PALMERTON, Pa. — Chad Schwartz remembers what Blue Mountain looked like decades ago, when there wasn’t any grass, trees or even moss covering the craggy rocks.
“It was very barren,” said Schwartz, executive director of the Lehigh Gap Nature Center. “There was hardly anything growing here at all. There were a few little trees that somehow survived but it was mostly just a rocky, barren moonscape.”
- Aerial seeding to remediate the Palmerton zinc pile superfund site is slated to continue through April 7
- Trees, grass and other vegetation were stripped from the land after a zinc smelting operation pumped chemicals into the air
- While greenery has returned to the land, there's ongoing management to ward off invasive species
The mountainside was stripped of vegetation by a zinc smelting operation. And state, local and federal environmental officials have worked to remediate the hundreds of acres on and surrounding the mountain to make it green again.
As part of that effort, for the first time in more than 10 years, aerial seeding is scheduled through April 7. Pilots will drop a dozen species of native grasses, 25 species of wildflowers, pine and sumac seeds, as well as limestone and fertilizer, to encourage continued growth.
Signs have been posted at both ends of the D&L Trail to notify residents, according to a news release from Lehigh County spokesperson Adrianna Calderon.
“Hikers, outdoor enthusiasts and others who use the trail or live in its vicinity may notice low-flying planes overhead distributing seeds,” the release said.
“While the seeds and process are completely safe, areas will be posted by the Environmental Protection Agency so that people may avoid active spraying processes.”
EPA officials have not responded to multiple requests for comment.
“It only took a few years for the entire mountain to turn green finally, so it was barren for decades after everything died off in the 1950s or so,” Schwartz said. “And finally, after all that time it was green. Ever since then it's continued to grow.”
‘It was not intentional’
Like Schwartz, William A. Car, a land management group supervisor with the Pennsylvania Game Commission, remembers what the land looked like before remediation efforts. He described it as “a barren rockface.”
“When I started hunting when I was younger, my dad used to take me up there to hunt deer because you can see forever, and hunters would drive the side of that mountain and it was truly barren except for a few sticks that just laid on the surface and old trees,” Car said.
“It was a wasteland — there wasn’t much growing up there at all.
"It's amazing to go back there now, 30-some years later, and it's unrecognizable to what I remember as a child.”
To understand how the mountain became barren in the first place takes more than 100 years of history, when the New Jersey Zinc Company set up business in the borough in 1898.
“They selected this location along the Lehigh River up here in what's now the Palmerton area because they were close to the coal mines, which was the main fuel that they used in their operations,” Schwartz said.
“But they also had a lot of transportation infrastructure that was already here.”
The environment was damaged from the operation in two main ways, he said.
“The first was the heavy metals that were inside of that smoke,” Schwartz said. “So when they were burning the ore, it put a lot of metal into the air. Most of it was zinc, but there was also lead and cadmium and copper that got into the air and those are toxic heavy metals, so that impacted the vegetation on the landscape.
“But you also had a lot of sulfur gas going into the air, because they were burning ore that contained sulfur, we call it sulfide ore,” he continued.
“And when the sulfur gasses got into the clouds, it formed acid precipitation, which really kind of finished things off. The heavy metals started the decline of the vegetation on the mountain, but the acid rain pushed the nutrients out of the soil and the trees just couldn't survive anymore.”
By the 1950s, the impacts were clear, Schwartz said. A lush, green mountain became barren land.
“We like to point out it was not intentional. The factory didn't have technology to prevent these things at the time. They also couldn't see that in the future, their operations would have such a serious impact.”Chad Schwartz, executive director of the Lehigh Gap Nature Center
“We like to point out it was not intentional,” Schwartz said. “The factory didn't have technology to prevent these things at the time. They also couldn't see that in the future, their operations would have such a serious impact.”
By the time the company shut down operations in 1980, vegetation on 2,000 acres of Blue Mountain was killed and contaminants flowed into the Aquashicola Creek and Lehigh River, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office of Response and Restoration.
Children in the area showed elevated levels of lead in their blood. Horses, cattle, and fish were also contaminated.
The impacts were also tangible. After 80 years in the borough, the company left behind a smelting residue pile called the “cinder bank.” According to the EPA, the pile is 2.5 miles long, more than 100 feet high and 500 to 1,000 feet wide.
Less than five years after the zinc smelting operation shuttered, the site was added to the EPA’s Superfund National Priorities List, a catalog of sites that have been polluted or contaminated with hazardous chemicals. Revegetation efforts began in the 1990s, with several rounds of seeding.
“One of the issues was after the trees died off on the mountain, we didn't have anything holding the soil in place anymore,” Schwartz said. “So without the root systems into the ground, the soil washed away. We lost 1 to 2 feet of topsoil off the side of the mountain here.”
Because of the precipitous landscape, planes became the preferred method to spread seed.
“The airplanes are just basically the best option they had to get the seed on the top slopes of the mountain,” Schwartz said. “They also use tractors and spreaders on the lower slopes where they could, at least on our section of the mountain, but airplanes make the most sense for getting to the top of the ridge.”
Ongoing management
The work doesn’t end after the planes land. Ongoing management is required to make sure the area thrives and remains unharmed by invasive species.
Some of the trees naturally pull contaminants out of the soil, which can in turn enter the food chain, Schwartz said.
“We do a lot of work to manage certain trees that we don't want here that are pulling the metals out of the ground,” he said.
“We also have to manage invasive plants, like butterfly bush and tree of heaven because they would displace all the native plants that we put in here. And they really don't serve much ecological benefit to our native wildlife. So, we try to keep things as natural to our landscape as we can.”
Butterfly bush, an invasive species of plant brought to the United States in the early 1900s from China, can spread and displace native plants. Similarly, tree of heaven was also deemed invasive after it was introduced in Philadelphia in the late 1700s “due to its "weedy" nature, prolific root sprouting and foul odor,” according to Penn State researchers.
A decade-long pause in the aerial seeding efforts was a good thing, Car said.
“It's more of just another gentle nudge to keep it pushing in the right direction,” Car said. “It didn't need it for 10 years, so that's great. That means we're getting there… And a lot of the trees are well over your head. The pines are flourishing — a lot of the species are doing very well.”
Asked how long until the site is deemed completely remediated, Schwartz said it could take time, and that the EPA is in charge of setting goals and benchmarks for progress.
“We're getting close to the end of the active restoration phase from what I understand, but as far as actually delisting the site, I think it'll be a long time before that happens,” Schwartz said.
“The goal is to remove this area from the superfund list eventually but I think for a while, there's going to be a lot of ongoing maintenance and management.”
