though still tentative, would most likely involve moving up to a million cubic yards of pyrite-laced sandstone from Skytop spoil piles to a still-unidentified permanent landfill-type site along the I-99 corridor in the Bald Eagle Valley.

The already-completed section of I-99 at Skytop, though it is paved over pyritic fill, would be left intact under the plan outlined by Khoury, who is retiring in two weeks.

That paved section starts on the Buffalo Run side of the Skytop crest and continues almost a mile down the Bald Eagle Creek side. PennDOT said last summer that one-third of the 800,000 cubic yards of fill there is pyritic. The highest concentration of pyrite is near the Skytop crest, a PennDOT consultant said last year.

Some of the fill in the paved section is there to support, or buttress, the mountainside above, and some was used to separate, or bifurcate, I-99's northbound and southbound lanes.

"We cannot remove that buttress and ensure slope stability along the slope there," Khoury said.

"We would end up with another slide condition."

Instead, Khoury said, PennDOT intends to "limit" the infiltration of water into the area by covering it with layers of plastic and other materials that would, in turn, be covered by topsoil and grass. The pyritic fill between the I-99 lanes would be similarly "isolated" from rain and snow.

Whatever acidic drainage remains would be treated to neutralize it before it gets into Bald Eagle Creek, Khoury and Kline said.

The environmental hazard at Skytop developed because road builders unearthed massive amounts of a highly concentrated form of pyrite, or iron sulfide. When pyrite is exposed to air and water, it forms sulfuric acid, which dissolves heavy metals such as lead, iron, aluminum and manganese into water contaminants.

Kline said PennDOT has similar plans to have its contractor, HRI Inc. of State College, cover the face of the big road cut through Skytop with plastic sheeting and webbed material that would hold topsoil and nurse a grassy surface.

The cut face, the length of two football fields and the height of one, is the cross-sectional wall of the Skytop Mountain left exposed by the road excavation.

Kline said Thursday that PennDOT has been working to determine whether acidic runoff from the cut face emanates from groundwater within or rain infiltrating it.

He said the source is rainwater, so runoff can be curbed by covering the cut face.

Khoury refused to identify the 35-acre site where PennDOT may dump up to a million cubic yards of pyritic rocks.

The rocks will be mixed with one third as much lime or another neutralizing agent, an aluminum-manufacturing byproduct called Bauxol that Skytop troubleshooters learned about at a Penn State conference last month.

He said PennDOT has not yet negotiated a deal to buy the land. The state, he said, is still negotiating with a company that has offered to haul the rocks to a fly-ash dump in Indiana County, suggesting that the cost to the state could be the decisive factor.

Referring to the Indiana County proposal, Khoury said: "It is conceivable at this point that that is a cost-effective solution."

Khoury estimated that the environmental cleanup cost for Skytop will amount to between $20 million and $25 million. The original construction contract for the 1.4-mile section was about $40 million.

Khoury said he is hopeful that environmental regulators will allow I-99 construction to resume at Skytop this summer, when removal of the pyritic rock begins. A state Department of Environmental Protection permitting process, perhaps three months long, will be required for either the Bald Eagle Valley or the Indiana County dump site.

Penn State geologist Richard Parizek, an expert in groundwater flows, has raised concerns that a Bald Eagle Valley disposal site, if it did not remain secure, could jeopardize the public well water supplies of Port Matilda borough.

Gary Byron, assistant director of DEP's 14-county northcentral region, said his staff and DEP district mining director Mike Smith's staff looked into the Parizek question and concluded that all four possible permanent disposal sites are downstream from the Port Matilda well fields.

"The bottom line is that Mike's staff and my staff feel that there's absolutely no risk at all to the Port Matilda public water supply based on what we know at this point," Byron said.

DEP hydrogeologist Randy Farmerie concurred that there was no risk, though with a slight qualification: "Although with this project I'm always leery to say never," he said, "it seems damn unlikely."


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Mike Joseph can be reached at 235-3910.