Dirt

A local contractor began dumping tons of clean fill in the Llanerch Quarry last week - the first step in an effort to buttress a section of the quarry wall that collapsed in June. The contractor, James D. Morrissey, is building a section of the Blue Route between Routes 3 and 30. On Thursday, trucks belonging to Morrissey backed up to the edge of the quarry and dumped dirt off the side of a cliff behind five homes on Joanna Road. Haverford officials have said they would need as much as 500,000 cubic yards of dirt to buttress the wall.

The township has taken the plunge, literally, to determine whether some of its soil is contaminated by old orchard pesticides. An environmental consultant conducted soil testing at 20 locations Monday, injecting six-inch probes into the ground on township-owned baseball fields, open spaces and easements, said Public Works director Everett Johnson. The probes were made at the Devonshire development in the eastern part of the township and the Ramblewood area in the west. The borings from the probes will be analyzed over the next three weeks.

   With two touchdowns Sunday against the Dolphins, Eagles running back LeSean McCoy moved to within one touchdown of Steve Van Buren's team records of 18 touchdowns in a season and 15 rushing touchdowns in a season. Here are the lists: Most touchdowns in an Eagles season:   Player              Year TDs Van Buren 1945 18 McCoy           2011 17 Brian Westbrook 2008 14 Terrell Owens     2004 14 W. Montgomery 1979 14 Van Buren        1947 14 Most rushing touchdowns in an Eagles season: Player              Year TDs Van Buren        1945 15 McCoy           2011 14 Ricky Watters     1996 13 Van Buren        1947 13

WHEN THE Daily News launched its "Acres of Neglect" series on Fairmount Park, one of the things we put on our wish list was a Park Commission that would roll up its sleeves and get its collective hands dirty. This week, we got our wish. The new Fairmount Park Commission, which underwent dramatic reconfiguration in June with the election of six new members, held a retreat on Wednesday to discuss the state of the park. The last agenda item was a bit of gardening: The group went into the park and weeded out invasive plants and planted native species.

Would you live in a house made of dirt? The answer, I'm guessing, is no. As a building material, dirt has an image problem. Mud dwellings are practically synonymous with third-world poverty. At best, an earth structure is something you expect to encounter in an old hippie compound. Yet some of the world's most magnificent structures are made of little more than dirt and water, from New Mexico's pueblos to the great Djinguereber mosque in Timbuktu. Now, thanks to the effort of several committed architects, dirt is making a comeback, this time as the material of choice for modern buildings, including multistory ones.

An old quarry in Marple Township used for leaf composting and illegal dumping will be transformed into a thick bed of neatly graded dirt by a Blue Route contractor who has offered the township 50,000 cubic yards of free fill. Martin Nash, president of the township Board of Commissioners, said Wednesday that the township and James D. Morrissey Inc. last week made a "mutually beneficial" deal in which Marple will accept dirt Morrissey needs to get rid of. The dirt will be stored at the site, formerly used as a fire training ground.

Every day, as they have for nearly two centuries, pilgrims journey to the little adobe church set among the cottonwoods here to visit what many of them consider a sort of Lourdes of America - the home of the holy mud of the Santuario de Chimayo. From around the Southwest and from places as distant as Canada and Peru, they come to take a handful of dirt from the hole that Bernardo Abeyta dug in 1810 when he saw a light shining from the earth. The pilgrims are convinced that the dirt has a special healing power, and over the generations, they have abandoned dozens of crutches and canes that now hang on the wall beneath ancient log rafters.

You've probably heard of the Land of the Rising Sun, and certainly the Land of Opportunity. Well, how about the Land of the Migrating Soil? That's a geographically undefined area in the Port Richmond section of Philadelphia whose inhabitants continue to be victimized by the ground beneath them. Take Joe Jezak, who has been without water for nine days. He's been borrowing just enough from neighbors to wash and to flush his toilet. And the Logacki family, whose basement has been flooded four times in the past two weeks.

Ignatius Fratantoni sauntered up to the front of the meeting room, grabbed the microphone from the stand and said to the Marple Township Board of Commissioners: "Gentlemen sit back in your chairs, you're not going to believe this. " At once pleased and frustrated, Fratantoni told the board he could get 140,000 cubic yards of dirt from a contractor working on the Blue Route - and it won't cost the township a dime. He estimated the cost would be $1.4 million if the township had to buy it. "There is still fill available, there's not a lot of time," he said, urging the commissioners to decide where to use the dirt for "ball fields, primarily soccer fields.

