Hobson’s choice

I had a surprising experience yesterday. Just as I was finishing lunch, the phone rang. A pleasant young lady informed me that she was calling from the Philadelphia office of the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). She wanted to know if she had reached the Mr. Fullerton who had written two letters to the EPA several years ago, complaining about a sewage situation on the Lackawanna River in the town of Carbondale. I admitted I was the gentleman she sought. I was quite amazed that she had managed to track me to my lair, deep in the heart of Texas. Unbelievable. She wanted to know if the sewage pollution problem that I had written about had been resolved to my satisfaction. I assured her that once the EPA had begun to put pressure on the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to enforce the law, the situation was promptly corrected. I thanked her for following up and the conversation ended.

There is an old, cynical saying, that you cannot fight city hall. Well, in this instance I had found myself embroiled in a struggle with the city hall gang of the town of Carbondale and the Pennsylvania DEP. Despite a horrendous sewage pollution problem smack in the middle of the town the Pennsylvania DEP had proven to be a very reluctant dragon when it came to enforcing the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

When I told my wife Barbara that I was going to take on this problem of raw sewage pollution in the Lackawanna, she rolled her eyes towards heaven. Barb pointed out that in a meeting with a local businessman and a Carbondale councilman I had already learned that this was a problem that had been ongoing for five or six years. Carbondale had shown no interest in repairing the sewer line that was the cause of the problem. The Pennsylvania DEP offered nothing but excuses as to why it was not enforcing the law. Therefore, what could I, an out of towner, a part time Pennsylvanian, hope to accomplish?

After a bit of reflection, I wondered if Barb was right, when she said I would just be Don Quixote, tilting at windmills. Ah, but you see, I have a good mix of genes for such a situation. There is the German blood in me that makes me stubborn and tenacious. Add a bit of Irish ancestry for a strong temper when angered, then leaven that with a bit of Guy Fawkes English, just enough to make me a good bomb thrower. It took dozens of phone calls and numerous letters plus six months of persistence, both while I was in Pennsylvania and Texas, but when the dust settled, raw sewage no longer flowed into the Lackawanna, at the Sixth Street bridge.

I had pretty much forgotten about all of this, until the phone call yesterday. After hanging up, the thought crossed my mind, what if I had decided not to become involved?If, after meeting with the businessman and the town councilman, I had felt that this was too tall a cliff to scale? Looking back, I do not see myself as any kind of hero in this story. The fact of the matter is I was trapped by my beliefs. The Lackawanna is a little gem of an urban trout stream. Barb and I have spent many pleasant hours wading its pools, pursuing its wild, not stocked, trout. The town of Carbondale was deliberately polluting it. The Pennsylvania DEP was satisfied to look the other way and not enforce the law. It appeared that I had two choices. The first would have been to shrug my shoulders and walk away. Too big a problem. Too time consuming. It would probably be a losing fight anyway. The second choice was to pick up the phone and the pen and give it a try. In all honesty, I came to realize, that there was no choice. If I had walked away, after what I had learned, I would have been just another phony conservationist. One who talked a good fight about protecting and preserving trout streams, but who ran and hid, rather than getting involved.

A long time ago, when I was in junior high school, I was pushed into a fight with the class bully. I could not run away, so I put ‘em up and took a licking. The only difference is, on the Lackawanna, when I could not run away, it was the other guy who got whupped. I am certainly glad that the young lady from the EPA called yesterday. I had been struggling for an idea for this column. She solved that problem for me.

Right now, the Delaware Coalition is involved in a similar, but much more complex, struggle to convince the Delaware River Basin Commission and the City of New York to give the rivers below the Catskill dams more adequate year round releases. This will be a far more difficult battle to win than the Lackawanna story. Under the able leadership of Nat Gillespie, Trout Unlimited’s Catskill Coordinator, the coalition is trying to play David, to New York City’s Goliath. Hopefully, Nat and the rivers will triumph.

The Upper Delaware Chapter of Trout Unlimited will be doing its second spring planting of willows along Delaware tributaries on Saturday, May 12. If you wish to participate, the work crew will meet at 9:00 a.m. at McFadden’s Fly Shop, Route 97, Hankins, NY. Work should be completed around 12:00 noon. Many hands make light work. For additional information call 570/224-6172.