Hazleton Standard Speaker Article

09/08/05

By KENT JACKSON kent.jackson@standardspeaker.com
Three concrete pools stand empty in a clearing outside Sheppton, but before the year ends, they will be filled with limestone that will restore life to the tainted waters of the Catawissa Creek, Jim Gotta said.
The treatment system that Gotta volunteered to help es-tablish near the outfall of the Audenreid Tunnel is a larger version of a system that al-ready cleanses water at the Oneida No. 1 Tunnel in the Eagle Rock development.
"That’s why we’re confident this will work,’’ Gotta said.
He and other volunteers with the Catawissa Creek Restoration Association began seeking money to treat mine water exiting the Audenreid Tunnel four years ago.
Their efforts helped pull in nearly $2 million and draw to-gether engineers, scientists, government workers and landowners.
People interested in the Catawissa Creek on Wednes-day afternoon checked prog-ress of the project that Gotta said will start treating water by November.
He described the project and pointed out features on a model that he built before walking the site with his lis-teners. They included repre-sentatives from the state De-partment of Environmental Resources, the Schuylkill County Conservation District, the U.S. Environmental Pro-tection Agency, Trout Unlim-ited and the Eastern Pennsyl-vania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation.
Water from the mouth of the tunnel will flow through three pipes beneath a road to the concrete pools.
Limestone in the tanks will neutralize the acidic water, causing the aluminum ions to form aluminum hydroxide. Aluminum will stick to the limestone, rendering it inert, so engineer Kim Weaver said she designed a way to flush enough water out of the pools to fill two tanker trucks per minute.
"It’s going to come whooshing out and hopefully take the aluminum with it,’’
said Weaver, of Hedin Envi-ronmental in Pittsburgh. "Aluminum is the killer.
It’s very toxic to fish.’’
Removing aluminum should allow trout and the in-sects they feed upon to live in the Catawissa again.
"Schuylkill County is going to have some of the best places to fish in the state,’’ Craig Morgan of the Schuylkill County Conservation District said of the Catawissa, which he called one of the state’s most beautiful streams.
The system will treat up to 8,500 gallons per minute, the average flow from the tunnel and the amount that can pass through holes in a partition at the intake.
If the volume exceeds that rate, excess water will flow to a diversion chamber and re-enter the creek downstream where the treated water will help neutralize it.
The squared timbers that once outlined the opening of the tunnel have collapsed, leaving a few wooden pylons at the base of a steep, eroded hillside.
James T. O’Hara, the gen-eral contractor, burrowed into the hillside with pipes to en-sure future subsidence won’t stop the flow. He heaped clamshell-size stone atop the intake to stop leaves from clogging it.
While excavating the pipe-line trenches, he separated rock that he used to control erosion.
The pipeline passes where a tributary merges with the Catawissa.
Trout fingerlings live in the tributary. They won’t swim into the main stream, but they will after treatment begins.
"As the aluminum gets out, they will come back right away. You don’t have to stock it,’’ Craig Morgan of the Con-servation District said.
Researchers from Blooms-burg University and a biologist from the Susquehanna River Basin Commission are taking an inventory of the insects in the creek and tributaries near the treatment system. Their findings will provide a basis to compare life in the stream af-ter the system starts operating.
The system is the most ex-pensive passive treatment plant in the state, Tom Davi-dock of the Conservation Dis-trict said. It won federal funds because of the persistence of groups like the Catawissa Creek Restoration Association and the project’s potential to bring life to 36 miles of the creek.
Outfall from the tunnel is such a large source of alumi-num that treating it should also help neutralize other sources of pollution, such as the Green Mountain Tunnel.
The Green Mountain Tun-nel discharges perhaps a half-mile downstream from the concrete pools.
While the water quality is poor, its flow isn’t as rapid as the discharge from the Auden-reid Tunnel, Robert Hughes of the Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition said.
The Green Mountain tunnel water meanders into the Catawissa Creek after flowing through a wetlands that Hughes studied.
He said the four-acre wet-land offers a home to blue-winged teals, red-winged black birds, bayberries, blue-berries, and hemlock, pine, and tupelo trees.