TRR photo by David Hulse (Click for larger image)

Resident charges sewage problems at school

NARROWSBURG — Upper Delaware Council (UDC), New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) delegate Bill Runge and Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources representative Marion Hrubovcak are pictured July 5, with a soda bottle filled with foul smelling waste discharge said to have come from the Sullivan West - Delaware Valley (SW/DV) school sewage system in Hankins.

Property owner Bill Schwinghammer brought the effluent to the UDC seeking its intervention. He said he had collected the sample where the SW/DV school septic system discharges into a tributary of the Upper Delaware River.

Schwinghammer said he has smelled and seen problems with the discharge of the school system since the first part of June, and despite reporting his concerns to school and state officials, has seen no corrective measures.

Schwinghammer said a DEC enforcement officer witnessed the problem at one point and promised to cite the school, but that his decision was reversed by DEC water quality official Bernard Lohman.

Sullivan West Business Manager Betsy McKean said the system’s discharge chlorinator was broken and recently replaced, but no continuing problem exists. “Our engineers were here last Tuesday and the DEC was here on [July 5]… We got a clean bill of health,” she said.

“The last thing we want to do is pollute the river,” she added.

While he said he was pretty sure what it would reveal, Runge said he would have the sample tested.