Protecting Lehigh Valley Watersheds from Harmful Wastewater Discharges

The availability of effective wastewater treatment is necessary to protect our watersheds and allow economic growth to continue. Local and regional watersheds with good water quality must be protected from degradation and those with poor water quality have to be upgraded. To help do this in the Lehigh Valley, the Pretreatment Information Exchange was started by pretreatment personnel from the Allentown, Bethlehem, Catasauqua and Easton wastewater treatment plants. Our objective is to bring municipalities, discharging businesses, regulators, environmentalists and concerned citizens together in a synergistic coordinated group to leverage resources through information sharing, networking, and mentoring; enabling businesses and municipalities that have successfully managed environmental issues to assist those with similar issues in a discrete and non-regulatory manner.

Wastewater treatment plants are not designed to handle the large number of different materials that can be discharged; such as commercial and industrial materials and nutrients and pharmaceuticals and personal care products from household discharges. Many of these substances can pass though untreated into our watersheds and due to a lack of toxicity information may not be adequately regulated. In the past, some inadequately controlled materials, that were later found to be persistent, bio-accumulative and toxic, have caused serious irreversible harm with high remediation costs.

Therefore a major part of PIX’s activities is focused on presenting seminars and workshops and sponsoring watershed related activities to keep the public informed of important wastewater and pollution control issues to help prevent future pollution incidents. As a cost effective compliance alternative, the use of source reduction (pollution prevention) technology is recommended as pollutants not generated have no treatment or compliance costs and have no environmental liability.