The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection issued an administrative order to PPG Industries, requiring it to collect and treat contaminated water discharging unabated from the site containing decades-old waste from its former Ford City plant, and to restrict access to the site and to the section of the Allegheny River impacted by the discharge. DEP staff was contacted by Allegheny River Stewards to discuss the results of analytical field tests showed that the discharge from PPG dump site was raising the pH of the Allegheny River to unacceptably high levels.
The Allegheny River flows into the Ohio River. The Ohio River provides drinking water to most Kentuckians residing in Northern Kentucky and Louisville. So, we are not happy about this latest discharge of alkaline wastewater from a historic dumpsite upsteam of us.
The site was used from 1949 through 1970 as a disposal area for glass polishing waste slurry produced by its former Ford City facility. PPG created a 77-acre slurry lagoon area, 90 percent of which has a vegetated cover. In the 1920s, PPG established a solid waste disposal area on the site to dispose off-spec glass and other solid wastes until 1967.
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