Geoscience Education in the Mountain State: CATS Applied Geology Telecourse, Spring 2000, Show 5 Transcript

CATS Telecourse
Applied Geology
March 21, 2000

Dr. Bob: Greetings Everyone! Here we are in CATS Telecourse #5 for this particular semester with Deb Hemler, Bob Behling here. We have all kinds of interesting stuff to share today. The great bulk of the program is going to relate to projects that were done last semester by members of the class, research projects, and then carrying them into the classroom. First we have lots of things to pull together. Deb?

Dr. Deb: We just want to make sure that you are aware of due dates which have been posted on the web site. Just in case you didn't check the web site: Quiz #3 will be due on April 7th. Quiz #4 will be due on April 21st. You have some time there to work on 3 and 4, 3's been posted already and 4 won't be posted until the very last broadcast. On that last quiz we will put a question on "A Civil Action." So those of you that have been e-mailing me with "What do we do for the review for 'A Civil Action'?" Don't worry about it, just watch the video, write down some notes or reactions to it and then we will ask you a question regarding that video on that last quiz. The book review will be due on April 14th. Remember we said it could be anywhere from 4 to 8 pages. There are three parts to this book review. The first part, you need to abstract the book content. Give us a short brief synopsis of what was in it. A summary to the best of your ability. Part 2 you need to give us your reaction to the book. This is your critique, what did you think about it? How was it written? How was the content? Was it readable? Part 3, give us a classroom application. Were there any classroom applications? There always are. How could you use this material or this content in the classroom? Could you generate an activity from the materials that you found there or is there a resource you could send a student to help investigate something that was covered in the book? Those are the due dates for those.

A couple of things we want to revisit from last show. I know we were cruising pretty hardily through the state parks of West Virginia and we didn't get a chance to tell you this, but there are some geology publications on the state parks of West Virginia that are available through the West Virginia Geological and Economic Survey. RESA's IV, VII, and VIII have some publications. They are about $5 each. They are a little old so you have to be careful when dealing with plate tectonics but the geology of the rock units you're going to find consistent. Hawks Nest, Watoga, Coopers Rock State Forest is covered. There are two actual publications on this, one that I've cited here is actually the Geology of Coopers Rock but we did mention one last time that is a natural history. We've got Blackwater Falls and Canaan Valley State Park and then Cacapon and the Lost River State Park system. Make sure, if you live in that area and you want to take a field trip there, that you get a hold of one of these.

Dr. Bob: There are additional Extension Service publications for some of these areas too. They are not listed on this.

Dr. Deb: These are just the ones available through the Geologic Survey. Also available, if you're not familiar, is a video called "Rocks and Rivers of West Virginia" again is available through the Geologic Survey. The video is discounted for teacher's at $10, I think. In order to get it for this price you need to send your request on a school letterhead. This is a really nice composite view of the mineral industries and the history, the physiographic provinces of West Virginia.

Dr. Bob: That's the $10 after the discount.

Dr. Deb: Another thing that Bob flashed on the screen last week was the drainage system of West Virginia. I mentioned that I've always had my students color in the drainage systems and you can see that it's not really clear. I should have used a different color. In the eastern panhandle or the Potomac system, that's in a forest green. The Monongahela and Cheat River systems are in black. Since my students were on the Cheat we colored that one a different color and focused on where the Cheat actually emptied into the Monongahela. Most people thinks it's in Morgantown because Cheat Lake is there. They don't realize that it extends all the way into Pennsylvania at Point Marion before it actually joins the Monongahela. You can see the New River and Kanawha drainage systems. Someone in that area might color the New River a different then the Kanawha but for us is was just important to see where that drainage system is. The blue system then just dumps directly into the Ohio. It's a nice way for those visual learners to learn where these drainage systems actually are. Take a look at the topography of those areas to figure out why they drain where they drain.

Dr. Bob: Your students were able to find the water shed area. You didn't have any hint?

Dr. Deb: No, not at all. Sometimes this map isn't clear and we'd have to get out something like the gazetteer to help clarify some of the spots on the smaller maps. The ones my students used were those huge ones that folded. It was really very obvious where these drainage lines were. On this smaller one it was a little bit more difficult.

Dr. Bob: I've always felt that the New River is hard to really discern the New and the Kanawha River, not including the tributaries.

Dr. Deb: I was creative. That's was I was referring to last week when we talked about those drainage systems.

One thing we need to go over again, we like to feature misconceptions that have been may have been generated over the course of the last few years dealing in geology. One of the misconceptions that we'd like to deal with today is comparing and contrasting the state parks and national parks. One national park in particular or probably a monument. We didn't get into any great deal of depth with the state parks so we'd like to banter back and forth about comparing and contrasting some of those state parks. Let's start one with, mentioned Devil's Tower on the adjunct but we really didn't cover that in the class. There's some confusion. How would you compare and contrast Devil's Tower with Ship Rock? We need to discuss how are they related? How are they the same? How are they different?

Dr. Bob: Ok. They both are of igneous rock and igneous origin. It's both intrusive and Devils Tower is much larger. Devils Tower is one very large, flat topped feature with columnar jointing so that it has the appearance of roughly hexagonal columns along the margin. This is the actual neck of a volcano. That's why it's so large. Everything else has been stripped away by erosion. Whereas in Ship Rock it's a system of one central feature and then it has radiating dikes out from it. Three major radiating dikes. It is intrusive igneous rock but it was a much, much smaller. There's no real evidence that this ever came through the surface and was a volcano where the magma actually went out. The rocks around it were cracked and broken so that there were some radiating, the magma seeped in along joints probably and therefore left after the erosion of the soft sedimentary, these radiating dikes that come out from the central core area for Ship Rock. Devils Tower is many, many, many times the size and is interpreted as a neck volcano and this one is radiating dikes.

