Don’t Blame Bethel for Pollution Problem

The White River, Bethel, and state environmental officials took a couple of cheap editorial shots during the last week over pollution levels in the river, and state officials have been a little careless about assigning blame, too.

Both the Rutland Herald editorial column and the Danziger Sunday cartoon made ill-considered and ill-informed comments to the general effect that Bethel has been running sewage straight into the river and that nobody cares much about it.

Neither allegation is remotely true.

What is true is that the White River, a natural river that flows through several towns and a lot of agricultural land, has varying levels e-coliform bacteria in it, probably similar to the levels in other rivers that have not been subjected to the scrutiny the White has undergone in the last two weeks.

It is apparently true that a tourist, though nobody knows who, called attention to an odor near the outflow of the Bethel sewage plant and that when the state tested nearby waters, they found e-coli, though there were no solids in the water from the plant. The e-coli level was described alarmingly as "off the charts."

However, it’s also true that recent measurements by an engineering firm have found e-coli levels "off the charts" in water ABOVE the Bethel plant. In fact, the pollution levels in the river above the plant can only be described as "ranging wildly," according to Bethel Town Manager Del Cloud.

In fact, according to Cloud, effluent from the Bethel plant tests for e-coli levels that are regularly lower, often much lower, than the levels in the river into which the effluent flows. Further, detailed studies of the Bethel treatment plant have found nothing wrong with the operation of the plant, and in-plant tests of the effluent have been consistently satisfactory.

Thus, the snide implications by some state officials and by editorialists that Bethel has been negligent appear to be ‘way off the mark.

Meanwhile, far downstream from Bethel in Sharon and Hartford, test results for e-coli are also varying greatly, almost from day-to-day, it seems. Health officials now are careful to say they don’t know what the cause is, and it seems unlikely that the Bethel sewage treatment plant has anything to do with it. Storms and other unidentified events conspire to make the e-coli levels in the White River vary greatly, and exactly why remains a mystery. But let’s not blame it on Bethel.