Contamination rising along I-99

PATTON TOWNSHIP -- Groundwater contaminants have been rising in the Skytop foothills since the spring, raising questions about whether the trend reflects a slow migration of metal-dissolving acid flowing from the pyritic spoil piles and fill areas at the Interstate 99 construction site.

Randy Farmerie, Department of Environmental Protection hydrogeologist, said Thursday that samples from groundwater monitoring wells and residential wells are showing increased levels of sulfates, which are sulfuric acid salts that the state counts to measure the severity of acid-rock drainage.

"The home wells are of more concern to me because that's a trend we began to see back in March," Farmerie told about two dozen engineers and geologists from the DEP and the state Department of Transportation.

Thursday's meeting marked two years of work to clean up the massive environmental hazard that unfolded in 2003, when road builders unearthed a million cubic yards of pyrite-laced sandstone and dumped it in huge waste piles along the I-99 corridor or used it to build the new highway's roadbed.

Pyrite, or iron sulfide, is a mineral that weathers pretty much harmlessly over millions of years but can devastate water supplies if massive 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.

Water normally contains some sulfates. Environmental regulators consider 50 parts per million an indication that the chemical reaction producing acid-rock drainage, or ARD, is occurring, and they consider 250 parts per million so excessive that the state must provide bottled water to owners of contaminated wells.

Farmerie said some residential well water around Carson's Corner -- the crossroads of U.S. Route 322 and state Route 550 (Buffalo Run Road) -- is showing sulfate levels "slowly going up and up" with "more wells that go up than go down." He began to say he was "disappointed" in the results but said instead that "it wasn't what I'd hoped to see."

Referring to one home well, he said: "The bad news is it (the measure of sulfate parts per million) was at 40 in the spring and it's now at 170. We're going in the wrong direction."

Farmerie said he didn't really have a good explanation because "there's a lot of variable out there." Asked whether the spike might owe to recent heavy rains flushing out dormant sulfates in the spoil piles and fill areas, he said: "Is it precipitation or a year-and-a-half travel time?"

John Sengle, DEP surface water specialist, theorized that a spike in sulfate levels at the Buffalo Run monitoring station may owe to heavy October rains, but he said a tenfold increase in sulfates in a nearby spring demonstrates that "there's still a component of the ARD that isn't showing the same as treated" areas show.

The water sampling data are all over the place, he said. "There's absolutely no pattern to it."

One Buffalo Run Road homeowner, Vera Carson, has been given bottled water by the state for more than a year. She said Wednesday that PennDOT informs her monthly about the quality of her well water, for which the sulfate levels have been fluctuating around 40 parts per million.

"They just seem to go up and down," she said. "Our lead came down a little bit this last time. I can't understand how this stuff keeps jumping up and down like it does."

Robert Yowell, director of the DEP's 14-county northcentral region, said the data show that the stopgap engineering that's been done to cover the spoil piles with tarps and to channel runoff into treatment ponds and treat it with the alkaline sodium hydroxide has had limited effect.

"Our interim measures worked to a degree, but they're only interim," he said. "Source removal is the required action -- the data's just showing that sooner's better than later."

Toward that end, the million-dollar pilot test of the Australian cleanup product Bauxsol has likely been completed but results have not yet been analyzed and prepared in report form for PennDOT and the DEP.

David McConchie, the Australian geochemist who invented Bauxsol, said privately that the results show dissolved metals and sulfates have decreased in the test area and the water running off the area has improved from highly acidic to nearly neutral.

"We're pretty pleased, but we think we can do even better," he said.

Kevin Kline, PennDOT district executive, said public meetings on the status of the Skytop cleanup -- which had been tentatively scheduled for December -- will now take place at the earliest in January.

Max Gill, executive director of the State College Borough Water Authority, said sulfate levels in the authority's well fields remain normal, from 5 to 6 parts per million in one well and from 2 to 20 in another, three miles from Skytop.

"We've seen no indication of any change or any impact from the ARD so far," he said.

Mike Joseph can be reached at 235-3910.