Day: July 24, 2021

In a single day, these bubbling mudboils spew 20 tons of silt and sand into the creek and all the way down into Onondaga Lake. The sediment causes a number of problems beyond making the stream unsuitable for trout. It builds up to 4 feet near the lake, which could be causing some of the flooding in Syracuse seen in the past few years. It also flows into Onondaga Lake, degrading water quality in a lake that the county and Honeywell have poured at least $1 billion into cleaning up.

The result was the accelerated discharge from increasingly active mudboils. A mudboil is not a common phenomenon in nature. It is quite rare, occurring only where pressurized groundwater penetrates upward through overlying materials with enough velocity to transport sediments along with it. Mudboils are so rare that scientists have been coming to Onondaga Creek to study them for decades, providing ample information over time. ?The first documented mudboil erupted in Tully Valley in the late 1880s, just years after solution mining began.? And since most of this pressured water was passing through the deep salt chambers, the Tully mudboils are particularly unique because over time they came to reflect the brine pressure source and became very salty.