Zoom In On the Conejohela Flats, Part 3

Posted on February 11, 2025 by Pam Lazos

Among the leaf litter, we discover plastic as numerous as it appeared on the banks from a distance. We find bottle caps, spent lighters, shreds of plastic bags, and Styrofoam bits everywhere. We see broken bits of plastic, no longer reminiscent of the items of their origin. They are just bits of colorful plastic among the leaves, roots, and soil. A bird can’t fit a discarded Gatorade bottle in its beak, but the tiny colored bits of plastic that permeate this island may well be enticing to many creatures. Think back to the shorebirds pecking into the mudflats or the osprey diving for fish. They snap at likely targets, as do fish. They do not have hands to pick up and examine that colorful object drifting past, so they must use their mouths. – Justin Mando, The Conejohela Flats, Part 3

Glad to see you back for the thrilling conclusion of The Conejohela Flats. Did you know that over 17,000 shorebirds of about 38 different species use the Flats to rest, relax, and refuel on their migratory journey to favorable breeding grounds as far north as the Arctic Tundra? Take a look at this nifty diagram from the Susquehanna National Heritage Area for more details.

Image courtesy of the Susquehanna National Heritage Area.

And now, back to our interview with Millersville English Professor Justin Mando, who is influencing the next wave of environmentalists by teaching them how to write to save the world (IMHO).

Justin, how do you see the fall of plastic and the rise of more sustainable products taking shape? I suspect the industry will not go along willingly, so what techniques do you employ to get manufacturers to the table when discussing replacing plastics with more sustainable materials?

As a person who studies and teaches rhetoric, I have hope in the power of raising our voices in favor of more sustainable products and against those that harm us. Organized efforts like those taken by an organization like LSRA [Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association] through our microplastics monitoring program can demonstrate the problem and raise awareness so that enough people become fed up with how things are. Rachel Carson faced the same insurmountable odds when she was writing Silent Spring, and she got it done. She’s one of my great heroes. 

I agree with you about Rachel Carson. I wonder where we would be if she hadn’t sounded the alarm. Things would be a lot worse, I think, without her guidance. So how do we keep her light shining, and where do we start with reducing our plastic consumption? Can technology get us out of this mess, or do we need another solution? Perhaps a magic wand?

I can’t claim to be all that knowledgeable on the technological side of plastic production or disposal, but I do think that technological innovation is a necessary part of the solution. We have to develop new materials that do not have the adverse effects on our world that plastics do. At the same time, plastics are so pervasive in our environment that the future will hopefully include some way to actually decompose plastic. I have read of progress being made in that direction, again, by using fungi. 

But really, if I had that magic wand, I’d use it to help people see that they can live their lives with much less single-use plastic than they consume now. We can send a strong message and begin to make an impact just by cutting down our own use of these materials. It’s very tough to completely cut them out, but it isn’t all that hard to refuse quite a bit of plastic that eventually finds its way into our waterways. 

Anything else? Feel free to dish.

Pam Lazos rocks. I feel so fortunate that she has become a board member of LSRA! Thank you for giving this attention to my work. I look forward to our collaboration on some exciting projects we’ve been developing.***

Well, the feeling is mutual. Thanks, Justin, for taking the time to create these videos and share your thoughts on a very important topic.

** Justin is referring to pestalotiopsis microspora, the plastic-eating mushroom that I have written about on this blog previously.

*** Justin had the idea to start a fun-raising project called Geotrashing which would operate much like geocaching, but the people going into the field to find “the cache” will actually be finding and removing plastic from the environment. We hope to make this idea a reality in the near future.

Speaking of the future, please join us at the LSRA office on February 19th, 2025 for our first Winter Speaker’s Series titled “Listening to the Susquehanna and Giving it Voice” featuring Justin Mando and Michael Garrigan. Justin will speak about connecting people to the Susquehanna through writing and advocacy, and our Pennsylvania Environmental Rights Amendment. Michael will share his place-based poetry, exploring the many ways we are shaped by the river. Some poems will come from Garrigan’s books River, Amen, and Robbing the Pillars. You can RSVP here.

