Editorial: PWSA plea needs to be clean start

The government has a problem with pollution.

Some agencies just spew a lot of filth.

Take the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority.

On Wednesday, U.S. Attorney Scott Brady announced that PWSA had pleaded guilty to eight federal charges in connection with a pattern of bad behavior from 2010 to 2017.

The Aspinwall Drinking Water Treatment Plant spent that time dumping sludge into the Allegheny River. Described as plumes of rust-colored chemical sediments that settled out of the drinking water as it was cleaned, the sludge was supposed to go to the ALCOSAN waste treatment facility.

Instead, for seven years, supervisors and employees either pumped this sludge — treated with a chemical that caused solids to clump together — into the river that is a symbol of the city. A river in which people boat and canoe and kayak, where they fish and splash. A river that provides the very water that PWSA and other suppliers treat for homes and businesses.

The sludge didn’t just wash away. It built up into islands. You could see birds walking on it.

But just one of the eight charges was for that all-too-tangible pollution. The other seven were for the more metaphorical muck that it spouted. Years and years of lies.

PWSA couldn’t measure how much of the sludge was being pumped into the river because the equipment that would do that was broken. But for years, reports to the Environmental Protection Agency covered that up.

The authority’s Executive Director William Pickering called this “an unfortunate product of decades of disinvestment.” While that is undoubtedly true, it also seems like more sticky muck settling out to cover up the truth.

It doesn’t take “investment” to know that an organization that’s entire purpose is the cleaning of water shouldn’t be pumping the same stuff they took out — plus added chemicals — back in. That’s a “don’t eat the yellow snow” level of basic understanding.

It also doesn’t cost a penny to tell the truth. Instead the authority faces a $500,000 fine plus three years of probation and oversight by Brady’s office, as well as being prevented from raising rates to make that fine the customers’ problem.

For its part, PWSA says it “fully cooperated” with the investigation and that it’s a new era at the agency. Pickering just assumed the top job in June, after joining PWSA in 2016.

PWSA knows something about filtering out the bad and making it clean and safe. Now it has the chance to be an example of the most elusive product in government — something pure and devoid of pollution.