vti project i-99., page-2

Posted on Wed, Jun. 08, 2005




Interstate 99


Cleanup means work for railroad

New track would be built if Bauxsol wins approval

By Mike Joseph

[email protected]


The Nittany and Bald Eagle Railroad, accustomed to hauling thousands of tons of quarried rocks out of Centre County to build roads, will haul thousands of tons of a chemical product into the county to clean one up.

The railroad is under contract to pull 40 carloads of Bauxsol -- that's 4,000 tons of the acid-mine-drainage cleanup product being tested by state road builders in hopes it will answer a 16-month puzzler: how to protect Skytop streams and well water from contamination for the best price.

The test shipment is enough to treat about 55,000 cubic yards of the acidic rocks. That's 6 percent of the 918,000 cubic yards of pyritic rocks in spoil piles and fill areas at the Interstate 99 construction site that are leaching sulfuric acid and threatening streams and groundwater.

If the 40 rail cars full of Bauxsol win approval and the state Department of Transportation uses it to clean up the entire construction site, there'll be a lot more business for the railroad -- enough to warrant construction of a new side track near Port Matilda to unload it.

"There's 4,000 tons coming," railroad General Manager Phil Lucas said Tuesday from his Bellefonte office. "This is just a test shipment. If the stuff works out, then there's the possibility of -- I can't remember the exact tonnage -- a substantial amount."

The 4,000 tons of powdery red Bauxsol is now being shipped in bulk in the cargo hold of a barge that departed St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands last week. It is scheduled to dock this week at Port Chesapeake, near Virginia Beach.

The Bauxsol will be loaded onto low-slung gondola rail cars. With sides only six feet high, the gondola cars are designed to carry about 100 tons of dense material such as Bauxsol.

Virginia-based Norfolk Southern Railway will haul the Bauxsol to Lock Haven, where the Nittany & Bald Eagle Railroad will take over and move the cars through the Bald Eagle Valley to just east of Port Matilda. The first 1,000 tons -- 10 rail cars -- is expected by the end of the month.

From the Port Matilda tracks, Lucas said, the Bauxsol will be loaded onto off-road construction trucks that will take the material to the remediation site at Skytop on the Bald Eagle Ridge.

"We'll unload this test shipment right off main track," Lucas said. "If we do indeed get the business, if this Bauxsol works out, we'll probably build a side track for it."

Mike Joseph can be reached at 235-3910.