Governor Wolf and Pennsylvania DEP:
Clean up the Susquehanna River
Dear Governor Wolf and Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection:
Harrisburg, the state capital, boasts a scenic riverwalk, majestic bridges, and a beautiful City Island Park with a public beach. But sadly, that beach is closed, and the river is unsafe for swimming or kayaking because of high bacteria levels caused in part by sewage releases from our capital. Up and down the Susquehanna River, the recreational potential of the Commonwealth’s oldest and largest waterway is a shadow of what it could be. On the surface, the river is stunning. But beneath the water, it’s so badly polluted that it is a threat to human health.
Governor Wolf, we urge you to clean up the Susquehanna River and make a restored waterway your legacy.
A major problem is the Harrisburg area’s more than century-old combined sewer and stormwater system, which releases waste – including from the State Capitol building -- into the Susquehanna without any filtration or treatment whenever it rains or the system is overwhelmed. That happens about once or twice a week on average, leading to a release of 1.4 billion gallons of sewage and stormwater in 2018, according to the Environmental Integrity Project’s report “Sewage Overflows from Pennsylvania’s Capital.”
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and EPA in 2015 sued Harrisburg over its chronic violations of the federal Clean Water Act and signed a legal consent decree meant to address the sewage problem. But that agreement was only a “partial” consent decree – meaning it was not designed to really fix the problem. The agreement’s terms were so weak that the releases of sewage have only increased since then.
The result? Water quality testing in the summer of 2019 found E coli bacteria concentrations in the Susquehanna River more than 10 times higher than health standards for swimming or water contact recreation. According to EPA, raw sewage contains not only bacteria, but also dangerous viruses and protozoa, and can cause diseases in people including stomach flu, respiratory infections, and potentially life-threatening illnesses such as dysentery and Hepatitis B.
This is a Third World public human health problem right in our state capital, and it needs to change. We have the right to enjoy swimming, fishing, kayaking, and other recreation in our beloved Susquehanna River.
The way to stop the sewage is for DEP to create a final consent decree that requires Capital Region Water to end the deliberate piping of raw human waste into the Susquehanna River. We urge you to immediately start the process of formulating such a final consent decree and open up the discussions to members of the public. Among the critical elements of a final consent decree would be a firm deadline for an end to sewage dumping and more substantial upgrades to Harrisburg’s antiquated sewage infrastructure than have been proposed so far.
Please help restore our river. We appeal to your pride in our great Commonwealth and the magnificent Susquehanna River.
Sincerely,
