news update, page-3

Looks like hauling away the pyritic rocks and using lime is the go. I can't see any mention of Bauxsol at all. Check out the news article below.

http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/special_packages/i99/13751857.htm

I-99 costs jump $40 millionBy Mike [email protected] -- The state Department of Transportation plans to truck 675,000 cubic yards of pyritic rocks from Skytop Mountain in Patton Township to a fly ash pit west of Ebensburg as part of a cleanup plan that will cost about $40 million, state officials said Monday.
PennDOT has scheduled a news conference in Hollidaysburg this morning to make public its plan for the final cleanup of acid-rock drainage along Interstate 99 about five miles west of State College. On Monday, PennDOT briefed elected officials and others from Centre and Indiana counties on what it intends to do.
The plan calls for removing seven pyritic spoil piles on Skytop through a $26 million contract with Robindale Energy Services, an Indiana County company that will take ownership of the acidic rock, said Gary Hoffman, PennDOT's deputy secretary for highway administration.
Increasing truck traffic
Fifty Robindale trucks will make three round trips a day for 200 hauling days between Skytop and the Robindale mine 74 miles away in Indiana County, just west of Ebensburg.
The trucks will stay off public roads until just west of Port Matilda, PennDOT district executive Kevin Kline said. They will use two-lane U.S. Route 220 for the eight miles between Port Matilda and the start of four-lane I-99 in Blair County. Hoffman said the 300 truck trips a day, to be made mostly in daylight, will increase Route 220 traffic by 2.6 percent.
Another $14 million will be spent to cover and treat the remaining 400,000 cubic yards of pyritic material in a fill area under an already paved section of I-99 at the Skytop crest and structured fill area awaiting pavement between U.S. Route 322 and state Route 550 near the Maternville School.
That $40 million total does not include the $10 million already spent on the cleanup, Hoffman and Kline said. That will make the $50 million grand total for the cleanup more costly than the original $40 million contract to build the 1.4-mile section of I-99 over Skytop.
Before the rocks to be moved are loaded onto trucks at Skytop, they will be crushed and otherwise processed to get them to a uniform consistency, other sources familiar with the plan said Monday.
Lime, tarp, web covering
The two pyritic fill areas to be left in place and the two exposed cut faces of the mountainside, which are bleeding acidic drainage, will be covered with a leveling layer of lime, an impermeable textile tarp and synthetic webbing that will be filled and held in place by crushed limestone. Stainless steel cables will run down the slope to hold the liners in place.
Pyritic rocks unearthed during construction of I-99 and dumped in spoil piles and fill areas in Patton and Huston townships have been leaching metal-dissolving sulfuric acid since 2003 and have introduced contaminants to groundwater, Buffalo Run and Bald Eagle Creek.
The plan has the end of 2007 as the date for opening I-99 from the already existing four-lane section in Blair County through to the highway's convergence with Interstate 80 east of Bellefonte, the PennDOT officials said. That timetable would eliminate the need to open I-99 piecemeal, as the 9-mile stretch between Port Matilda and the Blair County village of Bald Eagle also is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2007.
Trucks to avoid Port Matilda
The trucks hauling the pyrite-laced rock to the Robindale mine will avoid downtown Port Matilda by using the I-99 corridor to a construction ramp just west of the tiny borough's crossroads. The trucks will then use the two-lane Route 220 to get to I-99 at Bald Eagle.
They will then take U.S. Route 22 to U.S. Route 219, passing just south of Ebensburg, and connect with U.S. Route 422, state Route 403 and a township road to get to the dump site.
PennDOT's permit applications to the state Department of Environmental Protection for the two projects -- hauling to Indiana County and treating the rest in place at Skytop -- will be submitted today.
That will start a 30-day public comment period that will conclude with two public meetings -- one in Indiana County and the other at the Park Forest Middle School in Patton Township, DEP regional director Robert Yowell said.
In addition to the Robindale site, PennDOT had been considering moving some of the acid-producing rock to a newly constructed landfill -- what it calls an engineered rock placement area -- close to the I-99 right of way in Worth Township. That option has apparently been discarded.
Hauling to start this summer
Hoffman expects the hauling to begin this summer and end in the spring of 2007, starting from the northern end of Skytop and working south, with I-99 construction resuming in turn as the spoil piles are removed.
Although the Robindale will transfer responsibility for the pyritic rocks to that company, Hoffman said, PennDOT will be responsible for what remains at Skytop.
"We'll be on the hook up there forever to make sure we don't degrade the environment up there," he said.
After Monday night's briefing in Hollidaysburg, Patton Township Supervisor Bryce Boyer said he was favorably surprised that so much of the pyritic piles -- including a fill area at Sellers Lane -- would be removed.
He said the PennDOT cleanup plan outlined Monday "has merit."