vti's new patent ?, page-4

you are welcome
.........................
Posted on Fri, Aug. 19, 2005

Interstate 99

PennDOT almost ready to apply I-99 remedy

By Mike Joseph

[email protected]


PATTON TOWNSHIP -- Preparations for a million-dollar Bauxsol test got under way at Skytop this week, state road builders announced plans for new public meetings, and state regulators set forth attainment goals for cleaning up the environmental hazard.

Those are the latest developments in almost two years of remediation work since the state Department of Environmental Protection cited the Transportation Department for violating the Clean Streams Law in allowing excavated pyritic rocks to leach contaminating levels of metal-dissolving sulfuric acid into Buffalo Run, Waddle Run, Bald Eagle Creek and groundwater.

Almost a million cubic yards of pyritic rocks lie in spoil piles and fill areas at the Interstate 99 construction site. Temporary measures that were upgraded last autumn -- tarping the piles and replumbing the runoff drainage system -- appear to be working well.

The Australian company Virotec produces Bauxsol from a muddy red residue left over from aluminum manufacturing. PennDOT officials hope to use the Bauxsol to treat water and coat the immovable cut faces in the mountainside and to apply it to fill areas and spoil piles.

Neil Bardach, Virotec's U.S. operations director, told state agents that Virotec subcontractors are set to begin drilling 36 horizontal borings, each 125 feet long, into the first pyritic fill area to be tested.

Different work crews on Aug. 29 will begin the actual test applications of Bauxsol, injecting slurries of it into the borings, Bardach said, to produce data to determine how well the product counteracts the acid-producing pyrite.

"We're off to a fine start," he said Thursday.

The DEP on its Web site has posted a memo, "Treatment Options and Goals," from DEP Assistant Regional Director Gary Byron to PennDOT district executive Kevin Kline that sets forth different attainment goals and options that will apply to various fill areas and cut faces, depending on which stream runoff from the area drains into.

The DEP considers Buffalo Run and Waddle Run more highly valued streams than Bald Eagle Creek, and thus stricter limits apply on how much of specific substances such as sulfates, iron and manganese can discharge into them.

"The permitted surface water limits outlined herein must be met not only for the few months of the pilot test, or for just a couple of years, but for the foreseeable future as long as an acid rock discharge is occurring," the memo says.

PennDOT spokeswoman Marla Fannin said Thursday that the state agency is planning a field trip for the public to the Bauxsol testing on Skytop for the morning of Wednesday, Aug. 31, and a more ambitious public presentation of the final remediation plan sometime before Thanksgiving.

Mike Joseph can be reached at 235-3910.