Thanks for reading and hope to see you on the 19th!

pam lazos 2.11.25

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Zoom In On the Conejohela Flats – Part 2

Posted on February 6, 2025 by Pam Lazos

“We step gingerly and feel ahead before we press down firmly. When we kick an underwater object in the Flats, there are good odds that it might just be a radial tire. *** While we can’t agree on which fish are wanted, we can all agree that automobile tires have no business in this place. – Justin Mando, The Conejehola Flats, Part 2

We’re back with Part 2 of the Conejohela Flats, and oh, man, the plastic! It’s really unnerving to see just how much trash three guys with a boat and some trash bags can pull out of the river in an afternoon. Let’s find out more, shall we? Back to our interview with Justin Mando, English Prof and Department Chair at Millersville University by day and Environmental Ninja 24/7.

Talk about your work with the Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association (LSRA), and the Chesapeake Bay Journal?

I joined the Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association on their board of directors in 2019 after being recruited to the position. Millersville’s Sustainability Director recommended me, and I joined shortly after. It didn’t take long for me to accept the position of Vice Chair of the Board, as our organization did not have one, and I was eager to be involved. We were a board of only six people at that point. 

Just a few months into my time as Vice Chair, the COVID-19 pandemic began, and we lost our chairperson for personal and professional reasons. That bumped me up into the role of board chair. The LSRA board was the first I’d ever joined, and I became the chair of it within six months. At that point, my understanding of what it meant to be a board member was still inchoate at best. Through work with our remaining board members, some fortunate recruitment of new members, and the continued leadership of Riverkeeper Ted Evgeniadis, we grew through some truly challenging times. 

My role as board chair is now over after three years in that role, and I could not be prouder of what we have accomplished. We saw some major victories like a $1m settlement with Keystone Protein that cleaned up a polluting site and distributed the settlement to shovel-ready projects that would make an impact on the water quality in our area. We joined as a co-plaintiff in our quest to resolve Harrisburg’s Combined Sewer Overflow issue. We’ve made progress on federal dam relicensing at Conowingo. We acquired robust educational programming that introduces thousands of local kids to the Susquehanna River. We’ve also grown our presence in the local communities in our area, which allows us to spread our message and invite more people to help us out directly. 

Through my work on the LSRA board and my role as an English professor, I was recently invited to join the board of directors for Bay Journal Media, which publishes the Chesapeake Bay Journal. 

That’s terrific, and I’m sure they are thrilled to have your expertise. Tell us more about what you’ve witnessed during the making of the Conejohela Flats videos. How do plastics stress the water cycle? And what have you noticed over the last decade as the use of plastics has increased?

The horror I have witnessed about plastics is just what I tried to emphasize in my Conejohela Flats piece; plastics don’t ever go away; they just get smaller. The smaller they are, the more dangerous they become because they can enter our bodies. When I say “our” bodies, I am including all humans and animals. When we go out plastic picking on the Susquehanna, it always feels good to remove big blue drums, foam blocks, tires, and other large petroleum-based refuse. But the scary part is that all you need to do to find an endless amount of plastic is to fall on your knees and start digging through the soil. The longer you look, the more you see. It just gets smaller and smaller. 

Unfortunately, you are referring to microplastics and the news on them has not been so good these days. In fact, microplastics have crossed the blood/brain barrier. It’s no longer a question about whether we will become part cyborg, but a matter of time. Against that backdrop, what do you see as the future of plastics? Reduced? Reused? Discarded with disdain?  Something completely new taking its place?

I hope the future will include new processes of keeping microplastics from entering our bodies through water and food. A great hope for replacing plastics is in the use of mycelium (the “roots” of fungi) to grow materials. I read all about this recently in a great book by Merlin Sheldrake called Entangled Life. 

I, too, have heard about using mycelium from the movie Fantastic Fungi. It sounds so promising; I can’t believe the entrepreneurial community hasn’t jumped on it yet!

That’s it for today. Hope to see you in a few days for Zoom In on the Conejohela Flats – Part 3 where we’ll discuss what we can all do to ease the grip that plastic has on our world and our bodies.

Thanks for reading.

pam lazos 2.5.25

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Zoom In On The Conejohela Flats!

