Ninety-six times last year, during summer rains or snowmelts, raw sewage and industrial wastewater from in and around the city were piped directly into the Conestoga River without being treated. Some 943 million gallons of combined sewage and rainwater were discharged into the river and even......

The results are in for Lancaster County Central Park's latest environmental health checkup. Chemical leaching from the 1960s landfill that lies under a portion of the park is neither up nor down significantly, according to county parks Director James Hackett. "To make a long story short," ......

You're not imagining it: Those ozone air pollution warnings out of Harrisburg have been coming faster and more furiously this year. But, no, the air itself has not grown that much hotter or goopier. "The [pollution] standards have been made more stringent," said Kevi......

A bill authored by a Lancaster County senator aimed at cleaning soap detergents that pollute waterways became law Tuesday, making Pennsylvania the second state in the nation with this type of legislation.The bill — written by Republican state Sen. Mike Brubaker of Warwick Township &m......

Instead of retrieving lost recess balls in the stream behind Fritz Elementary School on Tuesday, students picked up plastic bags, cardboard boxes and cans.Fritz students in fourth and sixth grades cleaned up a section of the East Lampeter Township stream as the first step in creating an ou......

Lawmakers in Harrisburg will try to figure out this week how to keep municipalities from being bankrupted by the cost of cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay.Under a federal mandate, municipalities in the bay's watershed, which includes the Susquehanna River and its tributaries, have just tw......

Agents from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency took water samples Tuesday from a Penn Township hog farm, eight neighboring wells and a residence served by Lititz Borough Water System. The samples will be tested for nitrate and fecal coliform, EPA spokesman David Sternberg said Thursday. H......

Lancaster and L.A. actually have something in common, but it's not great weather or world-class shopping.It's filthy air.Lancaster placed a mere 10 slots behind Los Angeles on the American Lung Association's 2007 list of U.S. cities with the worst air quality.Usin......

In 2004, the American Lung Association drove home a dagger by labeling Lancaster’s ozone pollution the 23rd-worst in the nation. Young children, the elderly and people with asthma and other lung ailments have been repeatedly warned to watch out on boiling hot summer days. But now, thanks to ne......

PennEnvironment charged in a report released today that 57 percent of 383 major industrial and municipal facilities across Pennsylvania exceeded discharge limits at least once from July 2003 to December 2004. The report, “Troubled Waters: An analysis of Clean Water Act compliance,” criticizes the......

The county also is one of 208 nationwide found last April to be in violation of federal limits for soot, the Philadelphia-based group PennEnvironment noted in a 28-page report, “Plagued by Pollution: Unsafe Levels of Soot Pollution in 2004.” the report was released in Harrisburg. Last year, the g......

In announcing the Clean Air Interstate Rule, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said new caps on emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides will substantially reduce premature mortality in the eastern United States Nitrogen oxides contribute to ground-level ozone, or smog, and are asso......

A consultant's report found that excessive levels of cancer-causing agents, such as formaldehyde, and an acidic compound found in rancid butter and sweat may be leaked into the air.

The report by ENSR International of Langhorne, hired by the township to determine the plant's po......

During this period of maximum rainfall, plants absorb nutrients more effectively. Summer and winter are not optimum times to fertilize. Hot temperatures cause the soil to become dry and compacted; in cold weather, plants are dormant, and the soil is not workable.

In the forest, trees draw nut...

Some people in the tidy farming town of Monroe see in the plume a singular success story.


Odor and pollution issues have dogged ethanol, acknowledged Matthew J. Urban, executive director of the Monroe Chamber of Commerce & Industry.


But Badger State bent ove...

The county got more bad news Tuesday when the U.S. Department of Environmental Protection reported that Lancaster is one of 22 counties in the state that likely will not meet national health standards regarding fine-particle pollution.

That means the county has an excess of fine p......

But sometimes she must go outside. Then, she says, "The worst is the fumes from cars in downtown Lancaster. It's difficult to breathe there.'' Especially now. From May through September, simply inhaling can be a challenge because Lancaster County's air is so often rich with ground-level ozone, a...

Nowhere else do such copious quantities of dirt and fertilizer run off thousands of farm fields and housing developments.

The concentrated slug of pollutants enter the mighty Susquehanna to eventually rob the bay and its creatures in Maryland and Virginia.

The story, quoting enviro...

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average American home contains 100 to 200 different air contaminants.

The EPA reports that formaldehyde, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, as well as molds, fungi, and bacteria spew into the air while you are eating dinner, sl......

Calvin B. Johnson spoke to a gathering of officials and media at Southeast Lancaster Health Services on South Duke Street, where he said asthma would "one day be a disease of the past.'' The state has won federal grants worth $800,000 a year for three years to study and track the disease, which ...

"Carly was having an attack every day at school,'' Drennen said. "Her teacher and I were getting really frustrated.'' Drennen visited her daughter's school and realized there were two forced-air vents that delivered heat to the classroom. When she asked the custodian to check the heating system,...

And though the proposed $80 million plant will emit pollutants that contribute to smog, they will not worsen Lancaster County's already serious ozone problem, consultants for Penn-Mar Ethanol say in their application for an air-quality permit to the state Department of Environmental Protection....

Gopher State Ethanol told residents that the only smell they might whiff would be like bread baking.

But from the day ethanol production began in 2000, neighbors complained of sickening odors and a host of ailments, ranging from rashes to loss of appetite.

The city sued. State heal...

Yet the comprehensive 42-page report neither endorses nor rejects the plan to build an $80 million Pen-Mar Ethanol plant that would produce 50 million gallons of ethanol per year.

The Hourglass Foundation, 123 N. Prince St., is a nonprofit organization dedicated to studying the quality of ....

On this day last year, the Susquehanna Valley region had its first red-level "ozone action day'' of the season in which the air quality was considered unhealthy.

Yet, as the region was starting its long summer broil, there had already been several orange-level days in which the air was ap...

Those hazy, crazy high-ozone days of summer are the price of admission for living in Lancaster County.

But this year, thanks to new programs and better coordination of voluntary ozone-fighting efforts, it should be easier than ever for people to help cut pollution that contributes to ...

Stream sediment gauges allowed officials to track how much silt was coming from different parts of the 64,000 square miles of watershed in Pennsylvania, New York, Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware and Maryland.

Due to funding cuts, however, no such sediment gauges have ......