pk, it took a beating last night indeed. I think the article below is the reason why. Read near the ending the comment by Kline regarding what he thinks of the trial. Does not look good. What do others think?
COLLEGE TOWNSHIP -- The head of PennDOT said Wednesday that it's highly doubtful that Interstate 99 between Patton Township and the Blair County line will open by the end of 2007 because of work to clean up the acid-rock drainage at Skytop Mountain.
Pennsylvania Department of Transportation officials, as recently as October, had expressed optimism that they could resume construction at the I-99 site at Skytop concurrently with permanent cleanup efforts to allow the interstate to open by the end of 2007.
But Secretary Allen Biehler, following a keynote address to the 2005 Transportation Engineering and Safety Conference at The Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel, said that 2007 now appears unlikely.
"I think that's probably long gone," he said of that timetable.
When asked how long the road opening might be delayed, Kevin Kline, PennDOT district executive, said, "I would hope it's not later than 2008."
Road builders and state environmental regulators have been working for the past two years to come up with a plan to clean up the massive environmental hazard posed by a million cubic yards of pyrite-laced sandstone unearthed during highway construction in 2003 and dumped in huge waste piles and fill areas along the I-99 corridor.
Pyrite, or iron sulfide, is a mineral that weathers pretty much harmlessly over millions of years but can devastate water supplies if large amounts of it are abruptly exposed to air and water. The resulting chemical reaction produces sulfuric acid, which dissolves metals such as iron, aluminum and manganese. The leachate can ruin surface water and groundwater.
State Department of Environmental Protection officials said last week that groundwater contaminants have been rising in a residential area of the Skytop foothills since March, and they worried that the trend could signal a slow migration of contaminants into groundwater.
In March 2004, PennDOT halted road building at Skytop to concentrate on the cleanup, and Biehler said Wednesday that PennDOT is "not going to lift a finger" to resume construction there until it's certain that "wells and streams" have been protected from the acidic drainage.
Marla Fannin, PennDOT spokeswoman, said Wednesday that it is still PennDOT's plan to open the entire 18 miles of I-99 between the Grays Woods interchange in Patton Township and the Bald Eagle interchange in Blair County at the same time, when I-99 at Skytop is ready.
But Fannin also said "it's possible that certain sections" could be opened earlier, though she said PennDOT has no plans yet to do so. The nine-mile section of I-99 from Port Matilda to the Blair County village of Bald Eagle is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2007.
PennDOT has been working on three different approaches to achieve a "permanent" cleanup of the pyrite: Moving some of it to a landfill along the I-99 corridor in Worth Township; moving some of it to a Cambria County site where it could be mixed with fly ash, an alkaline byproduct of coal burning, to neutralize it; and leaving it at Skytop and treating it with an Australian cleanup product, Bauxsol.
PennDOT has completed a million-dollar pilot test of Bauxsol, and Kline said Wednesday that "we're not fully confident" with its effectiveness in neutralizing the acidity of the spoil piles.
Untreated runoff from some of the pyritic rocks has a pH of about 3, highly acidic in the 0-14 range between extreme acidity and extreme alkalinity. Pure water has a pH of 7.
Public meetings on the status of the Skytop cleanup, which had been tentatively scheduled for this month, will not take place until January at the earliest, PennDOT officials said last week.
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