One Year Later, More Answers About Portage Creek Spill

June 30, 2007 By: Marshall Cutchin

It turns out that the engineer responsible for letting a Norfolk Southern train careen at 77 miles an hour through a 15-mile-an-hour zone and spill 42,000 gallons of sodium hydroxide into Pennsylvania’s Sinnemahoning Portage Creek was taking pain killers and other sedatives. “‘They didn’t find any dead fish right at the scene of the spill,’ said Todd Deluccia, a watershed specialist in nearby Cameron County. ‘The thinking was that the chemical was so concentrated there, the fish just disintegrated.’” Michael Beebe in the Buffalo News.