The following letter appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Think about everything that's happened in your life in the past 365 days -- a birthday, the holidays and the Fourth of July. But when it comes to fireworks, it's hard to top the revelation that sewage has been pouring into the Youghiogheny for at least that long ("Sewage Pouring Into Yough," Jan. 17).

Investigators have told our organization that a portion of the cause could date back 25 years. Think about that. Ronald Reagan was president and Dan Marino was a senior at Pitt then. Yet Pennsylvania residents didn't know about this odoriferous problem until it ran in the pages of the Post-Gazette recently.

Something about that stinks, and it's not just the sewage.

Brad Devries on the Lower Yough

The Youghiogeny River is renowned as one of the best white water rivers in the eastern United States. Thousands of boaters, anglers and families flock to western Pennsylvania's Youghiogeny River every year because of its outstanding recreational value. Sadly, you know when a river shows up on this blog it rarely means something good and as someone who loves to paddle the Yough I'm troubled to be writing about this. Last week, the Pittsburgh-Post Gazette reported that over the past year the wastewater treatment plant in Elizabeth Township has released more than 95 Million gallons of raw sewage into the river, sometimes six million gallons a day! And this is the first the public has learned about this issue.