Dr. Deb: Now, moving into West Virginia state parks since we really didn't have a chance to discuss many of them, we have Coopers Rock located on the Preston/Monongalia border. Then we have Beartown which is located in Pocahontas County. Is there any relationship between Beartown and Coopers Rock and what is that?

Dr. Bob: In both cases there's a relatively thick sandstone and it's at the base of the Pennsylvania. Meaning the geologic age is Pennsylvanian and it is underlain by rocks of Mississippian age. The rocks directly under it are siltstones. At Coopers Rock the exposure goes all the way down finally to the Greenbrier limestone. In Beartown you'll also find some of the siltstones and if you drive to the south you go into Lewisburg to see the Greenbrier limestone. What is happening is that these rocks are weak. This lower one by solution and this one, especially freeze/thaw. It really breaks down rapidly. In both cases, it is weak rock overlain by a cap rock of sandstone. These large blocks of the sandstone break away along joints and move down the slope. In effect, they're both the same type of dynamic situation where a very resistant cap rock is being altered and changed in it's form and shape by these large blocks moving off and down a slope that developed on the weak rock. The large rocks then maintain their integrity and you can walk around in between these. I've shown them to be almost wedge shaped but when you get inside it looks like they're just slid over to the side, parallel. There are large trees growing up in between the blocks. This probably reflects that during the Quaternary, when there was much more ice and snow in the area, that ice and snow could pack down in there and exert forces to help move that material. We see no direct evidence that these blocks are moving today, for example. They probably are a relic mass movement phenomenon that could be triggered again most likely by a very dense heavy continual snow pack, maybe even some permafrost or ground frost that last a longer time. Beartown is much further south but it's at a higher elevation. Coopers Rocks is just over 2,000 feet and Beartown might be around 2400 or 2500 feet. That added elevation in the south really helps and so it's latitude and altitude. You get it high enough, it's going to be cold up there. They are really very much the same, the same rocks.

Dr. Deb: In Tucker County we have a situation called Canaan Valley which we know as the southernmost boreal climate or ecosystem. Then we have something in Preston County called Cranesville Swamp. Is there a relationship between these two?

Dr. Bob: Structurally, there's a Pennsylvanian sandstone, as a matter of fact it's the same units as the example you just asked about, Beartown and Coopers Rock. Then, it goes all the way to Canaan Valley. It has an Arctic climate species in it and plants, subalpine. What happens here is that the wetland forms and there's a major wetland in Canaan Valley. At Cranesville the weak rock in which the wetland is, is in the limestone. The dissolved limestone leaves clays and silts and unsoluble residue behind and it floors the valley in Canaan. In the sense of Cranesville it's rock that dipping off very gently and there's just enough of a lip in the tough, old sandstone and the rocks behind it have weathered through chemical and physical weathering and finer particles can get swept out but there is a lip or a nick point that prevents the water from getting totally and draining it as a normal river system would. The wetland there is just in one directional dip off the edge of an anticline. Canaan Valley is the entire anticline that has been breeched or opened by erosion.

Dr. Deb: Are there concerns for drainage if your building in these areas, like septic systems?

Dr. Bob: There's enormous problems, especially in Canaan Valley where there's ski resorts and everything and they're planning on using some sort of a self contained septic system with a leaching field. There very nature of the material, that's why it's a wetland down there. It doesn't drain, therefore, it doesn't leach.

Dr. Deb: How do they pass a perk test?

Dr. Bob: They don't, that's it, they don't pass the percolation test. As a result, there's a moratorium with respect to adding on additional septic systems. You almost have to have a water treatment plant which is a pretty expensive situation. There are some very expensive individual homes way up on the mountain and the ski resort and a gated community up there. Down in the valley they've got real problems, they don't have a leaching field for the septic systems.

Dr. Deb: Do they mound it up like Florida does?

Dr. Bob: What they really should do is they should bring in truckloads of sand. They would mound it up by bringing in material that would be permeable and allow for the leachate from the septic system to go on through let the microbes work on it and get rid of all the unsightly residue. That's an expensive proposition too. Plus you're destroying a wetland. It's almost a lose/lose situation there. Except for economic development.

Dr. Deb: Ok, the last one compares a gorge we have here in West Virginia with a national gorge and that is comparing the Grand Canyon to the New River Gorge in terms of it's age and the shape or the geometry of the gorge itself.

Dr. Bob: The Grand Canyon has a series of rocks from Paleozoic to Mesozoic that are sedimentary rocks in the upper gorge. The Red Wall limestone, for example, is red only because the iron comes out of the rock unit above it and it stains the surface. Then on the inner gorge there's a deep V shape. There's also an angular unconformity. There are some sedimentary rocks that are at an angle with the younger sedimentary rocks.

Dr. Deb: By angular unconformity you mean rocks are missing from the rock unit?

Dr. Bob: Rocks are missing and also these are tilted a little bit and cut off by erosion. The new rocks were deposited in essentially a flat line system and sequence. But down here it's dominated by metamorphic rocks. There's also some igneous rocks. These rocks are crystalline and very difficult to cut through because they are a good consistency, hard and tough, there's very few holes in them in order to have freeze/thaw working on it. The inner gorge is a V shaped gorge as that river continues to down cut, or it did until we blocked it up from the Colorado River. The entire gorge system is 10, 15, 20 million years old. We know that because there are igneous rocks that have come out and flows into the gorge. This one is a very, very deep gorge. It's got a step wall sequence here because of the rock types and the semi arid environment. It's very cold on top and very warm at the bottom. The freeze/thaw processes at the top are quite striking. Last week a storm struck this area again so that they had a lot of snow. They're getting a harsher winter then we have had. They consistently get more snow then we do in Morgantown.

Dr. Deb: Out there the limestone seems to be the resistant rock.

