Take a Look at My Mussels

At this very moment, your editor is comfortably numb and is, if everything is going according to plans, again having a snake run through the plumbing in his body’s most important muscle.  It thus occurs to him how strange it is that with muscles as run down and faulty as his, people at one time asked him to come speak about and display his marvelous mussels.  And some, believe it or not, actually took interest in such a thing.  If the reader finds this odd, he or she would not be alone.  But the peculiarities don’t stop there.  The reader may find further bewilderment after being informed that the editor’s mussels are now in the collection of a regional museum where they are preserved for study by qualified persons with scientific proclivities.  All of this show and tell was for just one purpose—to raise appreciation and sentiment for our mussels, so that they might be protected.

Click on the “Freshwater Mussels and Clams” tab at the top of this page to see the editor’s mussels, and many others as well.  Then maybe you too will want to flex your muscles for our mussels.  They really do need, and deserve, our help.

We’ll be back soon.

Three Mile Island and Agnes: Fifty Years Later

Fifty years ago this week, the remnants of Hurricane Agnes drifted north through the Susquehanna River basin as a tropical storm and saturated the entire watershed with wave after wave of torrential rains.  The storm caused catastrophic flooding along the river’s main stem and along many major tributaries.  The nuclear power station at Three Mile Island, then under construction, received its first major flood.  Here are some photos taken during the climax of that flood on June 24, 1972.  The river stage as measured just upstream of Three Mile Island at the Harrisburg gauge crested at 33.27 feet, more than 10 feet above flood stage and almost 30 feet higher than the stage at present.  At Three Mile Island and Conewago Falls, the river was receiving additional flow from the raging Swatara Creek, which drains much of the anthracite coal region of eastern Schuylkill County—where rainfall from Agnes may have been the heaviest.

Three Mile Island flooding from Agnes 1972.
1972-  From the river’s east shore at the mouth of Conewago Creek, Three Mile Island’s “south bridge” crosses the Susquehanna along the upstream edge of Conewago Falls.  The flood crested just after covering the roadway on the span.  Floating debris including trees, sections of buildings, steel drums, and rubbish began accumulating against the railings on the bridge’s upstream side, leading observers to speculate that the span would fail.  When a very large fuel tank, thousands of gallons in capacity, was seen approaching, many thought it would be the straw that would break the camel’s back.  It wasn’t, but the crashing sounds it made as it struck the bridge then turned and began rolling against the rails was unforgettable.  (Larry L. Coble, Sr. image)
Three Mile Island flooding from Agnes 1972.
1972-  In this close-up of the preceding photo, the aforementioned piles of junk can be seen along the upstream side of the bridge (behind the sign on the right).  The fuel tank struck and was rolling on the far side of this pile.  (Larry L. Coble, Sr. image)
2022-  Three Mile Island’s “south bridge” as it appeared this morning, June 24,2022.
Three Mile Island flooding from Agnes 1972.
1972-  The railroad along the east shore at Three Mile Island’s “south bridge” was inundated by rising water.  This flooded automobile was one of many found in the vicinity.  Some of these vehicles were overtaken by rising water while parked, others were stranded while being driven, and still others floated in from points unknown.  (Larry L. Coble, Sr. image)
2022-  A modern view of the same location.
Three Mile Island flooding from Agnes 1972.
1972-  At the north end of Three Mile Island, construction on Unit 1 was halted.  The completed cooling towers can be seen to the right and the round reactor building can be seen behind the generator building to the left.  The railroad grade along the river’s eastern shore opposite the north end of the island was elevated enough for this train to stop and shelter there for the duration of the flood.  (Larry L. Coble, Sr. image)
2022-  Three Mile Island Unit 1 as it appears today: shut down, defueled, and in the process of deconstruction.
Three Mile Island flooding from Agnes 1972.
1972-  In March of 1979, the world would come to know of Three Mile Island Unit 2.  During Agnes in June of 1972, flood waters surrounding the plant resulted in a delay of its construction.  In the foreground, note the boxcar from the now defunct Penn Central Railroad.  (Larry L. Coble, Sr. image)
2022-  A current look at T.M.I. Unit 2, shut down since the accident and partial meltdown in 1979.

