The Thin Man

Big visible change at Skytop

A big symbol of a big road-building mistake no longer rises alongside U.S. Route 322 on the road from Philipsburg or Altoona to State College.

The dead brown spoil pile known as the "Skytop" pile, as big as a small mountain in itself, has been picked up truckload by truckload and dumped again three miles away.

In its place is wide-open space, enough space to allow PennDOT road builders to get on with the construction of a small (1.4 miles) but fateful section of Interstate 99 — the section to surmount the Bald Eagle Ridge at the Skytop gap.

At Skytop on Thursday, work crews filled that space with, well, work. A grader began to extend the I-99 roadbed northbound toward State College and a roller packed down the earth.

And on the mountainside that was for four years brown and lifeless with sulfur-bearing rocks that oozed acid-red runoff, real grass was growing green.

Spring Creek Canyon forum: The Q&A

A lot of questions got asked and answered during Thursday night's Spring Creek Canyon forum because the League of Woman Voters organized it well.

The forum addressed the issue of the state's plan to transfer 1,800 acres of Rockview state prison land to Penn State, Benner Township, the state Fish and Boat Commission and others.

The League positioned six officials with different loyalties and different points of view on a panel in front of an audience of 100 or more concerned citizens, who wrote scores of questions on three-by-five cards. League members screened redundancies out of the questions and posed the rest to the panel.

No one from the audience asked questions directly. League President Candace Dannaker, serving as moderator, handled that. Here are a few of the questions and answers:

Question: Two years ago Penn State began storing manure along Siebert Road in Benner Township without asking the township for permission. It could have drained into Spring Creek. Why should we trust Penn State now?

Answer (from Dan Sieminski, Penn State associate vice president for business and finance): That's a good question. That's a very good question ... We should have communicated with Benner Township and let them know what we were doing there. Benner Township said not to do it, and we stopped doing it.

Question: Where will Benner Township get the money to manage the canyon?

Answer (from state Rep. Mike Hanna, D-Lock Haven): The township will form a partnership with the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and the Fish and Boat Commission for money.

Question: Why can't the DCNR, whose mission it is to conserve land, take over the Rockview land?

Answer (from Larry Williamson, DCNR deputy secretary): We would be real uncomfortable taking the full 1,800 acres because we wouldn't know what to do with the agricultural land. ... There's nothing to guarantee that if DCNR too it, it's going to remain a natural resource.

Question: Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences has a School of Forest Resources. Why can't Penn State follow the recommendation of the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy and reforest the Rockview cropland to better protect the Spring Creek Canyon forest>

Answer (from Sieminski): Penn State has 7,000 acres of forestland in Huntingdon County, where Stone Valley is located. Still, the university may "very possibly" add to the canyon forest. But Rockview land is already cleared for cropland. "Let's try to make that work on that land."

Question: What is the status of the legislation?

Answer (from Hanna): The state government committee of the state House has the bill now. That committee will convene a public hearing on it from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 25, at the Central Pennsylvania Institute for Science and Technology in Pleasant Gap. Afterward, if the committee approves the bill, it will go to the full House for a vote. If the House approves it, it will go to a Senate committee and then to the full Senate for a vote before going to the governor for signing into law. ... The governor cannot transfer the land without the General Assembly's approval first.

Question: How can Penn State justify further acquisition of agricultural land when it's selling Circleville Farm?

Answer (from Sieminski): Penn State got the 155-acre Circleville Farm (in Ferguson Township) in the mid-1960s. That was before several residential developments grew up around it, including Park Hills, Greenbriar, Chestnut Ridge and Teaberry Ridge. It was very clear that that part of town was residential. Penn State needs agricultural and and will continue to have a need for agricultural land. The university's part of this community. We want this community to be strong.

For more on the state's pending transfer of Rockview land, go to Benner Township's website, here.

Meetings to air Rockview land transfers

Here are a few links in case you want to do some home reading before two big public meeetings on the transfer of Rockview state prison land to Penn State, Benner Townsip and the state Fish and Boat Commission.

The meetings include an informational session sponsored by the League of Women Voters of Centre County 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 20, at the Patton Township municipal building and a public hearing 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 25, at the Central Pennsylvania nstitute of Science and Technology, 540 N. Harrison Road, Pleasant Gap.

For backround on the pending transfer of 1,800 acres of natural, undeveloped Rockview land along the Spring Creek Canyon north of Interstate 99 in Benner Township, go to the township's website and click on ""Rockview Land Transfers."

For a text of House Bill 1657, the legislation sponsored by state Rep. Mike Hanna, D-Lock Haven, click here, and for information on state Rep. Babette Josephs, D-Philadelphia, chair of the House's State Government Committee, where the legislation waits for action, go here.

Josephs, who will be in charge of the public hearing Oct. 25 in Pleasant Gap on the legislation, has been a forceful advocate for open records and two months ago won an environmental leadership award from the Clean Air Council, a member-supported non-profit organization.