Dr. Bob: Yes. Limestones are resistant because of the semi arid nature and there's not as much percolating water through that. The ground water is limited because of the rainfall, the precipitation, therefore, limestone tends to be pretty tough. Sandstone is always tough but in some cases the sandstone and the limestone weather about the same out there. Simply because of the lack of water. Whereas, the system that we all know as the New River, we have no real dating capabilities. There is a resistant sandstone cap but by and large the river is a V shape. The rock units are all sedimentary. Even though these rock units have layers you don't see that very well expressed in the valley walls. It looks younger. It looks like a deep v-shaped gorge and you lack the long term wasting back. It's also much narrower situation then the Grand Canyon and it's not as deep. Those are some of the compare and contrast situations. Many people want to call the New River the second oldest river. We have no evidence as to what it really is in total age.

Dr. Deb: Ok, well that wraps up our discussion of the state parks. We did have a quiz question that was reeking havoc and to help with one of the quiz questions we need to actually discuss three different types of maps. Structural, isopach, and lithofacies maps. If you could clarify what those are and how they're used. I think it will help the quiz question.

Dr. Bob: Structural map shows the structures: anticlines, synclines (the big structures), faults and what type of faults (normal, reverse) or if it's a thrust fault (a very low angle reverse fault). It shows these on a geologic map and with the components of the geologic map quite often with a topographic map as the base map. A subdued color behind. An anticline is shown with arrows pointing away from the central axis. A syncline the rocks are dipping in towards the center. A fault will have sometimes a saw toothed pattern or else a solid filling in of the teeth or it will actually show one side and the other with a up and a down side on the more normal fold situation. This type of symbolism is used and it's usually used on top of a topographic map.

Dr. Deb: We have essentially seen these, they've just been superimposed on other maps.

Dr. Bob: Yes, in a geologic map. It will always show that on the geologic map. A variation of this is interesting, it's a structure contour map. It will show the elevations above sea level on a certain unit, say a coal and a certain coal seam at that. The structure contour map attempts to show where you would see or find the coal if you drilled as based on the topography being neutral but still there. The contour lines of the topography being there. How deep would you have to go to find the particular coal you were interested in. In the case of Chestnut Ridge it kind of interesting. Chestnut Ridge shows on the map the symbols indicating an anticline. The elevation on the topo map might be 2200 feet but the contour on that map in Preston and Mon County area, they contoured the Pittsburgh seam because it's so very important. The contour on the Pittsburgh seam is about 3000. What does that mean?

Dr. Deb: It means it's well above the actual topography.

Dr. Bob: You have to interpret where is the coal.

An isopach map is a specialty map. Especially useful in economic deposits. It could be an ore, coal, but it could also be sands and gravels, limestone, for groundwater purposes. An isopach map will demonstrate through contours in a way just like we had done on the contour map but it will show thickness. It will encompass or enclose areas of similar thickness based on a contour interval. That's why it's so very similar. For example, the Pittsburgh coal might be 20 feet thick in places and then finally in central West Virginia it finally thins out to 2 or 3 feet. You can do an isopach map of the ranges of thickness of the Pittsburgh coal. Another thing to do is one that you had brought in and this doesn't have the units. Talk to us about this map.

Dr. Deb: These numbers represented the thickness of the ash that was deposited after an eruption. The exercise is to figure out from which vent this came from. You're looking at the key there. If the contour interval then would be 10 mm you can then trace back then the thicknesses towards the vent in which the ash was spewed from. This is an example of a classroom application for an isopach map in which you're using thicknesses of ash as opposed to thicknesses of coal.

Dr. Bob: You don't have the closure here but there would be closure.

Dr. Deb: There would be closure here, there was no data so we can only put the lines where the data existed.

Dr. Bob: Usually, there is a zone because of wind direction at the time the eruption took place so that you'd expect to find these closures. If the wind is coming from the direction of the double arrow, that's the interpretation that one has to take, that these closures are going to be very, very close to each other right over the top. Why should be kind of obvious that it isn't going back into the wind. It's all being blown downwind. The contours are real closely spaced here. They can almost lie one on the other and then the material moves on down. The same type of situation we can talk about in on of the other papers that we have today with point source pollution from a dry cleaning establishment and then the plume, the key word, of whatever we're measuring. Whether it's pollution or volcanic ash. Something that has moved, that's the key element.

The next one is a geologic map, lithofacies. Litho from rock. Facies comes from a word that means aspect. What it means is the aspect of the rock. On a beach what would you expect to find? Corals or mud, no sand. On a lithofacies map then they might be reconstructed a sand beach, maybe 300 million years ago. The sand accumulated here and then we postulate that the level was somewhere in there but in deeper and deeper water the sand gives way to silt, finer grained material, then maybe even just mud. Then perhaps there was a reef. That would be limestone. The reef was much closer to sea level out there. When I say mud it could be of the silicates that perhaps made the beach. Depends on what the beach is made out of. It's sand sized particles then silt sized, then clay sized and then out further from shore there might be a fringing reef or a barrier reef to the land mass. The land or the continent over here and the land or sea is in this direction.

Dr. Deb: It gives you an indication of the depositional environment.

Dr. Bob: Yeah, it might be over the entire state of West Virginia, for example. This beach might be narrow but very long. It might extend up into Maryland and Pennsylvania, sort of like the Tuscarora sandstone. Then, interestingly enough, through geologic time the lithofacies will move, if the sea level rises the beach transgresses, moves up onto the land and in effect all the other environments might be pulled along with it.

Dr. Deb: Are these commonly used in historical geology text, they're like side views?

Dr. Bob: Yeah, they're side views or cross sections.

Dr. Deb: So you're tracking transgressions and regressions?

Dr. Bob: Yeah. The reason these are interesting cross sectional diagrams is you want to know where to drill. If you're looking for oil or gas it might be in this limestone reef.

Dr. Deb: Great, I think that catches us up then for everything we shaded over last week in a rush to finish.

Dr. Bob: One other thing we didn't talk about was the possibilities of building your own nature trail. We've had some experience here in West Virginia, not just the Owl's Grant locally for something on a little wetland or a little flower garden for hummingbirds or that but a much bigger picture. What are some of those that we have?