Posted on February 2, 2025 by Pam Lazos

My friend and colleague, Justin Mando, who serves on the Board of the Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association (LSRA) with me, has created a triptych of videos on the Conejohela Flats, a series of small islands and adjacent mudflats in the Susquehanna River which the National Audubon Society calls significant stopover points in the Eastern U.S. for shorebirds. The Flats are located in Clarke Lake, a slow-moving section of the Susquehanna River, and their fortunes rise and fall with the river, its inhabitants, and we humans who use the river.

I asked Justin to answer a few questions about himself and give us some insight into how he came to work in his field and specialize in environmental matters. This is part one of a three-part series. I will share parts two and three this week.

Photo courtesy of Millersville University

You’re an English Professor at Millersville University and currently Department Chair.  Tell us how you got there.

    I started at Millersville directly after completing grad school (Ph.D. in Rhetoric and an M.A. before that) at Carnegie Mellon in 2016. I’ve been department chair for 1.5 years now and served as assistant chair for three years before that. I think I was selected by the former chair to be her assistant because I was one of the people in department meetings who always came ready to ask questions.

    My areas of expertise are environmental rhetoric, rhetoric of science, and science writing. My training in rhetoric taught me how to investigate, analyze, and create writing about environmental issues, but the whole thing can be applied more broadly. That led me to teach Science Writing as one of my primary duties at Millersville. My specific research interest has been related to the question of how people communicate about environmental threats. Fracking was the topic I selected to research and write about for my doctoral work.

    I have another research topic that has been increasingly taking my attention, which is intellectual risk-taking, especially as it exists in the writing classroom. Colleagues from grad school and I were curious how we could encourage our students to consider taking risks as writers rather than just following the safest path to complete their assignments. I have continued to work on this for over a decade now and am making good headway with my colleague from UMass Dartmouth, Alexis Teagarden. She and I are currently writing a textbook, editing a special issue of a journal, and leading a workshop on this topic. What’s really exciting about it to me is that asking students to think about risk has shown me how generative concepts like “courage” and “risk” can be for students when you really get them to dig into what those concepts mean to them. The connection to my environmental work is in helping my students see that their voices matter, especially when they are willing to take a risk to say or do something unconventional, something that pushes the boundaries of what’s expected. We need more people who give a damn today, and I’m doing my best to help my students find that within themselves. 

    What books, articles, papers, etc., have you written?  Do they have a common theme? What are you most proud of?

      I published a book called Fracking and the Rhetoric of Place: How We Argue from Where We Stand in 2021. That was a big accomplishment for me that helped me get promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. The book was developed from my doctoral dissertation. I have an article on the topic that was published in the journal Environmental Communication. I also have published another article in that journal on the topic of representations of invasive Asian carp, co-authored with Garrett Stack. I’m pretty proud of the title we stuck on that one: “Convincing the Public to Kill.” We found that people were using xenophobic rhetoric to promote the eradication of these non-native fish, which we see as a big problem. 

      I’ve also published one book chapter and two articles on the topic of intellectual risk in the writing classroom in the journals Rhetoric Review and Composition Studies. The book chapter appears in the recently published book “If at First You Don’t Succeed: Writing, Rhetoric, and the Question of Failure.”

      One of my favorite publications is a short essay about praying mantises that hatched on my Christmas tree a few years back — Mantis Move In. I really found it to be so enjoyable to write an essay like that after so much academic writing. 

      I’ll also admit to a weird side road that my life has taken over the past couple of years. I got way into an Australian psychedelic rock band called King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard. I’ve always been a big fan of live music, especially improvisation, like you find in the band Phish. When I found out that King Gizzard didn’t have a fan website similar to Phish.net, I started one by purchasing the URL “KGLW.net” for $17 for the year. That’s turned into a much bigger enterprise than I ever expected. (We were even mentioned in Rolling Stone in an article about the band.) It’s been an outrageously fun creative outlet that allows me to collaborate with similarly weird people from all over the world. I’ve also been able to write some blog posts for the site that give me a lot of joy. King Gizzard has a strong environmental message that really resonates with me, so that was the initial draw. They even have a song called “Plastic Boogie” with a refrain that goes, “Fuck all of that plastic!”

