Allegheny River water quality good; pollution concerns remain for 2 creeks

Water quality on the Allegheny River continues to be good but pollution concerns persist on Blacklick Creek in Indiana County and Pine Creek in Allegheny County.

The results are part of the fourth year of the Three Rivers Quest (3RQ) study, one of the most comprehensive surveys in the region covering more than 30,000 square miles of the Upper Ohio River Basin.

Although no major pollution issues popped up on the Allegheny River this year, researchers further documented persistent water contamination in some tributaries and waterways that drain into the Allegheny, according to Brady Porter, Duquesne University associate professor of biology and one of the study's principal investigators.

This year's study found:

• Continued high levels of bromides, which can form the carcinogen trihalomethane (THM), in Blacklick Creek in Indiana County.

That creek flows into the Conemaugh, Kiski and, finally, Allegheny rivers.

• Levels of chloride contamination in Pine Creek are eight times higher than when the creek was studied in 2013.

After discovering high levels of chloride — the highest in the Pittsburgh-area portion of the study — several years ago in Pine Creek in Pittsburgh's North Hills, researchers learned more about the pollution this year.

These pollution issues have not impacted the quality of drinking water drawn from the Allegheny River, according to 3RQ researchers and area water authority managers.

However, the contamination can degrade the quality of the waterway for wildlife and outdoor recreation.

Pine Creek

Since 3RQ the chloride discovery 2013, researchers have focused on potential causes.

Pine Creek winds through 14 North Hills communities and flows into the Allegheny River near the Sharpsburg and Etna boundary.

At high levels, chloride is toxic to aquatic life. However, the current levels of contamination have not yet affected the fish, according to Rick Lorson, area fisheries manager of the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission.

But it is affecting the quality of the macroinvertebrates, according to Porter and Bill Moul of Marshall Township, president of North Area Environmental Council (NAEC) headquartered in Franklin Park.

“Those developing bugs that live at the bottom of the stream are early in the food chain for feeding everything else,” Moul said. “When their population goes down, the population of everything else goes down.”

Testing in August and September throughout the Pine Creek area, 3RQ found chloride in 47 percent of 19 water surface samples and in more than a quarter of 27 residential drinking water wells, according to Porter.

He suspects that chloride is from legacy contamination from coal mining in the area.

“Elevated chloride, manganese and iron — those are things associated with abandoned mine water discharge,” Porter said.

Porter and Moul believe there are a number of places where mine water still could be accumulating despite the mines closing decades ago.

Oil and natural gas extraction in the region at the start of the 1900s is another possibility, he added.

“We're still looking for answers,” Moul said.

Blacklick Creek

Researchers this year continued to turn up high levels of bromide, a salt often associated with waste water from Marcellus shale fracking and abandoned mine drainage, in Blacklick Creek.

The creek has the region's highest concentration of bromides, the most persistent pollutant in the study since it began.

Bromides are not regulated by the state, so there is no legal limit.

But levels are of concern to scientists, especially if the contamination is close to a drinking water source.

Water from Blacklick eventually ends up in the Allegheny River, the drinking water source for the majority of Alle-Kiski Valley residents.

Environmental authorities have been monitoring the bromide problem since 2010, when the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority (PWSA) discovered a significant increase in bromides in Allegheny River water and trihalomethanes in drinking water.

Long-term exposure to THMs might cause liver, kidney or central nervous system problems and increase the risk of cancer, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

The PWSA studies revealed that discharges of oil and natural gas waste water, from both fracking and conventional wells, were the major source of bromides in the Allegheny River basin.

DEP requested local sewage authorities in 2011 — which couldn't treat the water, only dilute it — to voluntarily stop accepting the waste water for treatment.

Porter estimates bromide levels on Blacklick Creek are on the order of about five times greater than what is detectable in other streams.

A suspected source is Fluid Recovery Services' waste processing plant in Josephine, Indiana County.

Calls to the business for comment were not returned.

The Josephine plant is authorized to discharge treated wastewater from conventional oil and gas formations, said Neil Shader, press secretary for the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Under a 2013 agreement between DEP and Fluid Recovery Services, the company agreed not to discharge wastewater from unconventional oil and gas wells until they have the state permits and treatment equipment.

The persistent, elevated levels of bromides, which 3RQ documented several years ago, is likely caused by a combination of legacy abandoned mine discharge as well as discharge from the Josephine plant, according to Porter.

The pollution has not affected the aquatic life in the Kiski River, which has made a miraculous comeback after decades of abandoned mine drainage pollution, according to Lorson.

But he is keeping an eye on Blacklick Creek's pollution.

“We don't want those ongoing elevated levels to continue,” Lorson said. “The Kiski has come too far to go backwards.”

Mary Ann Thomas is a Tribune-Review staff writer. She can be reached at 724-226-4691 or mthomas@tribweb.com.