Carrying a silver tray filled with pieces of broken glass, bottle caps and trash, Jane McGarity told Swarthmore Borough Council members that they had created a health hazard at the Thatcher Park playground. McGarity brought the tray to council's business meeting Monday, the same day, she said, the dangerous items were brought to the park in dirt used by borough workers to grade the area. Mayor Charles D. Hummer, Jr. said at the meeting that he would use his executive power to close the park.

A 5-year-old boy was seriously injured when he was struck by a dirt bike that fled the scene late Wednesday afternoon in the city's Hunting Park section, police said. About 5:05 p.m. at Ninth and Cayuga Streets, the boy was about to get into a car when he was hit by one of three dirt bikes speeding through the park, police said. The rider fell but was helped up by the other riders, and they all fled west through the park. The boy was taken by private automobile to St. Christopher's Hospital for Children.

TWO PEOPLE were killed in separate dirt-bike accidents Thursday night, a vivid reminder of the danger of dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles as summer approaches. The first accident occurred on Girard Avenue near Belmont in Parkside. Police said the operator was speeding when he struck a median and was thrown from the bike. He was pronounced dead at Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania at 7:40 p.m. He hasn't been identified. The second accident happened at Marshall and Kent roads in Upper Darby about 9:12 p.m. Police said Eric Robinson, 28, was riding a Yamaha 250 dirt bike when he lost control and hit a pole.

A man riding a dirt bike was killed in a crash Thursday night in West Philadelphia, police said. Shortly before 7 p.m., the man, described only as 25 to 30 years old, was traveling west in the 4500 block of Girard Avenue when his dirt bike struck a median, police said. The man suffered a traumatic head injury and was taken by a medic unit to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was pronounced dead at 7:30 p.m. - Robert Moran

THEY SEEM to be everywhere - outside gas stations, in mall parking lots, or beside a neighborhood minimarket. They are donated-clothing bins, those sturdy steel containers where you drop off used clothing for the needy. Ever wonder where those old shoes, shirts, belts and coats go? The answers may surprise you. For starters, many of these bins are not run by charities. And most of the stuff you donate isn't given to needy folks in the region. And two groups active in the donated-clothing business have been linked to a cultlike Danish organization that has been investigated by the Danish government and Interpol.

Here are the morning-line odds for the Breeders' Cup, which will be run Friday and Saturday at Santa Anita. TV: NBC Sports Network, except for Saturday's Classic on NBC10. FRIDAY JUVENILE SPRINT: 6 Furlongs, 2-year-olds, 4th race. Purse: $500,000. Post time: 4:06 p.m.   No.    Horse             Trainer      Jockey         ML 1. Hightail                Lukas         Maragh            8-1 2. Ceiling Kitty            Dascombe    Velazquez          12-1 3. Merit Man                Hess Jr.       Valenzuela            8-5 4. South Floyd             O'Neill         Dominguez         6-1 5. Super Ninety Nine       Baffert         Garcia               5-2 6. Hazardous                O'Callaghan    Maldonado          8-1 7. Sweet Shirley Mae       Ward          Rosario             4-1 MARATHON: 13/4 miles (Dirt)

MARIE PARHAM knows firsthand how dangerous all-terrain vehicles can be. One hit her as she crossed a West Philadelphia street in 1994. She lost one leg, almost lost another and still marvels that she didn't lose her life. But even Parham believes that the city should create a place for ATVers and dirt-bikers to ride legally. "I wondered why I was alive, because I was really in bad shape, and I think this is it, this is the reason: I have a chance to get these bikes off the road, where they shouldn't be," said Parham, 79, who walks with a prosthesis and still has rods and plates in her head and leg from the accident.

SIXTY-SIX DOWN, a kajillion to go. One week after confiscating 37 dirt bikes and ATVs in a crackdown on the vehicles, police seized an additional 29 in live-stops throughout the city last weekend. "It's on!" police spokesman Lt. Ray Evers said of the city's battle against riders who zoom through streets and parks. Police, working undercover and in uniform, took 16 dirt bikes and 13 four-wheelers from Cobbs Creek Park, the Belmont Plateau and areas frequented by riders in the 24th, 25th and 26th districts, police said.

Cops seized 23 illegal dirt bikes and ATVs during a Sunday morning raid in Kensington and North Philadelphia as part of a citywide crackdown on illegal riding.   "We went out to take back the streets for the citizens," Detective Jack Logan said later at Major Crimes headquarters, at Whitaker Avenue and Macalester Street. Logan said that a task force of about 10 officers went to the 24th, 25th and 26th districts — which cover swaths of Kensington, North Philadelphia, Fairhill and Hunting Park — about 11 a.m. and started to confiscate illegal bikes and four-wheelers.