The Altoona Water Authority has received a $134,000 grant from the Department of Environmental Protection to redesign a passive mine drainage treatment system above the Horseshoe Curve.

The system treats acidic outflow from the “Spaghetti Hole,” and is one of six passive systems in the Glen White Run watershed near the Curve slated for renovation over the next decade, along with two others in the Bells Gap Run watershed near Bellwood, according to authority Land Manager Katie Semelsberger.

The Spaghetti Hole treatment system has gone past its 20-year life expectancy and is no longer working at optimum level, according to Semelsberger.

The authority will hire an environmental engineering firm to evaluate the data the authority has collected over the years on the Spaghetti Hole outflow and the treatment system and to design a retrofit based on what that evaluation shows — with adjustments to account for changes over the years in composition of the mine drainage, Semelsberger said.

The design will also create redundancy, so workers during the life of the renovated system can divert all the flow to one side in order to do maintenance or make adjustments to the other side — after which they can reverse the process, Semelsberger said.

The current three-section system has an initial pond for stabilization, the raising of pH and reduction of metal load; a second pond with limestone to make the flow even more alkaline; followed by a sedimentation wetland.

The environmental engineering firm will guide the authority through permitting of the renovation and will design a road into the site to accommodate the big trucks that will be hauling stone to replenish the system, Semelsberger said.

In addition to adding decontamination materials like limestone to the site, the renovation will involve declogging, which includes removal of precipitated pollutants like heavy metals from the surface of such materials, exposing them to the runoff again, so they are once more effective, Semelsberger said.

The authority will eventually be seeking a grant for the actual renovation of the Spaghetti Hole system.

Semelsberger predicted the cost of that renovation will far exceed the cost of design.

The authority will be working on a schedule for renovations of the other systems, he said.

The authority is hoping that the DEP will handle some of those additional renovations, and that grants will cover the cost of the others that the authority will manage, Semelsberger said.

“The goal is grants and partnerships,” so the work doesn’t require financial input from authority customers, she said.

The AWA grant is one of 16 that the DEP recently allocated as part of the Abandoned Mine Lands and Acid Mine Drainage (AMD) Grant Program, according to an email from the Shapiro administration. The grants total $101 million.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.