Girty's Run is dirty, even when it's barely running. Dry Run is full of sewage even when it's almost dry.

Martha Rial, Post-Gazette 3 Rivers 2nd Nature project manager Kathy Knauer tests Saw Mill Run along the Seldom Seen Greenway near Beechview. Click photo for larger image. Related coverage Pa. has miles and miles of dirty rivers and streams Graphic: Measuring waterway pollutants

And last week, visitors to Saw Mill Run saw a creek tinged orange with acid mine drainage that masked the strong dose of sewage that bacteriological tests show is always there.

The three streams are among 15 in Allegheny County that have serious sewage pollution problems even in dry weather, a surprising finding that raises public health concerns. It also calls into question whether the state's surface water assessment program is producing a true and accurate picture of the pathogens that pollute the region's rivers and creeks.

"In those 15 streams the dry weather water quality is astronomically bad," said Tim Collins, a research fellow at Carnegie Mellon University who directed 3 Rivers 2nd Nature, a five-year project to study pollution in the county's waterways. "There are significant potential public health impacts because those streams run through some of the county's densely populated areas, backyards and public parks."

Test data compiled during the recently completed project by Carnegie Mellon's STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, confirmed sewage contamination problems in the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers and the county's 53 streams during wet weather when combined sewers overflow into them.

The study's bacteriological testing also found significant dry weather loads of fecal coliform and E. coli bacteria in the following Allegheny River tributaries: Girty's Run, Pine Creek, Sipes Run and Indian Creek. The impaired Monongahela River tributaries are Becks Run, Streets Run, West Run, Homestead/Whittaker Run, Turtle Creek, Thompson Run, Crooked Creek, Lobbs Run, Dry Run and Sunfish Run. And in addition to Saw Mill Run, the impaired Ohio River tributaries are Kilbuck Run, McCabe Run and Hays Run.

Waste product indicator

E. coli is a species of bacteria found in human and warm-blooded animal waste, and its presence is an indicator of sewage contamination. It also signals that disease-causing bacteria, viruses and protozoans might be present. Drinking, swimming or other forms of recreation or contact with the water with high E. coli levels is unhealthy.

Collins said that risk is multiplied because there are 2,024 stream miles in Allegheny County and only 90.5 miles of river.

"If the issue is public health then [streams are] a lot more accessible than the Mon or the Ohio rivers," Collins said last week during a walk along the well-used path that parallels Saw Mill Run through the Beechview-Seldom Seen Greenway. "There's more people coming through here and most of them are under five feet tall and telling their mothers they're not out playing in the creek."

Yet the state, which is operating under a 1997 federal consent order to assess, monitor and improve the water quality of its rivers, streams and lakes, has done little bacteriological testing for fecal coliform or E. coli to determine if particular surface waters are suitable for water contact recreation, drinking or fish consumption.

The consent order requires Pennsylvania to develop a list of its impaired waters, identify sources of the pollutants, their types and amounts, and calculate how to reduce them so that individual waterways can meet federal water quality standards. That calculation is known as the Total Maximum Daily Load, or TMDL.

The 10-year Statewide Surface Water Assessment Program has made significant progress doing biological surveys to assess aquatic life. It has surveyed populations of insects, worms and other macroinvertebrates, as well as habitat and watershed landscapes, on 67,979 miles of Pennsylvania's 83,161 miles of rivers and streams. It has found that about 16 percent of those waterways are impaired by various pollutants.

According to Richard Shertzer, DEP water quality chief, the state is on schedule to meet federally set goals of producing 575 TMDL plans for polluted streams by 2009.

But the state has conducted bacteriological surveys on only 140 miles of the state's waterways and Shertzer said that must improve.

"We need to be looking at all uses in all waters," he said.

Shertzer said the DEP plans to use the CMU study results to target bacteriological assessments of as many of the impaired Allegheny County streams as it can get to this summer.

But such testing is expensive and complicated by a lack of a comprehensive federal testing protocol, said Cathy Myers, DEP deputy secretary for water management.

The EPA wants the state to use an E. coli standard, but Myers said sticking with a fecal coliform standard allows the DEP to draw on decades of data from hundreds of monitors around the state.

Larry Merrill, a division chief in the EPA's watershed protection division in Philadelphia, said the agency has been recommending that states adopt its E. coli standard since the mid-1980s.

"We would feel much more comfortable with the state's monitoring program if they could increase the number of streams for which they have bacteriological data," Merrill said.

He said a $75,000 federal-state pilot study of streams in Allegheny County is planned for next summer to work out a bacteriological assessment protocol that can be used statewide.

Volunteers needed

William Luneburg, director of the University of Pittsburgh's environmental law program, said the state is moving too slowly in identifying impaired streams. He said Pennsylvania will have to increase its reliance on non-governmental organizations and individuals to collect water quality data in a timely manner.

There are hundreds of volunteer organizations in the state but few are stepping forward to do bacteriological testing because such tests require some level of technical training. Shertzer said the DEP has mailed 466 letters to watershed organizations, environmental groups and local governments asking for such help but received only nine responses. It used data from seven of those in compiling its 2004 assessment report.

Collins said an independent Allegheny County watershed association or government-supported authority is needed to collect, analyze and publicize water quality data about the region's network of rivers and streams.

A model for such an organization is the Charles River Watershed Association, which has monitored water quality since 1995 along the Charles and its tributaries near Boston using 80 volunteers.

"We need a rigorous assessment and an advocate for the region's natural systems," Collins said, "and now it's not entirely clear if anyone or any agency is doing that."