Technical Overview

Water Clean Up: Let's Finish The Job

It was 1972, and in the news at the time, Richard Nixon was the President who signed that act as well as issuing the executive order establishing the EPA in 1970. In news of particular interest to no one, at the time, I caught my biggest trout to that date in a clean little stream called Falls Creek, while my wife shopped at an IGA about 250 yards away, in Ithaca, NY. I caught it on a lure that would surprise most trout fishermen. In spite of the time spent fishing, I was soon to receive my MBA from Cornell and had already accepted an offer from a chemical company in the Lehigh Valley.

Fast forward 35 years. I decided to try to find out how Falls Creek was doing and who was not in line with the Clean Water Act. PennEnvironment, a non- profit, the source of the release AP picked up, has a list of polluters cited in the article on their website. (http://www.pennenvironment.org/uploads/PC/kx/
PCkxqfmWmhf65zdzoFYi0A/PA-Troubled-Waters-2007-Final-State.pdf ). Falls Creek was not on the list, nor was any waterway in Northampton CC's market. A quick click on the binocular search button revealed that the company I joined after leaving Falls Creek behind was not on the national list and only one location of my subsequent employers was listed. That location, the only problem site owned by the largest US chemical company, I happen to know has chronic pollution and is under a consent decree and remediation.

Those facts made me feel good about my immediate environment and my current and past organizations' citizenship, but did not surprise me. This part of PA, despite a heavy industrial base, has public and private organizations that mostly play by the rules. Performance materials (chemicals and related) companies either modified their facilities for compliance or shuttered them fairly quickly. Working for them, I acquired an intimate knowledge of the rigors of compliance by the EPA and related state departments and agencies, and later developed “greener” products to replace problematic ones. No laurels resting for us though, we need to finish cleaning up waterways and knowledge, ingenuity and well-placed funding are needed to do so. So, let's finish the job.

Who is not playing by the rules after all this time? PA's list has a mix of 14 of 33 polluters consisting of corporate entities: metals companies (pre-EPA chronic pollution), power plants (variances to keep power costs down), and a few that are not readily explained. The remainder are government facilities; one army base; and municipal waste water facilities. Some of the latter are in neighboring counties that are within NCC's reach.

We at the Center of Business and Industry may be able to help wastewater facilities with our wastewater treatment courses, any of which may be customized to help facilities' management cope with individual plant eccentricities. Our group reaches out and offers training services—knowledge and ingenuity—to help companies and municipalities work towards compliance and cleaner waters.

I guess I need to come clean on the lure that caught the trout: it was a red and white Dardevle® spoon and that was the only trout that I ever caught with one.

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