An Australian company already in a pilot-test contract with the state said it can use its Bauxsol product to counteract all 900,000 cubic yards of contaminated rocks at Skytop for $18 per cubic yard.
That would amount to more than $16 million if the state decides to use Bauxsol to treat all the acidic rocks at the Interstate 99 construction site without removing them.
"It's a perfectly appropriate number for this job," Neil Bardach, director of U.S. operations for Virotec International Ltd., said Monday.
Virotec, with headquarters in Queensland, has begun a contract with the state Department of Transportation to treat at least 6 percent of pyritic rocks at Skytop with Bauxsol, a highly alkaline derivative of aluminum refining waste.
PennDOT will pay Virotec between $1 million and $1.3 million for the pilot project, the company said on its Web site, with completion expected by the end of August.
Virotec, trying to get a foothold in the U.S. environmental cleanup market, has not sold more than $200,000 worth of Bauxsol at a time during previous applications in the United States, Bardach has said.
Virotec's Web site said a Colorado engineering company, Montgomery Watson Harza, will assist in the Skytop pilot project.
Four thousand cubic yards of Bauxsol -- roughly enough to fill 4,000 pickup truck beds -- was on the high seas Monday after departing the Virgin Islands on Thursday aboard a barge bound for a Chesapeake Bay port.
One fourth of that shipment will fill 10 rail cars that the Nittany and Bald Eagle Railroad will haul to start the pilot project, Bardach said. The Bauxsol is expected to arrive by the end of this month.
Plans for the Bauxsol test will likely claim considerable attention during PennDOT Secretary Allen Biehler's appearance before the state House transportation committee Wednesday in Harrisburg.
The hearing, expected to last only 30 minutes, will mark the third time Biehler has answered state lawmakers' questions about Skytop since the Centre Daily Times first disclosed the full scope of the problem 16 months ago.
PennDOT unearthed 918,000 cubic yards of pyrite-laced sandstone in 2003 while making a deep road cut through the Skytop gap in the Bald Eagle Ridge. That material -- enough to fill Beaver Stadium -- was dumped in about a dozen spoil piles and fill areas.
Exposure to oxygen and water oxidizes the pyrite (iron sulfide) and creates sulfuric acid, which dissolves heavy metals such as iron, aluminum and manganese into stream and groundwater contaminants.
Eighteen acres of heavy vinyl tarps now cover the worst pyritic piles, and other temporary plumbing and treatment measures have limited the acidic runoff into Buffalo Run and Bald Eagle Creek. Sulfate levels in some nearby residential wells are high, but not excessively so.
PennDOT is also considering more costly solutions that would remove half of the acid rocks from the Buffalo Run watershed, but its interest in Bauxsol as a permanent solution grew during a conference sponsored by ClearWater Conservancy and Penn State last December.
Virotec's proposal would leave the rock piles where they are and inject water-mixed Bauxsol into them. The company said the treatment will neutralize existing acid, prevent the formation of additional acid, trap the metals, prevent leaching and "improve" the quality of water running into the streams.
PennDOT said Monday an updated estimate of remediation expenses so far was not available. In November, PennDOT said $5 million had been spent on the cleanup. Before he retired in January, PennDOT district executive George Khoury estimated the total bill for the cleanup would reach $25 million.
PennDOT's original contract with HRI Inc. of State College to build the 1.4-mile section of I-99 was $39.1 million.
Although PennDOT officials hope Bauxsol will eliminate the need to remove acid rock from Skytop, Robert Yowell, director of the state Department of Environmental Protection's Northcentral region, said two weeks ago that "it seems like some will have to be picked up and moved."
Mike Joseph can be reached at 235-3910.
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