Nockamixon and Revere Chemical Co.

I found a thick packet of 1960s-era negatives today labeled simply "Echo Plant."
After a little rummaging, I learned that "Echo, Inc." was a chemical reclamation plant — they produced "copper fungicides," amongst other things — in Nockamixon Township. Beginning around 1963, Echo was operated at various times by Echo, Inc., the DeRewal Chemical Company and the Revere Chemical Company.

According to epa.gov, the area of the site used for the processing of materials covered approximately 25 acres. In 1965, the State Health Department charged that Echo was allowing industrial waste to discharge into two tributaries of Rapp creek — a creek that then flowed into Tinicum Creek, and then into the Delaware River.

Despite a court order from Bucks county Judge Isaac S. Garb to halt the pollution, the company continued to pump its waste directly into the creek. A September 12, 1968 article recounts "Judge Garb gingerly fingered the blue-green stained rocks from Rapp Creek, the bright orange ones from the unnamed tributaries ... and studied color photographs of the slime-covered creek bottom."

Sadder still was a 1969 quote (the ensuing slew of charges and trials dragged on and on) from Charles Rudy, a sculptor whose property on Sheep Hole Road backed up to the creek. "Everything here is dead," Rudy lamented. "We no longer hear frogs and the birds are gone, the fish dead. We worry about the deer who come to drink. Even our dogs get sick."

For some reason it's this, more than the litany of evidence and charges from state officials, that really breaks my heart. Thankfully the Echo abandoned the site in December 1969.

It seems like a lot of the damage was already done, though. Articles from 1984, all the way through 1998, (in 1987 the site was named one of the nation's worst hazardous waste sites) describe a total lack of vegetation, drums of chemicals discovered, contaminated wells ... the list goes on and on.

In 1991 the EPA identified IBM, Lucent Technologies, General Electric and Unisys Corp., among other, small companies, as having had a hand in the contamination.

The site cleanup was completed in 1998, through the federal Superfund program. The contaminated soil was consolidated in an 8-acre area, contained underground by a synthetic cap and clean soil. Deer, turkeys and foxes crept back in.

In 2001 the land was bought by the Nockamixon Ordinary Trust, and, in 2003, was transferred to the township.