Dr. Deb: I know Paula Waggy did get an Owl's Grant that was pretty good size. I don't know how far along she is on that. I remember a great deal of frustration in trying to get some cooperation to get the land to actually do it. But she was going to do an arboretum type on a good size chunk of property. A few of the others working on nature trails are the Sacco's and Karen Parlett.

Dr. Bob: There are multiple funding sources available. Building your own if you have the property and you have the opportunity on the campus to so that sort of thing through time and a little bit of money you can build some things. I'd always suggested putting an outline map of the State of West Virginia with the different rock types, a specific sample. At Seneca Rocks you have a piece of Tuscarora sandstone. In Canaan Valley, Germany Valley, or down in Greenbrier County you have a piece of that limestone so that you can characterize the area by the geology.

Now, what we'd like to do today before the break now is to talk about 5 projects that were done last semester, mine subsidence in Marion County, mountain top removal and valley fill, mass wasting in southeast Wetzel County, Pocahontas County landfill, and west type glass factory site. We'll have a break, we'll come back for the Stonewall Jackson Dam, erosion control on the Ohio River, water for the city of Vienna, West Virginia. What is locally known as the TNT area in Point Pleasant, that's an interesting package, and water quality of the Potomac river. A more general project in a large river basin. Then to remind everyone that our next show is two weeks from tonight. There's no show at all next week, spring break. We shut down in those offerings here. But our next show with Deb and I will be April 4^th. We'll be talking about the disposal of radioactive wastes throughout the entire country.

Let's start out then with mine subsidence in Marion County. I just picked the salient features. These were term papers and then Deb will work on aspects of how to utilize these topics for lesson plans in the classroom. I should probably do a conceal and reveal situation here. Why is mine subsidence important in Marion County? In 20 years it's taken an excess of 10 million dollars to correct the issues. Federal funds come out of SMCRA (Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act). The WV Dept. of Environmental Protection has an Office of Abandoned Mine Land and Reclamation. The theme here is based on the fact that the Pittsburgh coal seam is so thick and so important that it has been mined for a long, long time. It has left through room and pillar operations in olden days and now in more recent long wall activity, subsidence problems. A tax, 35 cents/ton on surface coal and 15 cents/ton on underground coal has generated quite a pool of money. About 10% of that goes for reclamation. In the Marion County area 185,000 cubic yards of concrete and grout have been used over the years. That's a costly procedure to fill in and try to keep the ground from subsiding any further. This particular paper has some great pictures and if you're faced with doing this type of situation you go out and decide what pictures are going to be useful. In this particular picture we see a home and there's a crack, and this ground is failing away. There were cracks in the concrete. She had also put together a marvelous map of the residence, she got this from the report. They were very forthcoming (the DEP) with information. She actually got to look at the field books of the people that were there doing the work. They drilled holes to find the nature of the problem. In this area they found that the Pittsburgh seam was about 140 feet below the surface. The home in this instance is in a precarious location. After the work was done on this, with the drilling and the injection holes, they were able to stabilize that feature and there has not been a great deal of movement since. The overall story then is one that the Pittsburgh coal seam, she used the structure contour map on the Pittsburgh coal seam. They used the concrete injection. She said, "Even though the best of plans with all that work, they completely concreted in somebody's sewer line." No matter how much work you do ahead of time, it doesn't always come out perfect. But the intent was there to do good work.

What sort of things could you do in the classroom with this?

Dr. Deb: You have resources that are available to you if you want to have students investigate mine subsidence. If you go to the Geologic Survey's web site and click on the "Homeowners Guide to Hazards" section and you'll see an actual diagram of what happens when a mine subsides. You have a nice visual for students to look at. If you scan through this it's a really nice job of some effects of mine subsidence. Make sure you use the Geologic Survey's site as a reference. Another thing we'd like to draw your attention to is the Pennsylvania Dept. of Environmental Protection. They have a site, just do a search for mine subsidence on the web it's easier then giving you the web site. It's called the Mine Subsidence Web Site. They have a short video that you can play right from the web site.

Dr. Bob: If you actually live in the county where this is a problem, such as Marion County, you can perhaps find old newspapers and clippings. As I've always suggested, start keeping a file. Start it today and bring it into the classroom. Put the date and what publication you got that from and have this resource in a certain file folder or in a box on the shelf with all things related to mine subsidence, etc. Topics that you feel are especially interesting to your students or to you.

There's another project coming up that has a very interesting action/reaction with respect to the kids in the class and Stonewall Jackson Dam as to how do the children of the businessmen think about a dam as compared and contrasted to the children in the same class whose families are farming and in agriculture. Who wanted it and who didn't. It's obvious we think but the decisions are really kind of difficult to finally come to.

The second one, mountain top removal and valley fill. I like to include the full title. You don't get mountain top removal without valley fill. The person who did this paper got some data and her information showed in the decade of the 1980s that 46 permits for 9,700 acres were obtained. Then in 1997 alone, 46 permits covering 12,500 acres. This is just WV information. The companies are forced for compensation for acreage of water resources lost. Three options: construct a lake, reservoir, or wetland; perform stream habitat improvement on another stream; or three pay the money. Which one do they generally do? Companies invariably take number 3. They pay about a quarter of a million dollars per acre of stream damage after 480 acres are impacted. If you don't impact 480 acres, no compensation.

Dr. Deb: Loophole!

Dr. Bob: Of course they're still squirming about this. The stream monitoring bill in the 1998 legislative session was a big, big argument and decision and discussion. It is said by some that it really opened up the situation in the state. From this paper there are 200 coal waste dams in WV, more then in any other state.

Why do we have to have mountain top removal? Because there are many, many coal seams but they are so thin that the only way that we can do this type of mining, taking the coal out economically and safely. You have no other choice. You either do this or leave it alone. Some say leave it alone.