      Photo courtesy of Millersville University

      Speaking of plastics, when did your interest in plastics begin, and how has it evolved?

      I try to stay pretty well-read on environmental issues broadly, so I’ve long been aware of the problems we face with plastics. But it was my first river cleanup with Ted Evgeniadis [our own Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper] and John Naylor [former LSRA Board member and still at the helm for LSRA events such as the Plastics Purge, and soon-to-be-rolled-out Geotrashing] that really sent the message home. That was right after I joined the Riverkeeper Board of Directors. We went out, just the three of us, to do a cleanup along the eastern bank of the river north of Wrightsville. I was astonished at the amount of trash we were finding. I also was captivated by John Naylor (Susquehanna_Plastic_Pickn_1000). He let me borrow two books that really made an impact on me: Garbology and From the Bottom Up. The latter was written by Chad Pregracke, a guy pretty similar to John who had simply had enough and decided to make it his personal mission to clean up a river. 

      Ah, I know you want more, but we’re going to save the rest of Justin’s commentary for the next two videos, so sit tight, enjoy the video above, and feel free to ask Justin any questions you might have. We’ll be back in a couple days with Part Two on the Conejohela Flats when things are going to get really interesting.

      Thanks for reading.

      pam lazos 2.2.25

      Posted in access to water, clean water, susquehanna-river, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 22 Comments

      Literary Titan

      Posted on January 1, 2025 by Pam Lazos

      Hello, and Happy New Year! Nothing like hitting the ground running with a blog post on the first day of the new year. I have been a slacker for the last year, busy writing Bad Pharma, retiring from my day job and all the emotional shifts that come with retirement, switching from lawyering to writing as a primary career, and trying to live in a world that always seems to be tilting toward extinction. It reminds me of a scene in Anne Rice’s, The Queen of the Damned, where Akasha, the queen, stares into the vast ocean of humanity with unblinking eyes — every terrible thing that has befallen humankind for the last 6,000 years passing before her — leaving her mute with horror and as tormented as the mortals themselves.

      Well, this is my push to start things off right. I’ll do so with a lovely book review of Bad Pharma from Literary Titan in which the editors admired the “rich and complex characters”, calling it a “moral inquiry wrapped in an engaging narrative” that they “would highly recommend it to anyone intrigued by the intersection of science, ethics, and corporate drama. Whether you’re a healthcare professional, a corporate worker, or simply a fan of thought-provoking conspiracy thrillers, this book will make you question how much we’re willing to compromise in the name of progress.“

      Thanks, Literary Titan!

      To read the full review, go here to Literary Titan. And as always, thanks for reading!

      That’s all for today, folks. After all, it is a holiday, and I have just completed one of my most important resolutions.

      The happiest of New Years to you. May you be blessed in the most amazing ways.

      pam lazos 1.1.25

      Posted in Uncategorized | 54 Comments

      Countdown to the ExtraGive!

      Posted on November 18, 2024 by Pam Lazos

      This year will be the 13th annual ExtraGive in Lancaster County, benefitting over 400 non-profits and adding to the total of over $100 million in donor dollars given since the ExtraGive was established by the Lancaster County Community Foundation in 2012. Donations will be accepted from 12 a.m. on 11/22/24 until 11:59 p.m. that evening, when residents — and those who want to be Lancastrians — can donate to their favorite organizations.

      The Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association (LSRA) is one of the organizations participating in the ExtraGive. Donor dollars given to the LSRA go directly to support its efforts to protect the Lower Susquehanna River from various threats to habitat, fish, and aquatic species, among other things. The stakes are high if we are to reduce water quality impairment and keep pollution out of the Susquehanna and the Chesapeake Bay.

      Sources of pollution include concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and slaughterhouses, landfills, combined sewer overflow (CSO), coal ash, plastics and microplastics, and other industrial facilities whose effluent returns to the river. In addition, hydroelectric dams, like the Conowingo, and the sediment, nutrients, and debris they contribute, as well as agricultural runoff from non-point sources, threaten the Susquehanna River.

