Editor’s note: Penn State’s Living Filter was established in 1962 after a release University’s sewage treatment plant caused an extensive fish kill in local streams. An interdisciplinary committee was formed in late fall 1961 and tasked to develop a wastewater renovation system that used nearby agricultural and forested lands as the tertiary treatment process for the University’s wastewater. The implementation required considerable research to determine the best management scenario for nutrient loading to prevent groundwater contamination or surface runoff. Richard Parizek, professor emeritus of geosciences, is the only living or active member of the original committee. The following is his account of the work that went into the Living Filter.
Last June, after one of his usual energizing, longest-possible commutes to work, Richard Alley let me know that he discovered Parizek Lane and Water Doc Lane while biking through a former section of State Game Lands 176 near Toftrees on one site of Penn State’s Living Filter. An email exchange sent to his ice physics colleague and my son, Byron Parizek, was followed by rapid-fire emails to the extended Parizek clan with banter such as “Parizek Lane, Water Doc Lane, Fracture Trace,” ...and how could he resist, “How much is needed for a 50-yard season pass, or to name a building?.... My check is in the mail”.... So, I thought I would share what is behind the name.
Many former undergraduate and graduate students in the Department of Geosciences, and its predecessors: the departments of Geology, Mineralogy, and Geophysics and Geochemistry; and later the departments of Geology and Geophysics, and Geochemistry and Mineralogy; will recall wage or assistantship support contributing to the research and design of the Living Filter from 1962 to 1976. During this time, about 20 percent of University Park secondary effluent was applied experimentally to forests and cropland, first during the growing seasons from 1963 to 1965, then year round at a 2-inch per week effluent irrigation rate, having experimented with 1-, 2-, 4-, and 6-inch rates. Others joined after 100 percent—up to four million gallons per day (mgd) of effluent—was applied on a routine basis starting in 1983. Ronald A. Landon ‘63g, Frank T. Carrucio ‘63g, and John H. Clark ‘65g were the first to update portions of Butts and Moore’s 1938 15-minute quadrangle map of Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. Their geologic and first-ever water table maps were prepared to search for land suitable to expand the Living Filter to treat all campus effluent should the research prove successful. Some of the Commonwealth’s first environmental hydrogeologic mapping studies were undertaken by Ed W. Meiser ’71g, Jim Eby ’75g, and Phil M. Hunter ’77g. Bill R. Gough ’75g completed geologic and hydrogeologic mapping of the entire Spring Creek drainage basin including its extension beyond Milesburg, Pennsylvania. More than 2,400 wells and springs were inventoried to produce the first basin-wide water table map, providing physical evidence for the limits of the Spring Creek groundwater basin. Lake Erie was not the source of Bellefonte’s Big Spring after all. These theses supported M. Todd Giddings’ ’74g detailed hydrologic budget study of the Spring Creek Basin, some 145 square miles of surface watershed and 175 square miles of groundwater basin; and Lenny F. Konikow’s ‘69g investigation of mountain sources of recharge. Although Bald Eagle, Nittany and Tussey Mountains comprise only about 20 percent of the watershed, mountains contribute more than 60 to 70 percent of annual basin recharge.
Improving gauging procedures showed Big Spring discharge was nearly sixteen mgd, not ten mgd as displayed on the entrance-gate brass plaque. Professor Emeritus of Geochemistry William B. (Will) White’s graduate student Evan T. Schuster ‘71g and Roger J. L. Jacobson ‘73g confirmed geochemical residence of its waters within the Gatesburg Dolomite, despite the spring’s resurgence within the Axemann Limestone. This was consistent with the regional groundwater trough that extended to, and even beyond, the Scotia ore pits nearly to Halfmoon Creek. State College could tap Big Spring without a direct pipeline connection, after all.
The fracture trace and lineament method for groundwater prospecting, published in 1964 by Laurence Lattman, a geosciences educator who taught at Penn State from 1957 to 1970, and Parizek, and its numerous other geotechnical applications were first developed during hydrogeologic site characterization investigations for the Living Filter and efforts to locate highly responsive onsite monitoring wells. Geologic variables that contribute to porosity and permeability of folded and faulted Appalachian carbonates were investigated to predict groundwater flow and possible transport of nutrients from below spray fields and for well siting. Richard E. Smith’s ’66g petrographic investigation of the Gatesburg Dolomite received the American Association of Petroleum Geologists best paper award. Similar analyses were conducted by Henry Rauch ‘72g, advised by White, on Middle Ordovician Series carbonate rocks that contained all known mappable caves within central Pennsylvania, followed by Charles E. Brown’s ’77g petrographic analysis of intervening carbonate rocks within the region. Structural, stratigraphic, and topographic controls on well yields were advanced by Shams H. Siddiqui ’69g, adding to Parizek’s thirty-six variables that contribute to karst hydrogeologic properties and phenomena.
