Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 4, 1990 TAG: 9005040552
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium
Ernst and Karen Kastning recently developed posters to be distributed to Virginia's ninth-grade science teachers illustrating the environmental hazards of such indiscriminate dumping.
Kastning, a geology professor, said ground water contamination can not only cause human illness, but also endanger cave-dwelling wildlife and subterranean organisms. It is a concern shared by his wife, a lab instructor at Radford.
"Sinkhole dumping has health implications that some rural people just don't realize," Kastning said in a telephone interview from his home, which sits on the rim of a 30-acre sinkhole in Radford. "If someone is dumping motor oil, cleaning fluids, dead animals and other stuff in a sinkhole, it eventually can contaminate their well water and they can get diseases from it."
Karen Kastning said a photographer who recently took pictures of a sinkhole she and several other people were cleaning out recalled that his family for years disposed of trash in a sinkhole. He said older family members began getting sick, and tests showed the well water was contaminated.
"But over 20 or 30 years, never had he made the connection between the sinkhole and the health problems," Karen Kastning said. "There's just no good reason for having a sinkhole dump in your back yard."
Karen Kastning said the good news about sinkholes is that once they are cleaned out, contamination of the ground water disappears because of the flushing action of "nature's plumbing system."
But cleaning out sinkholes is no easy chore. The Kastnings said a group cleaning out a sinkhole dump in Pulaski County has pulled out 12 major appliances.
Such dumps are by no means rare. Kastning said a recent survey of two dozen Western Virginia counties revealed more than 3,000 illegal dumps in sinkholes and caves.
Kastning said sinkholes can range from 2 feet in diameter to several acres. The indentions typically occur when water hits limestone, slowly dissolving the rock. Water seeps through cracks, often into nearby caves.
"The cracks are like pipe," Kastning said. "But unless you put dye in the water, you don't know where the water is going."
Mike Lipford of the Department of Conservation and Recreation's Natural Heritage Program, said contaminated water that reaches caves can endanger isopods, other crustaceans, flatworms and other cave-dwelling creatures. He said people should not underestimate the importance of those animals.
"There are intrinsic values to all organisms," he said. "For scientific purposes, they serve as good indicators of environmental change and water quality trends. We would want them around to warn of damaging effects to the environment."
Lipford said eliminating one or two organism groups can upset the entire ecological balance of a cave system.
Karen Kastning said illegal dumping is more of a problem in sinkholes than in cave entrances. "Cave entrances get more damage in terms of vandalism," she said. "High school kids like to gather there for beer parties."
She hopes the poster developed under the auspices of the Virginia Cave Board, of which she is a member, will help change attitudes about caves. The poster, the brainchild of Longwood College professor Lynn Ferguson, features seven photographs tracing how a cave system and a farmer's well can be contaminated by illegal dumping.
"The problem is severe enough that, as educators, we wanted to bring it to the attention of the public," Kastning said.
by CNB