From their headwaters in Western Pennsylvania and Upstate New York, the two main branches of the Susquehanna River wind toward Northumberland. There they meet and continue as one, rolling south to the Chesapeake Bay. Two days after Christmas, I sit on a bench swing between two trees, watching ice floes float down the Susquehanna. Steam from the coffee in my mug meets steam from my breath. It’s cold, but twenty-four of my in-laws are having breakfast in the house behind me, and I’m bad at conversations in the morning (and the evening, and the afternoon).
Twenty miles down the river is the Three Mile Island power plant, site of the worst nuclear disaster in U.S. history. While emissions from the 1979 radiation leak were found to be environmentally harmless, raw sewage dumping and urban and agricultural runoff may yet destroy the Susquehanna. The EPA’s Chesapeake Bay Program has been defunded, and the work of volunteer groups like the Susquehanna River Cleanup Project is laudable, but necessarily limited in scope. If you’ve got the cash or time to spare, it would be good to give these organizations your support.
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