Dr. Deb: The tunnels are only as big as the coal seam.

Dr. Bob: How would you incorporate this in the classroom?

Dr. Deb: There are again some resources that you need to be made aware of. The WV Geological Survey has an article on the web site. This article is available at the bottom of the home page. Click on "Mountain Top Removal" and it will bring you to an economic view of mountain top removal. Do check that out. The other thing, the picture that you saw on the web site www.geocities.com. If you want two cites that give you the environmentalists point of view as opposed to the WV Economic point of view these would be the two cites to visit. The first being from the Sierra Club. If you go to the WV Nature Conservancy they also have a link to this WV Sierra Org. website. What you can do in your classroom is this is a great, great thing to do with your students and that's role playing. This is something that impacts people in WV. This is not something distant or removed from them. Keep the role playing close to home, it means more to the students. You can assign each class member a different position. Some can be environmentalists, some can be coal mine owners, some could be the coal miners that are going to lose their jobs if this doesn't take place. You've got the view point of the coal geologist, somebody whose funded by this activity. You've got legislatures, homeowners, you've got all sorts of perspectives for which you could view this idea from. To get the whole class involved don't just stop with the hearing. It's one thing to let the students to go on and on about this and have fun with this but make it meaningful. Ask the students questions. They need to be responsible for the material that's being covered. What environmental concerns are being identified? What economic concerns are being identified? Are there safety and health issues? Is there a cost and a benefit to the program? If so, what are they? Identify the three strongest arguments offered. Identify the three strongest arguments against mountain top removal. Then ask them, based on the evidence presented by all parties involved, would they vote on it personally and why?

Dr. Bob: Have you actually run the vote?

Dr. Deb: No, I haven't. Mountain top removal was something that came about after I left the classroom. These are questions that I do with role playing situations. They apply to all of them. They will apply to this.

Dr. Bob: What age group can they really have a sense of the lawyers and the geologists?

Dr. Deb: I did this with high school students. I think to some extent you could get into the upper junior high, the 8^th and 9^th.

Dr. Bob: The next one that I've brought forth is an example of a continuing problem constantly in the state of West Virginia, mass wasting. In this particular project it was Rt. 20 in Wetzel County. In this one, Angela, put together pictures and cartoons. She had one mud flow, personal story, not to her specifically but someone she knew, where the family was awakened at night and the mud was coming down the hill in back of them. They evacuated safely but the mud came through the house, some rooms up to 4 feet deep, in the back door and out the front door and then on down the road. That's the way the stuff moves. If it's a lot of clay sized particles of mud you get it water saturated and it's going to flow. She had also looked at all the types in that particular area.

You get this sandstone cap rock with a joint and then there's shale below with the freezing and the thawing, you can see this is differential weathering. This weighs a lot. This is Coopers Rock and Beartown but it's also the slide out in the Arboretum in Morgantown.

How would you use this in a classroom?

Dr. Deb: Angela had a really good activity at the end of her unit and she talked about taking the students on a field trip. They had to sketch the different forms of mass wasting and label those. Then discuss what caused them and why they're there. As an application she would bring a picture in and ask what type of mass wasting is this? How could it have happened? It was a really nice. She had them construct a field booklet, a different page was a different form of mass wasting.

Dr. Bob: She titled it, "No Slumping You Creep!" The old traditional play on words.

Pocahontas County landfill and a new solution to an old problem. We need to set the stage that the papers were due at the end of the semester but part of what we did this semester was go on a field trip. We went to two locations: one was a beautiful landfill near Parkersburg and then the other one was a landfill in Nicholas County, not necessarily characterized as beautiful.

This paper, Martha first put together a cartoon of the Modern System of Pocahontas County and she got this information from brochures. The people in the landfill business are marvelous if they will just open the doors, take you anywhere. If they don't, they hesitate, then back off because somethings going on that you may not know about. There's either a court case out or there's something that they're really hesitant about. You will know immediately if you have any sense that they are not forthcoming with information, back off and find another site in another county perhaps.

This is a modern situation and she recalled her field trip in Nicholas County. They didn't have the money or enough top soil. They were buying soil at an exorbitant fee from all the way down in Charleston.

Dr. Deb: Getting permission to not have to cover every night.

Dr. Bob: They have to have some sort of a landfill. They didn't have the resources in the county to go to a new landfill or ship the material out of the county. It helped because of going on the field trip to something else. When Pocahontas first built it in 1986 for the 9,000 or so people in the county, it was designed for 7 cells. The cells are 7 individual collecting units. In 1994, they closed some old cells and a new line cell of 3.5 acres was constructed. They made a recirculating sand filter, RSF, installed below the wetland that had been created. The wetland accepted the leachate, but it wasn't doing the entire job. They took leachate from the wetlands into the RSF (recirculating sand filter) and they sprayed it onto 28 sand filter beds, a black sand, open to the atmosphere. She was allowed on there and she a great package of pictures. These fellows that run these, they open up everything to you. It recirculates it 12 to 14 times. This is a commercial material. It uses oxygen, chemical weathering, biologic weathering, physical weathering, and it's a trade secret. If it works, it works. Why do they have to go to that? Because they found that the water, the final water that was exiting, was not passing standards and they were going to have to pay for, it was costing way too much to then take their leachate and treat it again. They tried to do it on their own. Some companies will send it off to be treated if there's a local company.

How would you use this particular one in the classroom?

Dr. Deb: Actually, Martha took care of that again, as well. She has a nice diagram. You can take your students to a landfill. I always had my chemistry students investigate where in the county the garbage went. We didn't have a landfill in Preston County but we have a transfer station. They at least had to investigate what happened there. The students should kind of realize and be aware of where their garbage goes. We just sort of blind side this garbage into the can. We don't pay attention to what we do with it and we have this disposal mentality. They need to be made aware that that stuff has to go somewhere. The fact that not every county has a place to put this. The first things is, make them aware that landfills exist and where this stuff goes. It doesn't get hauled away in a truck never to be worried about again. Martha had a nice model of a sanitary landfill. There's a diagram using a milk carton. You could use a two liter pop bottle. If you cut the top off you can invert it and stick it back in to cover the smell. She's got a straw there for piping the leachate out. They could then do some tests on it. You mentioned what you did....

