Water
Groups threaten to sue Beaver County plant over plastic pollution
Captain Evan Clark of Three Rivers Waterkeeper started trawling the shores of the Ohio River in Beaver County in September 2022 to monitor Shell’s newly opened ethane cracker for water pollution. He began finding plastic pellets called nurdles, similar to what the plant was supposed to produce. But the pellets weren’t the same size or shape as what Shell’s plant would make.?
“We started seeing these plastics that we couldn’t attribute to Shell,” Clark said.?
Three Rivers Waterkeeper and other organizations traced the nurdles to a separate plastic plant nearby — BVPV Styrenics LLC — owned by the Texas-based polystyrene maker Styropek.?
On Tuesday, Waterkeeper and PennEnvironment announced they were filing a 60-day notice of intent to sue Styropek for water quality violations in federal court in the Western District of Pennsylvania.?
Clark said he found an outfall from where the pellets seemed to be emanating: a wastewater pipe that empties into Raccoon Creek, a tributary to the Ohio River.?
Algal blooms in New York are getting worse
Something is wrong with Cayuga Lake.
Harmful Algal Blooms, or HABs, have been widespread there. While New York state is supposed to be doing assessments and comprehensive watershed cleanup of the blooms, it hasn’t been, according to Walter Hang, president of Toxics Targeting, an independent environmental monitor.
According to Hang’s just released data, which he obtained from the New York state Department of Environmental Conservation, while Cayuga Lake has more reported HABs than any other waterbody in the state, these blooms threaten critical drinking water sources for more than 10 million New Yorkers.
“There are 186 HABs so far this year in New York state,” Hang told Capital Tonight.
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Army Corps to begin Scajaquada Creek cleanup study
CHEEKTOWAGA, N.Y. — Lawmakers, clean water advocates and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers all seem to agree: the 13-mile-long Scajaquada Creek that flows through Buffalo's eastern suburbs and the city is gross.
"Fecal bacteria in the creek is at levels that are 20 times the threshold that are considered safe for human consumption,” Assemblywoman Monica Wallace, D-Lancaster, said. “Contaminated sludge is up to five feet deep at some places and the avian botulism has been estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands of birds in our region.”
The pollution, they said, is largely the result of abuse, alterations and poor infrastructure choices which have led to regular sewage runoff into the creek. Tuesday, Buffalo Waterkeeper and the Army Corps signed a cost-sharing agreement to cover a $600,000 restoration feasibility study.
"What it really means is that in the coming years we will be making significant progress in the actual restoration and changing and improvement segments of this creek system. It's what we've been talking about for decades," Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper Executive Director Jill Jedlicka said.