Sigh of relief; green stuff is harmless

Just a quick follow up to yesterday’s “green stuff” scare in the Norwalk River. In late afternoon a green substance spilled out of a pipe leading into the Norwalk River near my place of work, The Hour newspaper. Before long the green stuff had moved into the river itself and the place where I watch hooded mergansers, black ducks, egrets, herons and kingfishers was bright neon green.

The early fear was that it was anitfreeze, but it turned out to be a dye test. Here’s a few paragraphs from Robert Koch’s story in today’s The Hour.

NORWALK — A bright green slick at the edge of the Norwalk Harbor near Selleck Street on Wednesday afternoon sparked fear that a large amount of anti-freeze had spilled into the water.
In fact, the slick resulted from the city’s Water Pollution Control Authority releasing test dye into storm drains to establish whether the system was leaking into the city’s sanitary sewer system.
“It’s just green dye. We were dye-testing storm lines because storm water (sometimes) goes into the sanitary sewers. We’re trying to reduce inflow from storm water,” said Ralph K. Kolb, wastewater systems manager for the WPCA. The dye “is bio-degradable, non-hazardous.”

 

A big sigh of relief. Sorry if I scared anyone …