Text Size:
A|
A|
A
Email
PrintVINTONDALE, Pa. -- Submitting a plan sight unseen is one thing. Executing the design is something else.
 |
 |
|
VWH Campbell, Post-Gazette Watershed coordinator Cindy Wigger stands at the first of several ponds at Vintondale's Acid Mine Drainage and Art Park, a passive system for cleaning contaminated water from Coal Mine No. 3 before it returns to Blacklick Creek. Contaminated water enters the area from the pipe at left. Click photo for larger image. |
The two women entered a nationwide competition last winter to design a place of reflection at the spot in the park where clean water re-enters the stream.
The designs had to fall within a $10,000 budget, be flood-resistant and be self-explanatory.
Adding to the project's difficulty for Neye and Fellman was the fact that neither of the two graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania had ever visited the park. Instead, they had to base their concept on photographs and maps of the 35-acre water-treatment site.
That didn't hamper their creativity, though. Their plan, one of 29 entries submitted, was chosen.
Neye and Fellman based their design on a literal and figurative "clean slate."
When they submitted their plan in February, Neye and Fellman, both 29, suggested a large slate slab at the water's edge that would allow people to walk or sit and record their thoughts.
But as Neye, of Cleveland, and Fellman, of Hartford, Conn., walked the site for the first time last month, they found they'd need to adjust their plan based on the geography of the land.
Instead of one slab, they now believe that they need at least two or three.
Talking with a construction contractor and the project's hydrogeologist, Neye made rough drawings in her sketchbook, while Fellman took careful notes.
They spoke about changing the grading at the site, what size piping to use to transport water from wetlands into the creek and how they would attach the slate to a concrete foundation.
In addition to submitting their design, Neye and Fellman are responsible for finding the material that will be used in it. While they've been trying to get prices on a slab of slate 6 to 8 inches thick, they've spoken with salesmen at stone quarries who tell them the thickest available is 11*2 inches, the kind used in counter tops.
Over the next couple of weeks, the women plan to visit quarries in Carbon County and check for themselves.
Besides the slabs, they propose a "carboniferous garden," which will include horsetail grasses and mosses similar to those that grew in swamps 300 million years ago and formed into coal over the eons.
"We wanted something that would unify the processes at the site and bring them to a close," Fellman said.
The water-treatment project, which started 10 years ago, has brought a tremendous transformation to this area along the Ghost Town Trail on the edge of Indiana and Cambria counties.
Once littered with coal scrap piles, old pieces of mining equipment and crumbling building foundations, the 35-acre site has become a place of tranquility. Trees have been planted, six ponds serve as treatment cells, and wildlife has moved back into 7 acres of wetlands. No longer are there orange stains left behind by contaminated water.
The water-treatment system now is fully operational. The only major project left at the site is the one Neye and Fellman are designing.
Reiko Goto, an art and ecology research fellow at Carnegie Mellon University and one of the jury members who chose the winning design, liked that the women included the potential for education in their plan.
"They make the audience very sensitive to the place and give them a chance to observe the plants and water," Goto said. "They were the only ones that spoke about using education there. I think the place really needs that."
Bob Deason, the hydrogeologist who helped design the AMD&Art Park, likes that Neye and Fellman worked into their plan the descendants of the plants that formed the coal.
"It's what the concept's been about from the beginning," Deason said. "It's about the cycle of things."
