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Showing posts from March, 2008

The Shenandoah is Not A Sewer

Over the last four years, eighty percent of the small-mouthed bass and sunfish population have died in the Shenandoah River. The Shenandoah is now one of the top five most endangered American rivers. Unfortunately in the last 20 years, both public and private enterprises have been allowed to impair the Shenandoah with sewage. We started with a faulty Broadway plant, then came a failed private firm called Sheaffer International, and today the Town of Broadway has taken over this bankrupt polluter with the same plant manager. This is not the blueprint for success. At this time, Virginia regulators have granted the Town of Broadway permission to dump part of their sewage back into the Shenandoah. In the fall of 2007, Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality’s (DEQ) gave just such a permit to the Town of Broadway. This “Consent Decree” sets “interim limits” on river discharges from operations at the bankrupt Sheaffer Plant. These “interim limits” stretch out to January 2011 allowi