When was the Sewage Plant at Shippensburg built? Environmental problem?

Sometimes i go on runs and see signs saying "Save the fish" and "Say no to the plant". I wanted to know more about the sewage plant but nobody seems to know anything about it and i can't find anything online about it. Please if you know of any books, or websites or any information at all please let me know.When was the Sewage Plant at Shippensburg built? Environmental problem?I can explain to you what I know about this subject:



Most likely this wastewater treatment plant disposes waste into a river or lake. Waste water treatment plants are meant to remove nutrients - phosphorus, nitrogen and well... poop, but they are not built to remove chemicals and things of that nature.



Shampoos, conditioners, body washes, lotions, deodorants, tooth pastes, etc all contain things called "endocrine disrupting compounds" (EDCs) or "endocrine mimicking hormones" which is the stuff that smells good and acts or is estrogen.



Because the wastewater treatment plant doesn't remove these items (because they are just too small and it would be very expensive to do so) the fish downstream of the wastewater treatment plant loose their male characteristics and become known as "intersex fish". In some areas where the river is 50% - 100 % wastewater this is a real issue and 9 out of 10 fish found downstream will either be female or intersex or changed to female. This not only is a mutation but can kill off the fish population downstream of the treatment plant because there are not enough males to reproduce.



Another reason that they might not like the wastewater treatment plant is because water that is full of nutrients - nitrogen and phosphorus is bad for fish and deprives the water of oxygen and the fish choke and die. However there are special limitations on discharge permits for wastewater plants to make sure that doesn't happen, so this shouldn't be the issue at all.



It seems to me that before this sewer plant everyone in the area had their own leach field/septic system/onsite wastewater treatment. This is arguably a better way to treat wastewater because it spreads out the pollution instead of concentrating it in one area. Also leach fields make the water go into the ground where there is a lot more natural filtration which can remove those pesky EDCs before they reach the river.



So all of this sounds very bad and you may want to go get a sign and start protesting, but also keep in mind that if the sewage water is less than 20%-30% of the river FLOW (not velocity) then most likely this isn't an issue. Remember this awful but true saying, "dilution is the solution to pollution."



Also maybe the solution isn't to shut down the treatment plant - but depending on the flow they could simply use a big leach field instead of putting it into the river. If there is too much flow you can look into getting the discharge permit changed so that they can only put out 20% of the rivers flow at all times. There are groups and boards that meet about water quality because it is such an important issue, I bet there is one in your area, especially since there are signs everywhere.