Lawsuit seeks to clean up stretch of Youghiogheny River

Many residents of Pennsylvania, particularly southwestern Pennsylvania, are familiar with the beautiful Ohiopyle State Park, through which the Youghiogheny River flows. People flock to the area every year for superb white water rafting, fishing, camping, hiking and biking opportunities. Just upstream of Ohiopyle lies the Borough of Confluence, situated along the Great Allegheny Passage where Laurel Hill Creek and the Casselman River empty into the Yough. Between Confluence and Ohiopyle State Park runs one of the nicest eleven miles of trout river in all of Pennsylvania. It is at the beginning of this stretch where the Borough of Confluence discharges wastewater from its sewage treatment plant.

The Borough's sewage treatment plant is hydraulically overloaded. Two main sewer extensions that collect sewage from the town are constructed of old tile lines that allow large quantities of water from the Yough and Casselman Rivers to infiltrate into the collection system. This condition results in raw sewage bypassing treatment at the plant. The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) estimates that the Borough's plant settles out only 30 percent of the solids that it should be collecting, meaning that the rest ends up in the river. Though this condition has existed for many years, neither the Authority nor the PADEP has taken action to solve the problem.

Ironically, the hydraulically overloaded treatment plant threatens the very natural resource that the Borough now seeks to use to attract economic development to the area. As suspended solids increase, a water body begins to lose its ability to support a diversity of aquatic life. Suspended solids absorb heat from sunlight, which increases water temperature and subsequently decreases levels of dissolved oxygen. Some cold water species, such as trout and stoneflies, are especially sensitive to changes in dissolved oxygen. Suspended solids can also destroy fish habitat because suspended solids settle to the bottom and can eventually blanket the river bed, smother the eggs of fish and aquatic insects, and suffocate newly-hatched insect larvae.

The Borough discharges sewage to the Yough under authority of a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Permit issued by the PADEP. A file reviewed performed by PennFuture revealed that for the past four and one-half years, the Borough has reported more than sixty (60) violations of its NPDES Permit, equating to over five hundred (500) days of violation of the Clean Water Act and Clean Streams Law. As a result, PennFuture filed a citizen suit in Federal District Court to cease the violations. The suit seeks to require that the Authority develop and implement a plan that will correct the hydraulic overload at the plant and eventually stop untreated sewage from being dumped into this valuable natural resource. 

You can read the full Complaint that PennFuture filed in the District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania here.

George Jugovic, Jr. is chief counsel for PennFuture and is based in Pittsburgh.