Dr. Bob: One of the neat things is, when I made garbage for the kids, unknown to them, I took a package of raspberry jello because it was good and red and I mixed it in. They never really saw it but once that water started moving through it, then it came out red. It's an excellent example of a leachate that's going to contain some things that you may not have known was in there.

Dr. Deb: The nice part is they should have a straw down below the clay layer to make sure none of the leachate happens to make it through. You should have a monitoring system which is what the a landfill has. They have a monitoring system down below the impermeable layer to make sure that no leachate happens to make it down through the landfill. I recommending investigating your county and what they do with their garbage and then modeling it. Also keeping track of the amount of garbage that is thrown away on a daily basis.

Dr. Bob: There are no landfills that are big bottles like this model. So what do they do? They make a big bottle out of the liner by drilling wells and pumping the water to the surface then having a well down below the ultimate bottom liner. Then an analysis has to be done ahead of time to know which way the ground waters flowing. They have to monitor the wells below or down stream in the ground water flow so they can tell there's no plume of leachate coming out of this system. A neat project. If you can swing it and the budget is there, take a trip with the class.

Dr. Deb: It's so easy to sweep them under the carpet and ignore the fact that they exist. We hide them so well.

Dr. Bob: We'll finish up here before break with the West type glass factory site. This is a local glass factory that moved from Brilliant, Ohio in 1927. It's in Lewis County. In 1936 it burned to the ground. It just sat there until around 1970 when part of the property was used but not all. The culls or waste glass material was put over in an area. If you've ever been up along the Ohio River with the pottery plants and the glass plants. They took a lot of their waste material and just outside the door. There's this huge dump along the Ohio River. They've kind of covered them over. It's mostly been a brown field ever since. That's a term that we introduced once. A brown field is often in a urban area and it's not a super fund site. It's not the most contaminated site in the world but it is contaminated enough that very few people are interested in relocating in that area because they feel they may be held responsible or they may create more problems.

Some additives for color, selenium, cobalt oxide, manganese, copper, and other things and one that's really neat, uranium for an interesting green color. Those pieces of glass fluoresce under ultraviolet light and you can find them in amongst the broken pieces of glass because they are radioactive. You could find them with a Geiger counter. Or go out at night with your black light and it will glow in the dark for you. Makes you wonder, doesn't it.

There's a swampy area now covering the glass factory dump and lot's of pieces remain and consider the town was considering putting in a new sewer line in Weston and it may expose hazardous materials.

What would be a neat way to use this in the classroom?

Dr. Deb: There are plenty of glass factories around WV and we commonly take kids to glass factory sites to watch them blow glass. We get really involved with the actual process of making glass and glass blowing but we can't forget to incorporate the geology. What does it take to make glass? We really need to focus on the raw materials that it takes to make the glass itself. There's a natural chemistry tie in here for chemistry students and that is to investigate these chemicals that make these glasses various colors. Don't forget to incorporate chemistry into this as well.

Dr. Bob: We here in WV, we have the energy, and we have some silica sand that's absolutely gorgeous stuff. The Oriskany silica sand, without iron stain, is absolutely gorgeous over in the eastern part of the state.

Dr. Deb: Take a look at where all these glass factories are located on that particular map we showed. Is there some relationship? Why are they located where they are? Can the students come up with some answers there?

Dr. Bob: What is the history in the sense of how many were employed in the early days and how the companies are just gone? Ellensboro has a marble factory you just have to go to. It's done the way it was done ages ago, natural gas blowing away and heating that glass, melting it, and watching how the marbles are made. It is absolutely fantastic. They also use broken glass particles. They take old glass from some of the other factories and reuse it. This was for decorative marbles. There are three types of marbles: decorative, play marbles, and industrial grade for aerosol cans of paint.

We've got 5 more projects to apply a variety of the topics we have talked about to situations in West Virginia. This next one is really interesting, as are all of them. This one talks about floods and what happens. It's the Stonewall Jackson Dam project in Lewis County.

A bit of the history...the teacher who had done this one had taught in this county for 28 years so she spanned and bridged all this time of the dynamics and going on of the latest part in the final decision. She put together maps, pictures, and brochures. She took her own pictures and got a great deal of information. I have the overall report. It's quite thick. She had marvelous things in here including topographic maps. Then she looked at the history of it, Lewis County floods. The Army Corps of Engineers said build a dam. In the classroom, the children of businessmen said build the dam. We're losing value by having flood damage, time after time. Agriculture families said, you build that dam what are you going to take away from us? You're going to take away our bottom land. A rich bottom land, yes it floods but it brings in more nutrients. If it floods in February, often the floods along the West Fork, it's not as much as the summer floods or the fall floods from hurricanes. The summer floods from the thunderstorm activity. It's interesting role playing there. That the kid's know about.

The first plan in 1948 was an earth filled dam, 14 million dollars. Lots of folks thought earthfill, that's going to give way. It's really going to get us. Well, yes. (Shows a picture of Stonewall Lake Dam on overhead) That's Stonewall Lake Dam, it's not an earth fill component now. They said not only is it going to be a dam fill you're going to let the land take over. We're not real fond of that.

