Leaders urge greater protection for Susquehanna River

Leaders urge greater protection for Susquehanna River

By Tyler Frantz

            On a sunny June morning, various Pennsylvania leaders with a vested interest in the Susquehanna River paddled from Fort Hunter to the West Fairview Boat Launch in Harrisburg. With the Enola rail-yard to their right, and a picturesque view of the state Capitol to their left, they took in the sights and sounds of the river’s shimmering splendor.

            “This area is a crossroad of sorts in the natural world,” said Secretary of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Cindy Dunn. “With raptors using the nearby Kittatiny ridge and waterfowl using the Susquehanna as major migratory routes, the river valley is an incredibly special place ecologically.”

            “While fishing here, I often marvel at the hundreds, if not thousands, of people who pass over the river each day, and probably have no idea about the diverse ecosystem below them,” Dunn said. “One of the islands here holds the state’s largest nesting colony of the Great Egret and Black Crowned Night Heron- two of Pennsylvania’s endangered birds.”

            Though the Susquehanna River appears healthy, beautiful and vibrant with life, a closer inspection of what lies beneath the surface forebodes a perilous future. 

            “We’re dealing with a number of hazards to the river,” explained Harry Campbell, Executive Director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in Pennsylvania.

“Some issues have been known for decades, like nutrient pollution- nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment - primarily coming off the urban and suburban landscape in the form of lawn fertilizers or from our agricultural areas in the form of nutrient or manure-laden discharges.”

            “These excess nutrients produce filamentous algae, which forms a colony of slimy film, choking out habitat and submerged vegetation, therefore deoxygenating the water and smothering macro-invertebrates fish rely on for food,” Campbell said.

            “We’re also now dealing with emerging contaminants scientists are just finding out about, such as hormone-disrupting compounds. The drugs we put on and in our bodies, once they get into our streams, can affect aquatic life.”

            “People are improperly disposing of prescription drugs by flushing them down the toilet, and we as humans also excrete a large percentage of medications we ingest. That gets into our wastewater treatment systems, which aren’t generally designed to treat those compounds, and they find their way into the rivers and streams.”

            The result of these contaminants infiltrating the river is increased numbers of intersex smallmouth bass (males producing eggs), as well as sores, tumors and lesions developing on their bodies.

            “We also have problems with animal-intensive agriculture that may rely on antibiotics and other types of hormone-producing compounds to increase productivity,” Campbell said. “If those animals are in the streams relieving themselves, that is a direct deposit of those compounds, along with bacteria and pathogens, into the water.”

            “And we still have a problem with combined sewer overflows. When it rains heavily, some of the wastewater treatment plants in our urban areas cannot handle the volume of water rushing toward them, resulting in raw sewage discharges mixed with storm water runoff.”

            Human impact is the root of problem, but making some changes may be able to reverse the outcome.

            “We have to start at the source by properly disposing of our medications and upgrading wastewater treatment facilities if necessary,” Campbell said. “Thankfully, the same methods we use for reducing nutrients, like planting buffers, can also help address some of these compounds. Getting cows out of streams and converting to less antibiotic agents all adds up to help reduce that particular type of pollution.”

 

            “We need leadership, commitment and investments from all levels- from the general public up to state and federal governments- in order to tackle this issue. There is no one solution or one magic bullet. This is a reflection of our society and how we treat the land and live our lives. It requires the responsibility and action of each and every one of us.”

            The Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission’s Executive Director John Arway says his agency is doing the best within its means to protect the Susquehanna, despite being held back by the Department of Environmental Protection, which still has not declared the river as impaired.

            “Our focus has been to do what we can based on the abilities we have through regulations and policy,” Arway said. “We implemented catch and release regs from Sunbury down to Holtwood, and we also put no targeting bass into effect through June 17^th. It is unfortunate, but we had to do that to try and protect the fish that are left in the river until DEP makes some decision about what future plan we’re going to have to fix the river.”

            “We also created S.O.S.- the “Save our Susquehanna program,” where we raise private donations. We’ve got $50,000 and we’re going to add another $50,000 to it to start doing projects- one farm at a time- to try and be the example of what needs to be done to fix the river.”

            “A lot of people don’t understand that fixing a river doesn’t mean doing something to the river itself,” Arway explained.

            “We’ve got to work on the land and all the tributaries draining into the river that bring those herbicides, endocrine disrupting chemicals and nutrients, exposing them to young fish and their habitats each spring, causing them to get sores and lesions and die. We’ve seen that condition every year since 2005, sometimes in a high incidence, and sometimes in a not so high incidence,” Arway said.

            “We are not in a position to be able to say, ‘The river is impaired, we need to put a plan together to fix it, and we’re going to implement that plan in a year or two.’ DEP is in that position. They are really in the driver’s seat when it comes to the fate of the river.”

            “We are anxious to hear what they are going to do, and then move forward, hopefully with a plan, and work together with everybody that might have an impact on the river, either in a voluntary or regulatory way, to get the river back to the world-class fishery it once was,” Arway said.

For more great writing, photography and video work by outdoors freelancer, Tyler Frantz, visit www.naturalpursuitoutdoors.com. Also, please LIKE US ON FACEBOOK!

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