Cleanup proposal to move forward

PATTON TOWNSHIP -- State officials said Thursday that they plan to press ahead with a $40 million acid-rock-drainage cleanup plan for Skytop despite strong opposition from people living near an old Indiana County mine where a million tons of the rocks would be dumped.

But the Transportation Department, which unearthed a massive amount of highly concentrated iron pyrite during Interstate 99 road construction, said it is considering measures that would reduce the impact of trucks on the Indiana County neighborhoods.

"We feel that we do have a sound plan and the material can be deposited in a safe manner," said Ben LaParne, PennDOT assistant district executive for construction. "We are looking at alternative routes that will alleviate some of the concerns in the Pine Township area."

Robert Yowell, Department of Environmental Protection regional director, said the DEP has changed the location of a March 7 public meeting on the plan from the Pine Township Volunteer Fire Company social hall to the Penns Manor High School auditorium, near Clymer, Indiana County. The school auditorium can hold 650 people but the fire hall only about 250, he said.

About 300 residents of Indiana and Cambria counties jammed the fire hall Monday night and shouted their opposition to the plan to PennDOT and DEP officials trying to explain it. The March 7 meeting begins at 6:30 p.m.

LaParne said alternatives under review could route trucks onto more than one set of local roads into and out of the mine site and could reduce the total amount of rocks hauled each day by lengthening the haul schedule. The schedule now calls for hauling to start in May and last almost a year.

Kevin Kline, PennDOT executive director, said about $3.5 million worth of road improvements would be made before and after rock is hauled to the old Barnes & Tucker mine, now owned by Robindale Energy Services of Armagh, Cambria County.

PennDOT spokeswoman Marla Fannin said the state road builders are considering meeting with newspaper editorial boards and appearing on radio interview shows to correct misconceptions and get the facts out to people who leave near the old mine.

"There did seem to be some misunderstanding of exactly what the material is," Fannin said. "What I've been trying to stress is that this is not acid rock. This is pyritic material that when exposed to air and water has potential to create acidic runoff."

The million cubic yards of acid rock at Skytop is in the form of pyrite-laced sandstone. The pyrite, or iron sulfide, was probably deposited as molten material millions of years ago that filled cracks in the sandstone.

When massive amounts of it are abruptly exposed to oxygen and water, as in mining operations or highway construction, the chemical reactions form metal-dissolving sulfuric acid. The runoff can kill stream life and make groundwater smell and taste bad.

But at the Robindale site, the pyritic rocks will be mixed ton for ton with neutralizing and solidifying fly ash, an alkaline byproduct of coal burning.

That solidified mixture will be on top of a 75-foot-deep bed of fly ash, and the new mountain will be covered to keep the rain out of it.

At the same time, a mountain of old waste coal, 3.7 million tons, will be depleted, reducing the amount of acid drainage from that pile that now flows through underground mine shafts to a DEP treatment plant near Ebensburg.

"It's accelerating the cleanup of that site," Kline said.

Mike Joseph can be reached at 235-3910.