The sixth annual Lancaster/Lebanon County Watershed Forum was held Saturday in Quentin, a southern Lebanon County community where E. coli was recently discovered in the water.
Irony?
Not really.
According to environmental scientists, water pollution remains a big problem here.
Citizens hold many of the solutions in their hands.
But people are unwittingly helping to degrade the myriad small streams that feed the Susquehanna River, sending a plume of nutrient pollution that smothers aquatic life in the Chesapeake Bay.
Forty percent of the bay is an ecological "dead zone" in the summer, said Harry Campbell, one of three presenters speaking to more than 60 environmental and municipal managers, citizens and students at Quentin United Church of Christ.
The forum was sponsored by the Pennsylvania Association of Conservation Districts.
Campbell, a Chesapeake Bay Foundation scientist, told forum members that "We've got the big [pollution] bulls-eye over our heads in south-central Pennsylvania."
He explained how traditional lawn care practices seriously foul watersheds.
Turf grass blankets 32 million acres of this country, he said. It's an area big enough to encompass two Pennsylvanias.
The smooth "green parking lot" look might be attractive, Campbell admitted. But it isn't very ecological for several reasons:
Grass has roots that go down only about 4 inches, so it does a poor job of retaining soil and soaks up only about a 10th as much rainwater as a forest.
Then there's all the mowing, fertilizing and weed and bug killing, said Campbell, as he flipped through facts and figures on a PowerPoint presentation.
Each year, Campbell reported, Americans burn 800 million gallons of fuel and spend time equivalent to one week of work just to mow the lawn.
They spread a lot of pesticides and herbicides per acre, too, he added — 10 times more than farmers.
Such products contain heavy metals and other unspecified "inert ingredients," added Campbell, who said more than half the compounds that are listed on the container are probable carcinogens.
About half the fertilizer applied to lawns washes away.
Joining it on the trip downstream are "emerging contaminants" — trace amounts of drugs, food additives and personal-care items.
In truth, said Arianne Proctor, a water program specialist with the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection, these contaminants are not just now emerging.
Antibiotics from home medicine chests and concentrated animal feeding operations — to name just one of the many substances — have been escaping into the water for years.
But use of such products is rising, according to Proctor. DEP is partnering with the U.S. Geological Survey to measure their frequency and determine their impact on the health of smallmouth bass and white suckers.
A report is due out next year.
Exposure to trace amounts of synthetic hormones has spurred so-called "gender bender" changes in male fish that go on to produce eggs, Proctor said.
"There's not one treatment technology out there that will remove everything" from the water, she added.
But she said consumers can help by placing expired medications in the trash instead of flushing them down the toilet.
Campbell said homeowners can directly improve water quality by fertilizing lawns with compost and grass clippings and choosing low-maintenance grass, such as fescue.
Better yet is landscaping with native meadow grasses and wildflowers, he added.
But it's streamside buffers and upland forests that benefit watersheds most, said Kristen Travers, an education programs manager with the Stroud Water Research Center in Chester County.
"The more forest the cleaner the stream," she said.
According to Travers, studies have shown that municipal water treatment costs drop 20 percent for every 10 percent increase in watershed forest.
The more natural leaf litter, the better to nourish mayflies, caddisflies and other macroinvertebrates, Travers said.
The fallen leaves clogging streams this time of year are a good sign.
"People like things to be neat, pretty, organized," Travers said. "Nature doesn't work that way. Nature's kind of messy."
The vast swath of old-growth trees that made every Pennsylvania stream a high-quality brook trout habitat back in William Penn's day is long gone.
But unbroken forested buffers can still sharply reduce flooding and absorb pollution from the land, said Travers, who advocates 100-foot-wide riparian bands.
She said studies suggest that organisms in woodland streams more efficiently break down atrazine, a common farm herbicide in Pennsylvania.
She encouraged the audience to plant trees, support watershed groups and urge elected officials to champion stream and forest preservation.
"We need an epidemic of little things we can all be doing," she said.
Jon Rutter is a staff writer for the Sunday News. His e-mail address is jrutter@lnpnews.com.
