OU engineering professor Robert Nairn explains a passive water treatment system that his students helped design. Behind him, orange water filled with iron is cleaned in the first section of the system. Photo by Hailey BransonCOMMERCE, Okla. — Toxic water that has killed fish and dyed horses' hooves orange is now being purified as a result of an OU research project that has been fully operational in northeast Oklahoma for nearly a year.
The OU College of Engineering has worked with the engineering firm CH2M Hill to create a system that naturally cleans contaminated mine drainage that, through an unnamed tributary, runs into Tar Creek, a federal superfund site. The system removes iron, zinc, lead, arsenic and cadmium from water that emerges orange from decades-old mining drill holes. The system uses natural filtering methods — such as draining water through compost and using microbes — to remove the metal particles.
"Nature was kind of doing the work, but we have set the stage for nature to do it a little more efficiently," said William Strosnider, an OU doctoral student who has worked on the project.
OU professors and researchers are working to secure money for the project because funding contracts with the Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Geological Survey expire next year.
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