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Wednesday, January 08, 2003

By Tom Gibb, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

For the state Department of Transportation, the price of ending a bureaucratic struggle and opening the path for a controversial stretch of interstate highway north of Altoona will be more than a half-million dollars and maybe three dozen acres of ground, both payable to the state Game Commission.

The deal was approved unanimously yesterday by the six-member Game Commission.

Now, if the legal intricacies of the pact win PennDOT's final blessings, heavy equipment could be moving by March, building eight miles of Interstate 99 across a mountainside that environmentalists charged was irreplaceable natural habitat.

The road is to be done by 2006.

The last remaining challenge is an appeal filed by a coalition coordinated by Citizens for Pennsylvania's Future, charging that the state Department of Environmental Protection was wrong last month when it gave the go-ahead for the road work.

But group spokeswoman Jeanne Clark said the organization, popularly known as PennFuture, has to examine the final agreement between PennDOT and the Game Commission before deciding whether to continue the challenge.

The eight-mile section of highway would replace an accident-laden section of two-lane road and forge the last link in an interstate highway connecting the Pennsylvania Turnpike at Bedford to Interstate 80 northeast of State College.

The project brought PennDOT and the Game Commission to loggerheads last year when PennDOT wanted to take a 68-acre strip on Bald Eagle Mountain -- pristine habitat, environmentalists charged -- from a 1,947-acre stretch of game lands there.

The deal approved yesterday has PennDOT paying the game commission $508,000, which will be put in escrow for a land purchase, commission spokesman Jerry Feaser said.

In addition PennDOT has agreed to buy 36 acres of privately held ground to allow access to 96 acres of game land that would otherwise be cut off by the new road. In lieu of that, the transportation department would give the Game Commission $50,000 to make the purchase itself, Feaser said.