Seismic studies supervised by Penn State faculty members Shelton Alexander, Roy Greenfield, and Peter Lavin and a cadre of students were conducted to further characterize soil thickness and weathered rock surface at potential spray field sites. Imagine these “party types” with graduate students playing with dynamite as the seismic energy source.
Walter F. Ebaugh ‘73g evaluated the shallow soil temperature survey methods in an attempt to define Miller’s cave within the Rock Springs watershed. The watershed was also investigated by Kristen L. Underwood ‘94g for pesticide and nitrate mobility within a conduit-flow dominated watershed. Frank (Tuck) Mooreshead ‘75g investigated streambed infiltration along Buffalo Run, while Robert M. Cohen ‘82g applied the Living Filter irrigation concept to treat leachate from the Borough of State College landfill. Foliage turned the color of iron oxide long before fall and this trench and cover landfill was shown to be not so sanitary by Burke E. Lanes’ ‘69g vadose zone leachate study, later expanded on by Mike Apgar ‘71g, advised by Don Langmuir.
Michael Smith ‘86g further constrained recharge estimates to carbonate aquifers and shale beds in the Centre Region using a digital overlay method. Following Reginal W. Spiller’s ‘79g statistical analysis of lineament- related well yields, Gail M. Banwell ‘86g demonstrated that major lineaments had deep structural roots through helium and radon isotopes in soil, gas, and groundwater studies. Fracture zones hydraulics were quantified by R. K. Weiss ‘89g andJ.M. Kim ‘96g. Chris A. Shuman ‘78g investigated similar Appalachian orogen fracture zones using geologic features and multi-scale remote sensing imagery, while Chi Van Chin ‘96g compared U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wellhead protection delineation methods for the Living Filter and surrounding areas using digital overlay, flow, and transport modeling procedures. The unexpected widespread occurrence of radon in the Commonwealth led to James O. Rumbaugh III ‘83g use of a radon isotope to estimate fracture permeability in the Reading Prong, and to Richard R. Marvin’s ‘89g radon soil gas mobility study driven by meteorological and water table fluctuations at Houserville.
Back at the spray fields, Michael O’Driscoll ‘94g evaluated cold temperature effects on slow rates of effluent application and various methods for determining recharge near the spray field. Jennifer Nemitz ‘01g began important investigations of nitrate removal during overland flow and within effluent enhanced wetlands. She continued the important work of Heide M. Smidansty ‘04, who was the first to investigate occurrence and transport of selected pharmaceutical and personal care products within various soil textures in the vadose zone at the game land spray fields. This topic continues to receive important attention by current College of Agricultural Sciences students and faculty. An earlier senior thesis also looked at caffeine as a possible effluent tracer.
Recently, heavy metal occurrences below effluent-enhanced wetlands and control wetlands were investigated with unexpected results. Sources other than effluent also account for accumulation of metals detected in both treated and control wetlands. This interesting work was followed up by Matthew Fantle’s student, Jared Carte ‘19g.
Only some of the students who contributed to the Living Filter project in one way or another are cited. My apologies to those who were omitted given the often-trying field conditions involved.
I am the only living and active member of the Office of Physical Plant’s original Waste Water Management Committee formed in fall 1961. This was shortly after I arrived on campus without start-up funds or an office. There was much to be learned working on real-world geologic and environmental problems as a member of an interdisciplinary team, which was uncommon at the time. To many, applied work was not science. However, many of these students have gone on to stellar careers in academia, research, government, geological survey firms, regulatory agencies, national laboratories, and industry as owners or employees of consulting and oil companies. Today, interdisciplinary research—dealing with complex interactive earth processes and systems—is the norm and expected by many funding agencies. Our nation and the world face many vital challenges that require insights and knowledge provided by earth scientists. It is a joy and rewarding to be blessed with good health, supported by a loving wife and children, to work each day on interesting projects, and most of all, to reflect on the success of so many former students who are behind the name, Parizek Lane.