It’s not hyperbole to call the Connoquenessing Creek’s nomination for Pennsylvania River of the Year honors a stunning turnaround.

The waterway, which is a tributary of the Beaver River, has come a long way in the last 17 years. In 2000 Connoquenessing Creek was rated the second-most polluted waterway in the United States, behind only to the Mississippi River. And concerns about its water quality stretch back even further than that.

In 1999 the creek was so polluted with nitrate compounds from the nearby AK Steel factory that Zelienople, which at that time drew its drinking water from the creek during times of drought, advised pregnant women and children not to drink tap water.

A year later, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued an emergency order to AK Steel requiring it to reduce nitrate levels. And in 2002 the agency issued a report that determined oversight failures at both the state and federal level contributed to the creek’s poor condition. In fact, according to the EPA report, for two years state officials weren’t even aware that there was a problem with the Connoquenessing’s water quality.

But edicts and finger-pointing would have effectively been the beginning and end of the response, had it not been for Christina Handley and the Allegheny Aquatic Alliance.

Formed in 2012, the alliance has spent six years organizing and hosting cleanup events up and down the Connoquenessing, attempting to mitigate everything from garbage dumped into the waterway to pollutants like acid mine drainage and silt.

We’d posit that they’ve been successful beyond most peoples’ wildest dreams.

According to the Alliance, this year’s cleanup of the waterway was the most successful of any in the six years the group has been pulling junk out of the Connoquenessing.

In October the Alliance said summer cleanups in 2017 removed 85,732 pounds of garbage, including 1,436 tires, from a 19-mile stretch of the creek between Evans City and Ellwood City.

Since 2012 hundreds of volunteers have helped the Alliance remove more than 360,000 pounds of garbage from the creek. The group has also constructed public creek access points and boat launches, using grant money from the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, and hosted outreach and educational events to inform people about water pollution in general and specific threats to the creek itself.

It hasn’t all been sunshine and rainbows for the Connoquenessing in recent years.

In 2016 the state Department of Environmental Protection fined the shale gas pipeline company Stonehenge Appalachia LLC $1.5 million for discharging drilling fluids and causing a landslide that damaged the Little Connoquenessing Creek, a popular fishing stream in Connoquenessing Township and a tributary of the Connoquenessing. A DEP news release called the violations “egregious and avoidable,” and added that they “never should have occurred.”

Despite the avoidable damage, the creek is likely healthier now than it has been at any point in the last two decades. That’s more than enough reason to celebrate both it and the people who have given their time and energy to rehabilitate the waterway.