Crabtree Creek looks like a lively little stream in a prim little town, but it's full of every kind of waste: animal, human and industrial. It's a victim of 100 years of farming, coal mining and leaky septic systems. Crabtree Creek is a blot on the environmental map of Pennsylvania.

"It really smells, that creek," said John Antinori, 68, who ice-skated on the stream when he was a boy. "In the summer, when it hasn't rained? Oowee! The smell hangs all over the town."

"Crabtree is about as bad as it gets," said Ben Wright, a Western Pennsylvania Conservation Corps watersheds director based in Blairsville, Indiana County. "Everyone knew something had to be done, but no one knew where to start."

Things seem to come in threes in Crabtree. The 900-plus homes that form the community spread over parts of Hempfield, Unity and Salem townships. Water flows from each into a single stream on the north end of the town.

The waste problem is caused by sewage leaking from households, runoff of fertilizers and manure from farms and an abandoned coal mine behind the fire hall. A hole in the hillside there spews acidic water full of iron oxide. It turns into orange muck when the air hits it, and it's not just a seepage, Mr. Wright said. "We're talking 4,000 to 6,000 gallons every minute, straight into Crabtree Creek."

A mile downstream, the toxic stew flows into almost-pristine Loyalhanna Creek. It sends a peanut butter-colored plume of sediment that is fatal to aquatic life into the clear stream.

Hope germinated in 2001 after the Loyalhanna Creek Watershed Association studied Crabtree Creek and its effect on the Loyalhanna. The association proposed building a $3 million pump-driven treatment facility near the fire hall, where the sticky orange iron oxide can be removed from the water without building costly lagoons and wetlands. The sludge can be sold as paint pigment or used as part of a new process at the sewage treatment plant.

Township supervisors from Unity, Salem and Hempfield took on the municipal sewage problem in 2004 by forming the Crabtree Area Municipal Authority. The entity started planning to install sanitary sewer lines and a treatment plant at an estimated cost of $12 million to $14 million.

No one had a good plan for handling farmers' "slurry pits," smelly reservoirs of rainwater and manure that are pumped out and spread over fields each spring and fall.

"I think it was Ben Wright who called us all together and sat us all down and said we ought to try to streamline these things together, to save time and money," Mr. Antinori said. "Then things started to get interesting and exciting, even. People from town came out, too. We got good crowds at the meetings."

And so began a three-way approach to the town's waste problems: A unique combination of facilities that reduces and recycles wastes, clears the creek and might even pay for itself someday.

About a mile northeast of town, deep in Salem farm country, the group hopes to build a "biofuel digester" tank system like those used in Europe and Asia. It uses manure and slurry trucked in from farms, grease and fat from restaurants and other area sewage treatment plants, and composted grass clippings and leaves.

A natural process "digests" the organic material into methane gas and a not-so-smelly, extra-potent fertilizer. The methane can be used to power the digester, or maybe Westmoreland County Transit Authority buses. Leftover methane can be sold to gas companies, said Dan Schmitt, a sewage treatment plant engineer for Gibson-Thomas Engineering in Latrobe.

Mr. Schmitt, under contract with the Crabtree Area Municipal Authority, hopes to see a new sewage treatment facility rise up about a half-mile downstream from the fire hall.

"The mine and sewage treatment facilities can be together there by the creek, right where the problem is," he said. "Sharing services makes sense, but we're up against a couple of challenges. This has never been done before. And how do we make this pay, day-to-day? The people who utilize the sewage treatment plant will pay with their rates. But who pays to clean up the mine drainage?"

Maybe a use can be found for the orange goo removed from the water. A Saint Vincent College professor is studying how effectively iron oxide is in settling-out solids and liquids at sewage plants. The Crabtree sewage treatment plant could have its own supply.

And sludge from the sewage plant, usually dredged out and hauled to a landfill, could instead go into the digester tank.

Feasibility studies went out to bid a week ago, so cost estimates for each element in the plan vary wildly. Mr. Wright and Mr. Antinori are calling together another public meeting in June to keep the town up to date on developments.

Ten local, state, county and federal agencies, businesses and nonprofits have some interest in the combination project, including the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service, state departments of environmental resources and environmental protection, and Penn State Cooperative Extension, the county Conservation District and Parks Department, and Gibson-Thomas Engineering.

"We're thinking outside the box here," Mr. Wright said. "The county has an opportunity to do something unique and very beneficial. There are so many partners, all playing significant roles and offering individual expertise. ... The challenge is hooking it all together."

The sewers should be done by 2009. All those involved hope the entire three-way plan can start up at the same time.

"That seems like a long time away, but there are lots of permits to file and lots of money to raise," Mr. Wright said.

Mr. Antinori is pushing for progress.

"I want to see this creek cleaned up in my lifetime," he said. "I told them they better hurry it up a little. I'm not getting any younger."