      As someone who loves to drink clean water and boat, swim, and fish in a healthy river, I support LSRA’s dedication to improving the ecological health of the Lower Susquehanna River Watershed and the Chesapeake Bay. Improvement comes about through education, research, advocacy, and insistence upon compliance with the law, all of which require a lot of funding.

      Won’t you join us in our quest? Make an ExtraGive donation on 11/22/24 and put your money into clean water.

      Thank you for reading!

      pam lazos – 11.18.24

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      Bad Pharma – The Book!

      Posted on November 12, 2024 by Pam Lazos

      The paperback and Kindle versions of Bad Pharma are now available on Amazon! Get your copy today and join the conversation at http://www.badpharmathebook.com or visit our Facebook page.

      When the physician overseeing a failed clinical trial is fired trying to
      protect the health of the children enrolled, he subverts the system to save them,
      imperiling himself and those he loves most.

      The novel discusses ethical considerations surrounding critical decision-making in the pharmaceutical industry, mental health issues that have become more prevalent in today’s society, and how the heroic efforts of a small group of people can fix what is broken despite the odds.

      Thanks for reading!

      pam lazos — 11.12.24

      Posted in Uncategorized, vaccines | 30 Comments

      Bad Pharma!

      Posted on November 7, 2024 by Pam Lazos

      Hello, Friends. Well, it’s been a long four years of writing (and neglecting my blog) but Bad Pharma is almost here, and so I ask you, are you ready for your next great read?

      This Tuesday — 11/12/24 — Bad Pharma will be hitting the Amazon bookshelves. As writers, we all know this self-publishing thing is hard, but success comes when people share their book experiences with each other. I would be honored if you would experience Bad Pharma for yourself and share your reading journey with our community of like-minded others by leaving a comment on Amazon about your experience.

      Need a little encouragement? Here’s a synopsis and a few early reviews to peak your interest!

      Synopsis for Bad Pharma

      Onward Pharmaceutical Labs (OPL), one of the world’s largest pharma companies, is completing the development of a new vaccine, RSVIX, to protect children from the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).  OPL expects RSVIX to be their next blockbuster and hopes to capture a big chunk of the $7 billion U.S. market. The final clinical study before licensure is a head-to-head comparison with RESPIRWELL, the currently licensed vaccine produced by OPL’s rival, Beamer Labs.

      When Siddhartha Kumar, the OPL lead medical monitor assigned to the trial, discovers that RSVIX is not performing as planned, he notifies his superiors, recommending they stop the trial and offer a dose of RESPIRWELL to all the study participants to ensure their protection. The company refuses to inoculate the trial population with the licensed vaccine. Sid questions the ethics behind this decision while continuing to advocate for the safety of the children, but his insistence leads to his dismissal. Now, Sid is forced to advocate for his clinical patients from the outside with the help of some dear colleagues still working for the company.

      Inspired by a true story, Bad Pharma delves into the ethical issues surrounding drug development, which often puts science and business at odds, and asks the ultimate question:  when is the risk not worth the reward?

      Reviews for Bad Pharma

      Bad Pharma is a riveting plunge into the shadowy corridors of the pharmaceutical industry, where profits often outweigh principles. Pam Lazos and Abraham Johns, MD, craft a timely tale that is as enlightening as it is unsettling. In today’s world, where the intersection of science, ethics, and commerce is more pronounced than ever, Bad Pharma serves as both a cautionary tale and a call to action. The novel describes a system gone awry and a testament to the indomitable spirit of those who dare to challenge it.
      At the heart of the narrative is RSVIX, a vaccine hailed as a tremendous breakthrough and moneymaker by the powerful corporation Onward Pharmaceutical Labs (OPL). Beneath the polished veneer of corporate presentations lies a chilling truth: RSVIX is a house of cards built on shaky science. Enter Dr. Siddhartha Kumar (Sid), a tenacious scientist whose discovery of the vaccine’s inefficacy sets off a chain reaction. Sid insists that an additional booster provided by a competitor be given to all participants in the RSVIX trial. This spark threatens to ignite the powder keg of corporate rivalry, greed, and moral bankruptcy.
      The plot moves at a good pace, pulling readers into a whirlwind of conspiracy, corporate greed, and scientific discovery. The urgency of the narrative mirrors the real-world race for medical advancements, and it’s easy to find yourself racing through the pages, eager to see what happens next. However, in the rush to uncover the next plot twist, you may miss the beautifully crafted prose woven throughout the novel, a masterclass in figurative language. The pharmaceutical industry is depicted as a beast, its tentacles reaching into every aspect of society, squeezing until the lifeblood of integrity is nearly drained. The settings are painted with strokes that vividly bring the stark sterility of labs and the cold grandeur of corporate offices to life.       – Ann Weaver, Jr. League of Lancaster Book Club