Pictures capture just a portion of the experience of witnessing a massive flood.  Sometimes the sounds and smells of the muddy torrents tell us more than photographs can show.

Aside from the booming noise of the fuel tank banging along the rails of the south bridge, there was the persistent roar of floodwaters, at the rate of hundreds of thousands of cubic feet per second, tumbling through Conewago Falls on the downstream side of the island.   The sound of the rapids during a flood can at times carry for more than two miles.  It’s a sound that has accompanied the thousands of floods that have shaped the falls and its unique diabase “pothole rocks” using abrasives that are suspended in silty waters after being eroded from rock formations in the hundreds of square miles of drainage basin upstream.  This natural process, the weathering of rock and the deposition of the material closer to the coast, has been the prevailing geologic cycle in what we now call the Lower Susquehanna River Watershed since the end of the Triassic Period, more than two hundred million years ago.

More than the sights and sounds, it was the smell of the Agnes flood that warned witnesses of the dangers of the non-natural, man-made contamination—the pollution—in the waters then flowing down the Susquehanna.

Because they float, gasoline and other fuels leaked from flooded vehicles, storage tanks, and containers were most apparent.  The odor of their vapors was widespread along not only along the main stem of the river, but along most of the tributaries that at any point along their course passed through human habitations.

Blended with the strong smell of petroleum was the stink of untreated excrement.  Flooded treatment plants, collection systems overwhelmed by stormwater, and inundated septic systems all discharged raw sewage into the river and many of its tributaries.  This untreated wastewater, combined with ammoniated manure and other farm runoff, gave a damaging nutrient shock to the river and Chesapeake Bay.

Adding to the repugnant aroma of the flood was a mix of chemicals, some percolated from storage sites along watercourses, and yet others leaking from steel drums seen floating in the river.  During the decades following World War II, stacks and stacks of drums, some empty, some containing material that is very dangerous, were routinely stored in floodplains at businesses and industrial sites throughout the Susquehanna basin.  Many were lifted up and washed away during the record-breaking Agnes flood.  Still others were “allowed” to be carried away by the malicious pigs who see a flooding stream as an opportunity to “get rid of stuff”.  Few of these drums were ever recovered, and hundreds were stranded along the shoreline and in the woods and wetlands of the floodplain below Conewago Falls.  There, they rusted away during the next three decades, some leaking their contents into the surrounding soils and waters.  Today, there is little visible trace of any.

During the summer of ’72, the waters surrounding Three Mile Island were probably viler and more polluted than at any other time during the existence of the nuclear generating station there.  And little, if any of that pollution originated at the facility itself.

The Susquehanna’s floodplain and water quality issues that had been stashed in the corner, hidden out back, and swept under the rug for years were flushed out by Agnes, and she left them stuck in the stinking mud.

The Antagonist

They can be a pesky nuisance.  The annoying high-frequency buzzing is bad enough, but it’s the quiet ones that get you.  While you were swatting at the noisy one, the silent gender sticks you and begins to feed.  Maybe you know it, or maybe you don’t.   She could make you itch and scratch.  If she’s carrying a blood-borne pathogen, you could get sick and possibly die.

To humans, mosquitos are the most dangerous animal in the world (though not in the United States where man himself and the domestic dog are more of a threat).  Globally, the Anopheles mosquitos that spread Malaria have been responsible for millions and millions of human deaths.  Some areas of Africa are void of human habitation due to the prevalence of Malaria-spreading Anopheles mosquitos.  In the northeastern United States, the Northern House Mosquito (Culex pipiens), as the carrier of West Nile Virus, is the species of greatest concern.  Around human habitations, standing water in tires, gutters, and debris are favorite breeding areas.  Dumping stagnant water helps prevent the rapid reproduction of this mosquito.

In recent years, the global distribution of these mosquito-borne illnesses has been one of man’s inadvertent accomplishments.  An infected human is the source of pathogens which the feeding mosquito transmits to another unsuspecting victim.  Infectious humans, traveling the globe, have spread some of these diseases to new areas or reintroduced them to sectors of the world where they were thought to have been eliminated.  Additionally, where the specific mosquito carrier of a disease is absent, the mobility of man and his cargos has found a way to transport them there.  Aedes aegypti, the “Yellow Fever Mosquito”, carrier of its namesake and the Zeka Virus, has found passage to much of the world including the southern United States.  Unlike other species, Aedes aegypti dwells inside human habitationsthus transmitting disease rapidly from person to person.  Another non-native species, the Asian Tiger Mosquito (Aedes albopictus), vector of Dengue Fever in the tropics, arrived in Houston in 1985 in shipments of used tires from Japan and in Los Angeles in 2001 in wet containers of “lucky bamboo” from Taiwan…some luck.