In the 1950s a big flood hit, but then they had years of drought. We'd like water sometimes but we don't want too much of it. They were really caught in the typical problem of what to do then. The flood of February 1957 tipped the scales. The citizens approved in March 1957. The county could not come up with 4.5 million dollars even though the Federal was going to add about 3 times that amount. It didn't happen again. We get into the flood of 1963, losses estimated at $700,000. If you start adding this up, floods that cost is getting higher and higher. Three quarters of a million dollars over a couple of years, maybe we better find the money somewhere. Finally in 1966 the dam was authorized. In 1967 another large flood, then there were floods in '68, '69, '70, '71, '72, '74. Finally they said, we can't go through this, enough is enough. Either the climate has changed or more likely we have changed the use of the land and we're having a lot more runoff. It's not all percolating in. Whatever the situation we've got to do something now.

In 1977, in April, they said 900 people were told they had to move. Then, a flood hit again in February 1978. The pattern is here, there are winter floods. They're the thaw and the snow melt. This year there wouldn't have been one. Of course, last summer there was a drought. They had to shut down the recreation area behind the Tygart Lake.

Major flood in February 1978, again in 1980 and 1985 major floods. Finally construction was started and the dam and lake were dedicated in 1988. It's a relatively new facility. (Shows on the overhead were lake extends on map) It's a drainage pattern, the dendritic drainage pattern, so the lake is long and narrow, filling the valley. Unfortunately it took some nice agricultural land, the flood plain. That's the flat land in the area. The sands and gravels are all now down below water. Some of the towns are totally gone. The bottom line is, that building dam anywhere is going to work if you're going to try and have water in times of drought. It's going to help in times of flood. What they do is draw down the water in September and October in anticipation of the spring situation. This year we didn't have much snow at all and we are still down in droughty conditions. That's why long term weather forecasting has become so important to try and anticipate due to El Nino or La Nina what's going to happen and how far down do we draw the water.

In the Summersville Dam area they're building in a hydroelectric plant. There we've got a situation that if they are out of water they don't get electricity out of it. How would you use the Stonewall Jackson Dam in the class?

Dr. Deb: We don't want to keep doing field trip after field trip after field trips, although it would make a nice field trip. There's a classroom activity you could probably do. In terms of the dam releases that occur and what that does to the sediment load or the sands and gravels that may be located in the stream bed. (Looks at a diagram on overhead) If you take a cookie sheet and the green outlines are clay ropes. You roll them out to about 16" long. Pinch them at the top and fix them to the bottom of the cookie sheet. Make sure you put some sinuous pattern to it, it meanders. In between the clay, simulation the canyon, sprinkle a thin layer of wet sand. Take two 8 oz. cups and poke 1 hole in one and 2 holes in the other then you have your normal and flood conditions. You put the cookie sheet up on a 1" block on the bottom and take the cup with the 1 hole and add 8 oz. of water to that. Make sure the water stream is hitting that channel. Once that happens observe where the sand has gone. This would be normal stream flow. This is what happens when the dam is releasing its normal flow of water. Have them record in journals where the sand went, what happened after it left the canyon, and kind of map out the pattern of sand deposition.

Scoop that sand back up and put back in and pack it lightly down and sprinkle it in the channel and take the cup with 2 holes in the bottom and put 8 oz. of water in the cup. This would simulate a dam release or flood conditions. Observe what happens to the sand grains, where they deposited, what happens to them. You have a nice classroom activity that's not quite so messy and fairly easily done. If you use a brownie it will contain the water better.

Dr. Bob: When you go on a field trip you'll see that at the tail race, at the bottom of the dam, or in the overflow, they have very large rocks to break up that energy. To disperse that energy splashing against the rock so that it does not erode. If you don't do that, you're going to erode right under the bottom of the dam area.

The next one, erosion control on the Ohio River. Overall the paper was not a great number of pagers but what Dave had done is he had gone down and took lots of pictures. He took some great pictures, he talked about rip rap and a very interesting material, blocks that are called CB blocks. They come out of Australia. They're made up of 40% fly ash here in the state of West Virginia. But first he went and took pictures of the erosion along the banks. Along the Ohio River with the tow barges there's a lot of wash that comes up. Smaller boats going close to shore can create stronger waves then the big tow barges because the barges are going very fast. You can have your students compare and contrast the energy level.

In some areas they use rip rap. This is large rocks placed against the stream. Under bridges and abutments they use rip rap, big blocks that are going to hold it up.

He featured these little fly ash creations called the CB's and they're hexagonal and that's great in working with kids. Why hexagonal? What insect do we know and love who utilized the hexagonal pattern and why?

Dr. Deb: Do you think that's where they got the name from, CB's?

Dr. Bob: Yep, the bees. How would you use this one?

Dr. Deb: Rather then do a role playing game make something like a problem based activity. Pose the question to the students. You've got an unstable slope, it may be something along the Ohio River, something close by, take a picture if you can't take the students out there. Tell them here's your task. You are an engineering firm. You have to figure out some way of stabilizing this slope. They can get involved with researching, the types of materials and fabrics that might be used to stabilize the slope. You can send them to web sites. This one in particular: www.ieca.org happens to be one that deals in these materials for stabilizing slopes. You've got all the manufacturers of these slope stabilization products. Things that deal with soil stabilization, others that deal with gabions (sp.). There are some that make the wire baskets that load up. Students could contact the companies to find out prices on these materials and the feasibility. We not only get how reasonable it is to stabilize the slope with this material but you also have a question about economics. It's not always easy to go with the greatest measure. You could put a price limitation. The owners only willing to spend this much on stabilizing this slope. They have to make a recommendation based on the materials available and the cost.

Dr. Bob: What you're hitting upon in seeing these few things is the tremendous availability of information. In past years, if you didn't have a brochure from one company you could try to sketch it, you just couldn't share that information. In this case you can go to a tremendous list. You can filter out those companies which have the best pictures that the students can learn from. It's like a virtual field trip. Nothings moving in there but you are specifically demonstrating to them some of the very special features. The company will have spent a lot of money on it's own and we might as well use that stuff. The web sites have been real, real valuable assets.

