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Pocono Record Editorial - June 15, 2008

Sewerage pact serves parties

Compromise all around has produced an important sewage treatment agreement that will help vaccine-maker Sanofi Pasteur continue operating in Pocono Township. Credit goes to all parties for working on this thorny problem.

Sanofi and three municipal governments — Pocono and Stroud townships and Stroudsburg borough — are working to complete the agreement, which will create a new regional sewerage system to collect sewage from Pocono and pipe it to an expanded treatment plant in Stroudsburg. The plan calls for the Brodhead Creek Regional Authority, Stroud and Stroudsburg's public water company to operate the two Stroud municipalities' common treatment plant, which will grow from the current 2 million gallons per day to 4.5 million gpd by 2012 to accommodate Pocono and Sanofi.

The plan isn't ideal for Sanofi, which has immediate and pressing wastewater treatment challenges, but it will work in the long run. For the municipalities it represents a breakthrough, an end to a legal battle they were waging against Pocono Township. Pocono planned to pipe sewage it would treat within the township, all the way down to a location near the Stroud-East Stroudsburg border and discharge it into the Brodhead Creek. The Brodhead Watershed Association, Stroud Township and Stroudsburg and East Stroudsburg boroughs had all protested the plan, charging among other things that it would degrade stream quality and adversely affect adjacent Brodhead Park.

The new plan calls for a staged expansion of the treatment plant in Stroudsburg, to 2.5 million gpd by 2011 and 4.5 million gpd by 2012. The effluent would be discharged at the existing location, McMichael Creek, which flows into the Brodhead about a quarter-mile downstream.

Meanwhile Sanofi plans to seek state approval for temporary discharge into the Swiftwater Creek should the vaccine maker not be connected to the Stroudsburg plant concurrent with Sanofi's own expansion.

Considering the acrimony and legal battle among the parties, the agreement represents a fair solution. But it's far from ideal for the affected streams. Allowing a 4.5 million gpd discharge does not reflect the growing body of scientific knowledge about water resources or the regional plans that Monroe County and its municipalities have developed to safeguard its waterways.

In general, it's not sound policy to draw millions of gallons of water out of a watershed area, daily, for years at a time, and discharge it downstream. Such a system can gradually draw down the water table, essentially draining the lifeblood of the region. In this case, the immediate pressure of ensuring continued economic development in Pocono Township outweighed the importance of treating the wastewater locally and keeping it local.

Economic development, jobs and economy are often cited as more important than environmental protection. In an ideal world, the two go hand in hand. Someday businesses and government will develop industrial and wastewater treatment and discharge systems that neither degrade nor deplete the Poconos' precious clean water resources. Someday.

Meanwhile, the compromise agreement ends what could have been protracted and costly legal battles and helps assure the continued growth of high-paying jobs at Sanofi. That's worth applause.