Asian Tiger Mosquito in action during the daylight hours, typical behavior of the genus. This species has been found in the area of Conewago Falls since at least 2013.

Poor mosquito, despite the death, suffering, and misery it has brought to Homo sapiens and other species around the planet, it will never be the most destructive animal on earth.  You, my bloodthirsty friends, will place second at best.  You see, mosquitos get no respect, even if they do create great wildlife sanctuaries by scaring people away.

The winner knows how to wipe out other species and environs not only to ensure its own survival, but, in many of its populations, to provide leisure, luxury, gluttony, and amusement.  This species possesses the cognitive ability to think and reason.  It can contemplate its own existence and the concepts of time.  It is aware of its history, the present, and its future, though its optimism about the latter may be its greatest delusion.  Despite possessing intellect and a capacity to empathize, it is devious, sinister, and selfish in its treatment of nearly every other living thing around it.  Its numbers expand and its consumption increases.  It travels the world carrying pest and disease to all its corners.  It pollutes the water, land, and air.  It has developed language, culture, and social hierarchies which create myths and superstitions to subdue the free will of its masses.   Ignoring the gift of insight to evaluate the future, it continues to reproduce without regard for a means of sustenance.  It is the ultimate organism, however, its numbers will overwhelm its resources.  The crowning distinction will be the extinction.

Homo sapiens will be the first animal to cause a mass extinction of life on earth.  The forces of nature and the cosmos need to wait their turn; man will take care of the species annihilation this time around.  The plants, animals, and clean environment necessary for a prosperous healthy life will cease to exist.  In the end, humans will degenerate, live in anguish, and leave no progeny.  Fate will do to man what he has done to his co-inhabitants of the planet.

The Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus) is again a breeding species in the Susquehanna River watershed.  It is generally believed that during the mid-twentieth century, Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT) pesticide residues accumulated in female top-of-the-food-chain birds including Bald Eagles.  As a result, thinner egg shells were produced.  These shells usually cracked during incubation, leading to failed reproduction in entire populations of birds, particularly those that fed upon fish or waterfowl.  In much of the developed world, DDT was used liberally during the mid-twentieth century to combat Malaria by killing mosquitos.  It was widely used throughout the United States as a general insecticide until it was banned here in 1972.  (Editors Note:  There is the possibility that polychlorinated biphenyls [P.C.B.s] and other industrial pollutants contributed to the reproductive failure of birds at the apex of aquatic food chains.  Just prior to the recovery of these troubled species, passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 initiated reductions in toxic discharges from point sources into streams, rivers, lakes, bays, and oceans.  Production of P.C.B.s was banned in the United States in 1978.  Today, P.C.B.s from former discharge and dumping sites continue to be found in water.  Spills can still occur from sources including old electric transformers.)
To substitute any other beast would be folly.  Man, the human, Homo sapiens, the winner and champion, will repeatedly avail himself as the antagonist during our examination of the wonders of wildlife.  He is the villain.  The tragedy of his self-proclaimed dominion over the living things of the world will wash across these pages like muddy water topping a dam.  There’s nothing I can do about it, aside from fabricating a bad novel with a fictional characterization of man.  So let’s get on with it and take a look at “A Natural History of Conewago Falls”.  Let’s discover the protagonist, the heroic underdog of our story, “Life in the Lower Susquehanna River Watershed.”

Over the top today.
SOURCES

Avery, Dennis T.  1995.  Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic: The Environmental Triumph of High-Yield Farming.  Hudson Institute.  Indianapolis, Indiana.

Eaton, Eric R., and Kenn Kaufman.  2007.  Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America.  Houghton Mifflin Co.  New York.

Newman, L.H.  1965.  Man and Insects.  The Natural History Press.  Garden City, New York.