Bucks County Casino Owners Ordered to Stop Polluting

Citing a history of violations and non-compliance, the Department of Environmental Protection today ordered the owners Parx Casino and Parx Racing facilities in Bensalem, Bucks County, to clean up their site to comply with environmental laws and regulations.

“More than 1,200 horses are being kept on a property where manure-laden stormwater and wastewater continually impact the Neshaminy Creek watershed,” said DEP Southeast Regional Director Joseph A. Feola. “This untenable situation must end.”

The department’s order requires the owners of both operations to complete many short- and long-term projects that will stabilize the site and eliminate environmental threats.

Within the next two weeks, the racetrack owners must stop washing manure into storm grates, implement a water conservation plan, improve their efforts to collect and manage wastewater, and inspect their stormwater and sanitary sewage systems weekly.

Other short-term requirements include stabilizing all bare earth throughout the site and submitting a report to DEP that identifies any wetlands that may have been filled.

Once DEP approves that report, Parx officials must submit within 30 days a wetlands replacement and restoration plan to the department and an erosion and sediment control plan to the Bucks County Conservation District. Once those plans have been approved, the work must be completed within 120 days.

By June 30, the owners must replace all existing manure storage systems with covered roll-off bins and apply for permits to build a covered manure storage facility and an enclosed horse washing facility. They also must submit a revised nutrient management plan to the Bucks County Conservation District.

Within 90 days, the race track owners are required to submit a plan and schedule for installing stormwater inlets to improve the quality of the water reaching their catch basins and must repair malfunctioning valves that have allowed stormwater mixed with sewage to enter a nearby stream.

DEP has been working with Parx officials for more than a decade to bring them into compliance with the Clean Streams Law, but the facility has failed to make sufficient improvements.

In addition to ignoring the law, DEP documented through its frequent inspections, instances in which Parx made unapproved changes that have further degraded the environment. In its most recent inspection on March 11, DEP uncovered numerous violations.

In particular, contaminated runoff has long been a problem associated with the race track given the high volume of animals it houses. Pennsylvania put in place aggressive new standards in 2005 to protect rivers and streams from contaminated water runoff associated with large-scale animal operations.

Any operation with more than 500 animals on site must hold a permit as a concentrated animal feeding operation, or CAFO. Despite meeting that threshold, the corporate owners of the racetrack failed to make a good faith effort to obtain a CAFO permit.

For more information on requirements for concentrated animal feeding operations, visit DEP’s website at www.dep.state.pa.us

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