TimesLeader.com

Tributary pollution addressed

By Rory Sweeney rsweeney@timesleader.com
Staff Writer

The Susquehanna River was the nation’s 19th most dumped-in waterway in 2007, receiving more than 2.6 million pounds of toxic discharges that year, and first in Pennsylvania for cancer-causing discharges, with more than 4,000 pounds, according to a report released this week by a state environmental advocacy group.

Perhaps that’s a positive step since it was named the nation’s most endangered river in 2005 by the American Rivers advocacy group, but it certainly doesn’t benefit from one of its tributaries – the Wyalusing Creek – ranking 34th on that list, receiving more than 1.5 million pounds of discharges in 2007.

One of the reasons for the Wyalusing’s contamination, according to the report by PennEnvironment, is the Cargill Taylor Beef plant in Wyalusing, which reported Pennsylvania’s second-largest discharge of chemicals that year. It reported releasing 1.5 million pounds of waste – mostly nitrates – according to the report. Pennsylvania ranks sixth for industrial discharges among states, the report found, allowing 10 million pounds of chemicals into state waterways.

The report only aggregates reported discharges, so non-point sources such as family farms are omitted, as are discharges from the state’s burgeoning gas-drilling industry, said Adam Garber of PennEnvironment. “This is a snapshot that’s scary enough for our water,” he said. “The environment is only (addressed) in the good times, and that’s not good enough.”

He noted that the 30-percent slash to the budget of the state Department of Environmental Protection comes at a time when more funding – not less – is needed for oversight and remediation. The irony is thick for the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which received the National Recreation and Parks Association’s 2009 Gold Medal Award just days after it learned its budget would be cut 23 percent.

“The tools you use to become the best are taken away from you,” Garber said.

Bernie McGurl, the executive director of the Lackawanna River Corridor Association, said more funding is needed, but so are stronger regulations to give overseers actual authority over discharges and clean-up requirements.

He pointed to the Cargill facility, which is what’s known as a “concentrated animal feeding operation” that, according to its Web site, processes 1,900 head of cattle daily. “Virtually, you’ve got a city of 15,000 people out in the country,” McGurl said, noting that the wastes don’t receive the same oversight as do human sewage facilities.

Ashlyn Gomez, a member of the state environmental advocacy group Citizens for Pennsylvania’s Future, noted a study being conducted in Clarks Summit that might link local infertility to pollution exposures.