Posted on Thu, Dec. 15, 2005Officials urged to open part of...

Posted on Thu, Dec. 15, 2005
Officials urged to open part of I-99House panel shifts tone from patient to urgentBy Mike [email protected] -- In their sharpest criticism yet, state lawmakers told road builders Wednesday to open part of Interstate 99 before finishing an ill-fated section at Skytop Mountain.
The lawmakers also pressured environmental regulators to fast-forward the permitting process for the new highway, which now isn't expected to open until 2008.
"I'm calling on the Department of Transportation to start opening up some of those lanes," said state Rep. Lynn Herman, R-Philipsburg.
PennDOT district executive Kevin Kline replied that "We will definitely be looking at" opening some I-99 sections ahead of Skytop, and Department of Environmental Protection regional director Robert Yowell said DEP is giving high priority to fixing the acid-rock drainage that has stalled I-99 construction at Skytop.
The state House transportation committee's fourth I-99 hearing since March 2004 marked a sharp shift in tone, from patient to urgent, and was punctuated by a hard-edged exchange between the committee leaders.
"DEP's got to get on the stick," the Republican chairman, state Rep. Richard Geist, of Altoona, told Yowell and DEP Deputy Secretary Barbara Sexton. "There are no more excuses that are going to be acceptable to this committee when it comes to delays. ... We have a tremendous amount of highway up there that's lying fallow. We have a tremendous amount of resources of the state of Pennsylvania that have gone into this."
Geist's rebuke came after Kline told lawmakers PennDOT will have to "re-evaluate" long-term strategies because the Australian cleanup product Bauxsol proved ineffective as a primary cleanup tool, and Yowell said the permitting process for PennDOT's new strategy could last until mid-2006.
"When you're talking about the time delays -- in the middle of this and six months for that -- that's not acceptable," Geist said.
The committee's Democratic chairman, state Rep. Keith McCall, of Carbon County, shot back at Geist, saying PennDOT and DEP "have done everything in their power" to devise a plan to clean up the massive amount of pyritic rocks that produce a highly concentrated acidic runoff.
"This has been something that is truly unique," McCall told Geist. "I'm not making excuses for anyone, but you know as well as I that both of these departments have worked diligently over the course of the last two years ... to expedite the permitting process."
DEP spokesman Kurt Knaus said later that DEP does not yet have PennDOT's final cleanup plan or any permit applications that could start the cleanup in earnest.
"We are awaiting PennDOT's final decision," Knaus said. "As soon as we get those permits, we will move quickly. ... Every permit we do has a public participation comment component. No permit would be expedited to the point where the public would not be involved."
In 2003, PennDOT unearthed almost a million cubic yards of pyrite-laced sandstone while making a road cut at Skytop. The mineral pyrite, or iron sulfide, weathers harmlessly over millions of years but can devastate water supplies if vast amounts 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 and ground water.
In the past two years, the state agents have limited the damage to ground water and nearby Buffalo Run with stopgap measures such as putting tarps on the spoil piles and fill areas and neutralizing the sulfuric acid runoff with highly alkaline sodium hydroxide.
Kline's Bauxsol comments were the first public PennDOT conclusions about the results of a pilot test in which 700 tons of the aluminum manufacturing derivative were mixed with water, sprayed onto and injected into pyritic fill in an already paved I-99 section.
The sprayed Bauxsol was "ineffective," Kline said, because it failed to penetrate much below the surface and did not migrate uniformly throughout the fill. He also said the application process requires more water than can be readily supplied.
Kline said Bauxsol lessened the acidity of only two of 12 ground-water monitoring wells on the test site. In those two wells, metal concentrations, though reduced, remained "significantly above" water quality discharge criteria. He said sulfate levels continue to be elevated at about 3,000 parts per million, against a targeted max of no more than 250 parts per million.
He said Bauxsol could be used as a "secondary" cleanup tool, in a filtering process, but PennDOT now plans to look to permanent tarps and treatment pond processes as the "primary strategies" to handle fill areas, perhaps half of the million cubic yard total, that will be left in place.
PennDOT is considering moving some of the pyritic rocks to a landfill along the I-99 corridor in Worth Township or to a fly ash disposal site in Cambria County. Fly ash is composed of unburnable bits of material left over from coal burning.
To use part of I-99 west of Skytop, before finishing the 1.4-mile Skytop section, PennDOT would probably have to build temporary on and off ramps. The nine-mile section of I-99 between Port Matilda and the Blair County line is expected to be completed by mid-2007.
PennDOT Secretary Allen Biehler, in a State College appearance last week, said it's highly unlikely that the Skytop section can be completed before 2008.
Mike Joseph can be reached at 235-3910.