Sleuth Probes Q River Mystery

Harry Pylypiw stumbled across a Quinnipiac River ​“hot spot” where previously undetected chemicals pour into fish-filled water streaming toward New Haven Harbor.

Now he wants to find out if we should worry about that. And if it’s legal.

For six years Pylypiw, a chemistry professor at Quinnipiac Univerity, and his students have been testing the Quinnipiac River fromt Wallingford down to New Haven Harbor for industrial contaminants.

They’ve found plenty of them, because companies are still allowed to discharge a limited amount of pollutants, by permit. Not until this year, however, did they find a genuine ​“hot spot.”

The spot is right next to a fishing spot and a state park.

The pollutants in question are pthalates, chemicals used in the softening of plastics. The hot spot is in water discharged from a pipe at the base of Toelles Road just east of the Wilbur Cross Parkway within Quinnipiac State Park, where the Q River is merely a stream.

Pylypiw (pictured), who has taught at Quinnipiac for nine years following an 11-year stint as a research chemist at the Connecticut Agriculture Experiment Station in New Haven, did the work this summer along with Assistant Professor of Chemistry Courtney McGinnis and several students including John Chiari and Jake Laperche.

On a recent bright, crisp day the crew of teacher and student researchers took this reporter down to the pipe that until this May had not been running. The team discovered it in late May, took samples, along with samples of water at at least four other points along the banks and in the middle of the river, from the shore and by boat from North Haven to Hamden and where the river runs wide entering New Haven Harbor.

Pylpiw has received grants for these environmental studies over six years from the Greater New Haven Community Foundation-administered Quinnipiac River Fund.

The latest findings, recently published by the foundation, showed that in general pthalates in the river had abated. That was the good news of the report, which you can read in detail here.

The bad news: the effluent from this pipe contained other chemicals new to the study: phenothiazine, vinyl ether monomers, and hexamethyl melamine. These are also, like pthalates, plasticizers, used in the making of PVC pipe and other plastic products.

These had never been recorded before.

Even more alarming, the water coming out of the pipe, both during the 20 or 30 sampling visits throughout the summer as well as on the visit with a reporter, was four to five degrees warmer than normal river water.

Students, John Chiari and Jake Laperche, wearing rubber gloves, took samples. , ​“The warmth indicates it’s not natural,” Pylypiw said, ​“not a run-off from a stream or storm sewer. From what we understand it’s [from] a cooling process for an industrial process.”

“The new elements are unique to this location. We’ve targeted this as our ​‘hot spot’ to find out what is happening to fish” that ingest it.

Because some chemical discharge is allowed by permit, overseen by the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection [DEEP}, Pylypiw was also at pains to point out that while the chemicals are harmful, the discharge may not be illegal.

When he reported the findings of the grant to the foundation, officials there notified DEEP.

DEEP in turn notified Pylypiw that the pipe belongs to the Nucor Steel Company, whose plant is nearby. DEEP plans to follow up with the company, according to DEEP emails sent to Pylypiw. The company did not respond to requests for comments for this article. DEEP spokesman Dennis Schain told that Independent that the agency is ​“trying to get the test results from the professor to evaluate them. Definitely Nucor in the area has a permit for a discharge but there’s no way to know at this point if they or anyone else is doing anything outside the scope of their permit. We are aware and involved and engaged to determine if some additional actions are necessary.”

On To Professor McGinnis’s Fish Tank

After the team returned to the Quinnipiac University chemistry department, where all the work on the project has been done and is ongoing, it set about to do a chemical analysis of the sampling.

Chiari and Laperche, both undergraduate pre-med majors, then were dispatched to go back to the pipe, about a mile from the campus, to retrieve ten more gallons of the effluent from the pipe.

McGinnis (pictured) will pour that into a tank in her lab and drop mummichogs into it. The fish will swim in the effluent-laden water while nearby similar fish are swimming in clean water, the control group, said McGinnis.

“After seven to ten days, we take out the fish and look at the liver, brain, and gonad” and compare what they see to the control group. ​“We know what the parts should look like and we compare it to [the fish parts] the water from the pipe.”

The use of these fish, which are native to Long Island Sound, is done in accordance with protocols established at the school for animal testing, said Pylypiw.

Pylypiw said he is passing the baton of the research on to his younger colleague. For the past six years, the focus has been on chemical analysis of the waters of the Q River.

“Our future efforts are [going to be] directed at changes of gene expression in fish as a result of industrial pollution,” she added.

While he harbored, it was clear, strong personal opinions, Pylypiw repeatedly wanted to emphasize that his role, and that of the grant funded study are purely investigative and educational, helping students ​“get their feet wet,” he said pointing out his own pun, in environmental science and its methodologies.

Whether what Nucor is doing is illegal and whether fish caught in the river should be eaten, he would say. He did say, ​“I don’t eat fish.”

That people are catching fish and right beside the pipe off Toelles Road is clear. The professor pointed out two green chairs not five feet from the pipe in which he observed anglers during the samplings.

McGinnis expects to write a grant to pursue the question on the biological impact on aquatic life in the Q River later this year.