Pennsylvania environmental regulators are investigating how much fuel oil leaked into the Lackawanna River from an abandoned above-ground tank.
The Times-Tribune of Scranton reported that the Department of Environmental Protection was alerted Saturday by a fisherman who noticed discolored plants along the river near Scranton's Poplar Street bridge.
Investigators tracked the leak to a tank at a defunct steam energy plant that shut down in 2006 after heating buildings in downtown Scranton for 130 years.
DEP spokeswoman Colleen Connolly says the fuel oil probably seeped through the ground and entered the river from a drainage pipe underneath the bridge.
Charlie Charlesworth of Trout Unlimited says plants are discolored almost two miles downriver. The DEP placed containment booms in the river to contain any further leaking.
