THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Friday, October 18, 1996              TAG: 9610180012
SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A14  EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Editorial 
                                            LENGTH:   52 lines

PAGAN RIVER IS POLLUTED AFTER ALL STATE WAS DEAD WRONG

When the Pagan River, long a recipient of wastes from packing giant Smithfield Foods Inc., failed to make the state's list of polluted rivers last spring, environmentalists did a double-take.

If the Pagan River, a tributary of the James River, wasn't polluted, what was?

Last April, Charles Martin, a state environmental engineer, explained that the Pagan escaped the polluted-waters list because shellfish still could be taken from branches of the Pagan at various times of the two-year study period.

That explanation made no sense. For one thing, shellfish from the Pagan River branches had to be moved to cleaner water for purging of contamination, before being fit to eat. Still, no other explanation was given until this week, when the real reason came out.

It turns out that levels of fecal coliform, a bacteria associated with animal waste, were so high in the Pagan that the state computer program didn't believe them and simply threw them out. Without those readings, the river was fine.

Officially, then, the cause of the mistake was computer error.

Unofficially, the cause of the mistake was gross human error. No matter what the computer said, state environmental officials should have known - even with both eyes closed and their hands over their ears - that the Pagan River is badly polluted.

State records indicate Smithfield Foods has violated its pollution permit more than 50 times during the past two years, according to Kay Slaughter of the Southern Environmental Law Center in Charlottesville. The state, itself, sued Smithfield Foods on Aug. 30 for illegally dumping slaughterhouse waste into the Pagan River.

Environmentalists like Slaughter complained about the omission of certain rivers, including the Pagan, in letters to the state, but received no reply.

Having every reason to know better, state environmental officials reported that the Pagan River was safe to swim in. It clearly wasn't.

The state list of polluted rivers is a requirement of the federal government. Gov. George F. Allen disdains the federal Environmental Protection Agency, so it's not surprising that his administration would compile the list unenthusiastically.

But that list was published and Virginians relied on it. Other waters mistakenly left off the list were Thalia Creek, London Bridge Creek, Broad Creek, New Market Creek, Poquoson River and Mattox Creek.

Slaughter believes there were other serious omissions as well.

You should be able to trust the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality to publish a correct list of rivers to avoid swimming in.

But you can't. by CNB