Environmental advocates sue over raw sewage Harrisburg piped into the Susquehanna River

Six years ago, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Protection sued Harrisburg’s Capital Region Water to get it to stop piping millions of gallons of raw sewage into the Susquehanna River. 

It has been a problem for more than a century, dating to the initial design of the wastewater system. As the system is designed, when stormwater surges during heavy rains, it mixes with sewage, overtaxing the system and causing the mixture to flow into the Susquehanna. 

Initially, Capital Region Water agreed to address the problem. But in six years, it hasn’t, and raw sewage, much of it from state office buildings and the governor’s residence, has continued to pour into the river. 

Now, clean water advocates are suing to join the lawsuit to “have a seat at the table” and offer solutions to the problem, according to Tom Pelton, communications director with the Washington-based Environmental Integrity Project. 

“We want to intervene to bring our experts to the table and say, ‘Here are our solutions,’” Pelton said. “Our argument is that after six years, you have made no real progress.” 

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On average, according to the EPA, some 800 million gallons of combined stormwater and sewage flows into the Susquehanna from Harrisburg’s wastewater system every year, contaminating the river with dangerous levels of E. coli bacteria. In 2018 alone, Capital Region Water pumped 1.4 billion gallons of sewage mixed with stormwater into the river.  

“I’ve talked to fishing guides who said they ask their clients to use hand sanitizer whenever they come into contact with the water,” said Ted Evgeniadis, the Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper and the plaintiff in the suit to intervene in the matter. 

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Evgeniadis’ monitoring of the river in June and July 2020 found E. coli concentrations that averaged 2.5 times higher than safe levels. Bacteria levels downstream averaged three times higher than those from samples taken upstream from Harrisburg. 

Evgeniadis, according to the suit, met with DEP officials twice in 2020 to discuss the matter and ask for action. He also wrote a letter to the governor outlining the issue. Neither produced any tangible results. 

Neither has the previous litigation filed by the state and federal environmental protection agencies produced any results. The agreement reached in that lawsuit, according to environmental advocates, is unlike any reached with other, older cities that experienced the same problem. It did not set any deadlines for Capital Region Water to meet clean water standards and did not require design changes to the wastewater treatment system to address the issue. 

Capital Region Water came up with a plan in 2018 that proposes spending $315 million over the next 20 years to reduce sewage overflows. Two-thirds of that money is proposed to be spent on maintenance of the system, something that the EPA has said will not effectively reduce the sewage overflows. 

“This is maintenance that should have been done 20 years ago,” Evgeniadis said. “Capital Region Water will say, ‘We’re doing something about it.’ It’s all crap.” 

The problem with the system is not a maintenance issue, environmental advocates said. It is a design issue. Other cities – including Washington and Alexandria, Va., - have updated their sewage systems to include large underground tanks that capture the overflow during storms and hold it until the stormwater recedes and the water can be pumped to a treatment plant. 

Environmental advocates hope that the massive infrastructure bill proposed by the Biden administration includes money to address this issue. They said they will be closely following the bill and the subsequent appropriations to see whether that money would be available. They also argue that the state has a constitutional and moral obligation to address the matter. The state’s constitution guarantees the right to clean air and water, and since the state owns about 40 percent of the real estate in Harrisburg, it is a major contributor to the problem.  

Meanwhile, Evgeniadis said, the problem persists and will only get worse as climate change brings more severe storms to the region. 

“We cannot keep kicking this can down the road for another 20 years,” he said. “It can be fixed, and we need to fix it now.” 

Pelton said, “It’s fixable. It’s not rocket science. We just have to stop piping sewage into the river.” 

Columnist/reporter Mike Argento has been a Daily Record staffer since 1982. Reach him at 717-771-2046 or at mike@ydr.com.