This one's neat. Water for the City of Vienna, West Virginia. It wasn't quite clear but I think Susan was on a trip, maybe with a class, and she happened to come across a water company and there's a geologist there and they were drilling holes and taking tests. She started a conversation. My thinking is, he wasn't supposed to share all this information. He said, there's a PCE leak. It's a chemical solvent from a dry cleaning establishment. This was generally know, she had heard about that. A dry cleaning plant had this leakage of material but there was an old well farm and what she had put together was all kinds of information. In general, everyone was more than happy to share information. She had the outline map of the city of Vienna, Wood County. The dry cleaner leak of PCE created a single source or point source pollution. They had to shut down the wells 1, 2, 3, and 4. Wells 5 and 6 were also shut down nearby. With the Ohio River nearby they have a heap of problems. Eventually, they went further out to drill new wells #11, 12, 13, and 14. These are way up stream. I took off a point or two because I would want a scale to know what we're talking about. These wells are about 400 feet from the Ohio River and that helped me a bit. The new ones are quite some distance away. They were way up stream in order to drill new wells but it cost them, they had to drill new wells. Those are in 70 some feet of sands and gravels in the Ohio River at that particular location. Parkersburg gets their water out of the sands and gravels. On one of the trips we went up to look at a well farm in Parkersburg. The point of this all is that there were PCE on top of the water table because it doesn't mix. How are they going to treat it? They set up a circulation cell. They pumped down air and then it vaporizes the PCE and the PCE comes up to the surface into the atmosphere. Some would say we don't want that in the air either. That's an interesting point. City officials were not permitted to discuss the situation due to a pending lawsuit. Obviously, with all this activity going on, she was at least stymied in that sense. The first well farm or system was drilled in the 1930s, she had great pictures. She took a tour...talk about the value to your students of seeing why do I study chemistry? What if someday I were working in a water treatment plant and I had to do testing for contaminants and this was my activity. Because I studied chemistry in high school I was able to do it. She also looked at some of the monitoring information. She even included one of the old monitor maps as to when they had enough material...she started out from the outside. She went in and took interesting pictures, excellent pictures too. This is just super information. She has a photo of the well head and well head protection. You have to keep pollutants from getting into those systems. What did you find out about PCE? What does it really mean?

Dr. Deb: One thing you have your students do is, if there is a problem with PCE, they need to know what it is. It's very easy to get on the web and look up the chemical PCE. The reason this is important is because this is one of the chemicals that was of issue in "A Civil Action." PCE was prominent in this. I don't know if the video brought that out clearly enough but I wanted to clue you in on that. Parachlora Ethelyne (sp.) is a chlorinated hydrocarbon so you've got a series of carbons and hydrogens with chlorines coming off of them. It's a common solvent. It's used ubiquitously and there are heavy regulations now on all dry cleaning facilities to control this. I'm not so sure that it was necessarily a leak in that dry cleaner, it may just have been dumped which was the case in "A Civil Action" where it was just dumped in the back.

Dr. Bob: The dry cleaning process is NOT dry.

Dr. Deb: These chemicals are also used as an intermediate for manufacturing refrigerants, it's degreasers, spot removers, so it's not just the dry cleaning industry.

Dr. Bob: These degreasers, when they ship gears someplace they coat them in grease and then they take them when they received them so they don't rust. They take them out back and spray them off with PRC (sp.) and the grease and PRC and they percolate into the ground.

Dr. Deb: Now just to indicate how nasty this stuff is, the indications are that if you're exposed it irritates the eyes, skin, and the upper respiratory tract. If you inhale this stuff it almost gets you light headed which results in nausea and vomiting. The contact to the skin is nasty as well causing redness and chaffing. The worst part is if you ingest it there is dysfunction to the central nervous system and liver damage. It is a known carcinogen. Since it is fat soluble it can accumulate in things. If it gets into the water system it can accumulate in fish and it's like PCBs.

Dr. Bob: Lot's of rivers they tell you, don't eat the old fish. Catch them and throw them back in. It's the young fish that don't have as much. I'd also like to point out that the dry cleaning industry use to use another chemical, not all that long ago. Carbon tetrachloride (sp.) we have it in homes. We got a grease stain let me get the carbon tetrachloride. You knew when you were working with it because it was really aromatic. This type of topic is probably more at the high school level but in general the basic understanding in middle school level is outstanding to realize that it will shut down your well field. You'd better do it right and solve the problem. Another case in the Ohio River, steel industry, cleans the steel with pickling acid. They were taking the pickling acid and dumping it at the north end of the island. Then they wondered why the union came up to them and said, look, our water tastes funny at the fountains. We're not going to work anymore until you solve the problem. They said, what problem. They said, you guys don't drink the water. Come down here on the factory floor and try to drink the water. They set the pickling tank and basin upstream on the island so it was just coming right on down through the sands and gravels and they had their well on the south end of the island. The river flowed from north to south and eventually the pickling acid got into their water supply. You've got to think about these things. Even in today's situation why let the pickling acid out there alone anyway.

We've come to the end of our time. We will pick up these last two because the one that we want to pick up, the TNT area, that really is Trinitroluene the TNT in World War II they were making 700,000 tons of TNT were being produced daily. An incredible volume of TNT. The resulting site hit the national list. We'll also talk about the broad problems of looking at an entire river basin and where you may be there may not be any problems but you're living within a basin.

Until two weeks form tonight, for Deb and I, thanks for joining us. We'll see you then and keep thinking about geology. As spring comes on, get out there and start planning some field trips. See you in two weeks.

WVGES Education Specialist, Tom Repine (repine@wvgs.wvnet.edu)

Page last revised: March 2000

Page created and maintained by: 
            West Virginia Geological & Economic Survey
  Address:   Mont Chateau Research Center
            Cheat Lake exit off I-68
            P.O. Box 879
            Morgantown, WV  26507-0879
Telephone:  1-800-WV-GEOLOgy (1-800-984-3656) or 304-594-2331
      FAX:  304-594-2575
    Hours:  8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m. EST, Monday - Friday