Section 15. MISCELLANEOUS INDUSTRIAL WASTES
GOVERNMENT-INDUSTRY CONFLICT AND COOPERATION:
AN INDUSTRIAL WASTE CASE HISTORY
M. N. Slater, Manager
Quality Control Engineering
RCA/Solid State Division
Mountaintop, Pennsylvania 18707
INTRODUCTION
This chapter concerns the accomplishments achieved through conflict, cooperation and
prolonged, dedicated effort over a three-year period by two teams, one from state government environmentalists and one from industry. Their joint efforts over that period,
sometimes in tandem and sometimes in heated opposition, upgraded Bow Creek from
(at times) a nearly dead stream to a thriving, biologically hospitable environment, with
a healthy diversity of benthic organisms and substantial numbers of native trout, from
fingerlings to well over legal size.
For most of the 19 years that RCA Solid State Power has been located at Mountaintop,
the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Resources (DER) and its predecessors
have commended RCA for having a model waste treatment system (Figure 1), for its
ecological awareness, and for its efforts to achieve clean air and clean water.
FISH KILL
In spring, 1973, some 50 trout were reported lulled out of approximately 1200 recently
stocked in Big Wapwallopen Creek. DER biologists and engineers, from the Wdkes Barre
Regional Office, investigated and concluded that the most probable source of toxic material was industrial wastewater discharge; and RCA was located on Bow Creek, the nearest
upstream tributary into Big WapwaUopen.
RCA, lacking biological expertise of its own, caUed the Academy of Natural Sciences
of Philadelphia, which has some of the finest aquatic biologists in the country. Dr. Ruth
Patrick, Chairman of their Board and Chief Curator of Limnology, was selected to receive the Tyler Ecology Award in 1975, perhaps the highest award in this field, for her
work in environmental improvement. The academy determined that the fish were probably
killed by a large excess of residual chlorine in the cooling water, which came from the
local water company and passed, untreated, through the RCA system, but could in no
way be caused by RCA.
RCA nevertheless was instrumental in arranging for the water company to lower and
control its chlorine levels. As a result, for over four years, the measurement of free
chlorine in RCA effluent has remained below the level of detection. And there have been
no more fish kills.
STREAM STANDARDS
The academy study had suggested some additional changes in the RCA system to
further improve effluent water quality. RCA immediately moved to strengthen its technical staff and began making the suggested changes.
Then, in September, 1973, as part of a statewide effort to upgrade water quality in
Pennsylvania waterways, DER issued an order drastically tightening RCA's effluent
requirements, and imposing several new and stringent limits (Tables I through V). These
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