Posted on Fri, Mar. 03, 2006State shelves I-99 planBy Mike...

Posted on Fri, Mar. 03, 2006
State shelves I-99 planBy Mike [email protected] a month after announcing a $40 million plan to clean up the acid-rock drainage hazard at Skytop Mountain, the state postponed it Thursday, citing overwhelming opposition in Indiana and Cambria counties.
Three hours later in a public hearing in the state Capitol, state Sen. Jake Corman, R-Benner Township, said the cleanup project has "gotten completely out of hand." He faulted the state Department of Transportation for failure to inform the public and engender public trust.
Corman told Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Kathleen McGinty that he will ask Gov. Ed Rendell to transfer responsibility for the cleanup project from PennDOT to DEP.
"I think PennDOT is incapable of solving this problem," Corman told McGinty during a Senate budget hearing. "We need the scientists to make this decision -- the environmental people, not the transportation people -- because it's now gotten completely out of hand."
Residents and elected officials in Indiana and Cambria counties have thundered their objections to the plan to truck a million tons of pyrite-laced sandstone 75 miles from an Interstate 99 construction site in Patton Township to an abandoned coal mine near the Indiana County town of Heilwood.
PennDOT Secretary Allen Biehler noted the opposition in a statement issued Thursday.
"While there is no danger or health hazard to the public in transporting this material to a site," he said, "I have directed a halt to any of those plans while we begin an immediate evaluation of all options for disposal of this material."
Public meetings scheduled for March 7 in Indiana County and March 9 in Centre County have been canceled.
Those hearings could have concluded the public phase of the 30-day DEP permit applications for Robindale Energy Services to dispose of the rocks and for PennDOT to get started on the Skytop end of the cleanup.
PennDOT and Robindale had expected to be moving rocks from Skytop by late spring. The postponement could add to construction delays, though PennDOT spokesman Rich Kirkpatrick said it is too soon to tell.
"It's just hard to say at this point what result that has on the end of goal of completing I-99," he said.
Exultation to dismay
Reaction to Thursday's announcement ranged from exultation in Indiana County to dismay in Centre County.
"The people of Indiana County have won and I couldn't be happier," said Indiana County Commissioner Bernard Smith, who arranged a meeting earlier this week between opponents of the plan and Rendell's senior representative, former lawmaker Allen Kukovich.
"God bless the governor for understanding and for making this decision," Smith said.
Daniel Klees, College Township councilman and chairman of the Centre County Metropolitan Planning Organization, which schedules transportation improvements, said the announcement left him frustrated.
"I would hope that whatever we're going to do next is not going to take another three years," Klees said. "I can't believe we've gone almost three years and haven't moved a rock."
Indiana County Commissioner David Frick said the acid rock itself is not dangerous but the 300 truck trips a day it would take to move it poses a peril. But he raised concerns about the county's long-term relations with the state government.
"Nobody wants it, but somehow if it's foisted upon us, then it becomes a matter of the truck traffic primarily," Frick said. "We've just got to make sure that we don't burn bridges or shoot ourselves in the foot."
Kirkpatrick said the Robindale site has not been ruled out but other options will now be evaluated. He refused to identify them, but they likely include a site in Worth Township near the I-99's Port Matilda bypass and an abandoned mine in northwestern Clearfield County, called Bark Camp, where the DEP has carried out a reclamation project.
Kirkpatrick said PennDOT still intends to move the million tons of pyritic rocks from Skytop, as the DEP has directed. "We've been told at this point that all of the material cannot stay there," he said.
Jim Panaro, Robindale general manager, questioned PennDOT's decision to cancel Tuesday's DEP hearing in Indiana County. He said the state could have completed the public process and withheld its pending $26 million dollar contract with Robindale until it evaluated other options.
Kirkpatrick said that "we just felt that this was the appropriate time" and that "the secretary felt that we need to gain an immediate evaluation."
Robindale opposition
Indiana County Commissioner Smith said the Robindale site may still be on the table for PennDOT, but not for him.
"In no way, shape or form is the Robindale site an acceptable site, and if they attempt to do it again, we'll rise up, by the thousands," he said. "For the people of Indiana County, it is not an option."
Kirkpatrick said the postponement decision was a Biehler directive. Rendell spokesman Chuck Ardo was asked Thursday whether Rendell had directed Biehler to issue that directive.
"I think the governor expressed his concern that the local officials representing so many citizens were so stridently opposed to the proposal," Ardo said.