      Following the lives, loves, and passions of the characters in this procedural medical drama story kept me reading until the wee hours of the morning. The characters work for a fictional pharmaceutical company completing a clinical trial of an enhanced RSV vaccine for children. Pharmaceutical companies make billions of dollars each year selling vaccines that have prevented many diseases. Before a new vaccine can be brought to market, the company must conduct a clinical trial to determine the efficacy of its product. Who decides the fate of those enrolled in these clinical trials? Does profit or concern for the patient come first? To find out who lives and who dies, who wins and who loses, read Bad Pharma, and you decide the solutions to the medical and ethical dilemmas raised. – Mary Theresa (Terry) Webb, MEd, PhD, founder of Conservation Consultants, Inc. and author of Tree of Life, among other books

      Readers of Karen Slaughter, Joseph Finder, and Michael Crichton will love Bad Pharma! It is full of complex characters with intricate personal lives operating in a high-stakes, morally gray-black corporate environment. Part thriller, part morality tale, Bad Pharma is solidly written with an attention to detail that takes the reader inside the high-stakes world of pharmaceutical drug trials and explores the ethical boundaries when everything that could go wrong does go wrong. This novel provides an important yet entertaining message about the profit-driven motive of drug trials and the willingness of pharmaceutical companies to look the other way to smooth the path to approval of questionable drugs. – Joel Burcat, Author of Award-winning novels Reap the Wind and Strange Fire

      I like stories that teach me things and make me think. But I want to be entertained, too. This story was gripping and fun, with plenty of romance and bad behavior. The characters had very real, very physical reactions, but there was also plenty to think about. I’m a pediatrician myself, and old emotions of rage and helplessness were stirred up in me as I watched the characters wrestle with competing priorities: profits, job security, one’s mental health, and the life of a child. Not to mention the ambiguities of scientific data! It’s so therapeutic to see all that given voice. – Catharine Pew, MD, Clinical Professor of Pediatrics, University of Washington School of Medicine.

      Bad Pharma, the paperback will be available on Amazon on Tuesday, November 12, 2024. Kindle Pre-Orders available now.

      And here are links to the website: https://badpharmathebook.com/

      And the Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/badpharmathebook

      Thank you for reading!

      pam lazos – 11/7/24

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      Ladies — It’s the Really FOR REAL Time!

      Posted on November 3, 2024 by Pam Lazos

      photo © Morgan Eberly

      Election Day is Tuesday, November 5th! Cooper says to vote like your Human Rights depend upon it—because they do.

      And ladies, listen up. Some of our forebears were arrested in attempting to secure the right to vote so we women could have a say in government. Do you want to throw that away?

      Without our legal icon, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, we’d still be asking our father’s, husbands, and brothers to co-sign a loan or take out a credit card. Do you want to throw that away?

      Donald Trump wants to “protect the women of our country,” but what that means is control — “whether they like it or not.” Do you want that kind of protection? Because it will be the same way he has taken over women’s reproductive rights? Do you want to throw your reproductive rights away?

      The fact is, women are dying because of Trump’s policies and Supreme Court picks. A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for ourselves, for our personhood, for the health of our children, and for a world where we all matter, not just the chosen few.

      Vote with your conscience, vote with your heart, and vote for the girls yet to be born, who should have at least the same rights we have all enjoyed—if not more.

      https://youtu.be/Ff-rqlU4ZWw?si=mgZCvS388MVmY1UO

      Thanks for voting!

      Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

      The Mighty Susquehanna River(keeper)

      Posted on August 28, 2024 by Pam Lazos

      © pam lazos – aerial view of the Susquehanna at the Wrightsville and Columbia Bridges

      I recently joined the Board of the Lower Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association (LSRA), a small but mighty organization headed by Riverkeeper, Ted Evgeniadis, who utilizes education, chemical and biological monitoring, pollution patrols, partnership building, public events, research and legal action to improve the health of the Susquehanna’s waterways.

      The Lower Susquehanna River covers roughly 8,527 square miles from Selinsgrove, PA, to the Chesapeake Bay at Havre De Grace, MD. Some facts about the Susquehanna for those who don’t know or for those who live in the area but want a deeper dive (although, note to self, much of the Susquehanna isn’t deep enough to do that).

      • The Susquehanna River is North America’s longest, commercially non-navigable river and geologically one of the world’s seven oldest rivers, dating back to the Paleozoic Era (543 to 248 million years ago) — and older than that youngster, the Nile, which is only 30 million years old.
      • It’s the largest river draining into the Atlantic Ocean, located entirely within the United States’ borders.
      • The Algonquian Indians named the Susquehanna Muddy River. It’s still muddy, but today, we call it the Mighty Susquehanna River for its sheer length and breadth.
      • Historically, the Susquehanna River provided a bounty of resources to those dwelling along its banks, including the Susquehannock and Lenape Native Americans, who relied upon the river for food, trade, and transportation. 
      • The Susquehanna near Safe Harbor Dam is home to Native American petroglyphs, which were thought to be the work of the Shenks Ferry people, who carved them over 1,000 years ago.
      • Today, the Susquehanna River is a critical source of drinking water for millions living along its banks, providing freshwater to various communities, including New York, Pennsylvania, and Maryland residents. LSRA continually monitors water quality in the Lower Susquehanna River through its sampling and analysis programs, keeping track of water quality and drinkability.
      • For most of the Susquehanna’s 444 miles, the river meanders like a lazy teenager, falling a couple of feet or so per mile. Once it reaches Lancaster County, the drops become more dramatic until the final 27 miles, when the Susquehanna falls 208 ft. or 7.7 ft. per mile.  This steep drop has resulted in the creation of four major hydroelectric dams on the Lower Susquehanna and some amazing vistas.  

      This Friday, August 30th, 2024, LSRA is having an open house at its new location at 338 S. Front St, Wrightsville, PA. Stop by and learn about all the incredible work being done by the Riverkeeper to keep our water drinkable, swimmable, and fishable.

      Prepare to be amazed.

      RSVP here — or just come, have a nosh and a beer and learn about the amazing Susquehanna River. Thanks for reading.

      pam lazos – 8.28.24

      Posted in Uncategorized | 44 Comments

      Grist for the Mill – Part Three

      Posted on August 17, 2024 by Pam Lazos

      I’ve written about the lovely and historic Newlin Grist Mill a couple times before. Last year, I had the opportunity to tour the Mill with the Executive Director, Tony Shahan. I had hoped to write a blog post on the extensive renovations being conducted at the Mill — not only stormwater management projects but some unique and amazing wetlands restoration projects — but time fled the scene, and I only recently found my notes. Sadly, I can barely read said notes and am left wondering what the heck they say. (My family complains mightily about my handwriting, but to think that it will somehow improve at this stage, well, that ship has sailed.)

      Thankfully, my friend and former EPA colleague Kevin Magerr has saved the day by providing me with this article about the work he and his Temple students did at Newlin based on a 2020 student design. Truly, there is some fine engineering work happening at Newlin, and I encourage you to go here to read all about it.

      https://tuengineering.shorthandstories.com/wetlands/

      At least I can provide a few photos from the day. If you are ever in the vicinity and want to step back in time, stop off at the Newlin Grist Mill, 219 South Cheyney Road, Glen Mills, PA 19432. You can see the past and the present pointing the way toward a very bright, environmentally sound, nature-based future. Kudos to Newlin Grist Mill and Temple University for seeing this project to fruition!

      Enjoy!

      pam lazos 8.17.24

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