Ischua Creek’s Ancient Course and Modern Crisis

The history of Ischua Creek and updates on the recent disaster

By Clayton L. Hulin, R.N.

An Ancient Path

Long before factories and permits, Ischua Creek was shaped by ice. Before the last Ice Age, the creek likely flowed north, following gravity toward a different watershed. When the glaciers came, they blocked that valley with massive deposits of rock, gravel, and till. The water had no choice but to turn around. It carved a new channel southward, where it still flows today into Oil Creek and eventually the Allegheny River.

That ancient reversal left a signature. The northern part of the creek, around Machias and Five Mile Road, sits in a wide, slow-moving valley. It used to be the old delta. Today, it behaves like a stream that is confused about where its mouth should be. The southern stretch, heading down toward Maplehurst, is narrow, fast, and steep. It looks like a much younger stream. That mismatch affects everything from sediment flow to water temperature.

While hiking along Ischua Creek, I saw several of the pools an old DEC hand once described. Slow-moving, quiet stretches that do not quite behave like headwaters. The delta head is vague but there, worn down by time and water. You can see it if you know what to look for. The shape of the land still remembers where the creek used to go, even if the water does not.

It also makes the creek uniquely vulnerable when something goes wrong.

According to EPA enforcement records, Great Lakes Cheese has violated its discharge permit at least twenty times since the plant opened in late 2024. In 2024 the company was permitted to discharge 547,143 pounds of Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) into Ischua Creek, but records show they discharged 2.63 million pounds, nearly five times that amount. By July 2025, the company had discharged 6.65 million pounds of TDS, almost double its 3.67 million pound annual limit. Phosphorus, ammonia, and residual chlorine also exceeded legal limits by wide margins, with residual chlorine at one point measured at twenty six times the allowable amount. Measurements of Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD₅) showed similar violations, a signal that oxygen starved water was inevitable (Benson, WGRZ, 2025).

These numbers are not abstractions. They explain why Ischua Creek turned deadly.

Enforcement That Fails

Why was this not stopped? Former DEC staff point to a long pattern inside the Division of Water. Many staff come from engineering backgrounds, with little training in fish and wildlife. Too often the mission of protecting habitat bends to industry pressure. Oversight falls away until the damage is so obvious it cannot be ignored.

This is not speculation. It is lived history. Other western New York streams have suffered repeated kills while DEC rationalized inaction. That pattern appears to have played out again.

Tributaries as Lifelines

The strength of Ischua Creek does not come from its main channel alone. It comes from its veins, the tributaries like Raub Creek that feed into it. These side streams are small but essential. They carry cool water, oxygen, and life into the larger system. They provide refuge for salamanders, frogs, and trout fry. They are, in effect, the capillaries of the watershed.

When a tributary runs clear, it gives the whole creek a chance to recover. When it runs foul, the damage multiplies. Living next to Raub Creek, I see this daily. In its springs I have found small reddish salamanders that testify to clean, cold water. They are living indicators of balance. Lose them, and you lose more than a species, you lose the coherence of the field that keeps the larger stream alive.

What Recovery Demands

If Great Lakes Cheese is to continue operating, two immediate steps should be required. First, public text alerts for all discharges, sent an hour before release, giving farmers, recreationists, and neighbors time to react. Second, clear public access and a livestream of the discharge outlet. If a release is safe, it should be safe enough to announce. If it is not safe enough to announce, it should not be happening.

Longer term, stricter permit standards and genuine monitoring are non negotiable. Benson’s reporting already shows that existing limits were too high for a stream as fragile as the Ischua, and that violations were ignored until the creek collapsed. New rules must require more advanced treatment, independent monitoring, and public accountability.

Update: Company Response

On September 16, Great Lakes Cheese told 7 News WKBW that it is no longer discharging wastewater into Ischua Creek. Instead, the company says it is containing and testing wastewater on site, then hauling it to permitted farms for disposal.

But this raises a harder question. If the “solution to pollution is dilution,” then which waterway must now absorb the load? Manure lagoons and farm fields are not voids. They drain into streams, ditches, and aquifers. The Ischua may get relief, but where does the burden fall next?

Are we content to move pollution from one community to another, or will we finally confront it at the source? Until that question is answered, containment is not resolution. It is relocation.

And here is what is still missing: responsibility. Not just for this season’s kill, but for the years of violations that made it possible. It would not be strange, or even radical, for a company to step forward and say, We did this. We damaged this creek. Now we will make it right.

What would that look like? Perhaps adopting the full length of the Ischua they scarred, pledging to restore it mile by mile. Planting trees where banks eroded. Restocking fish where pools were emptied. Funding the science and stewardship needed to bring it back whole.

The path forward is not withdrawal or silence. It is to stand alongside the people who live here, to join with us as neighbors and caretakers. Every gesture of restoration says, we belong here with you. As long as Great Lakes Cheese stays apart from its new community, the wound remains open. But if they step toward us, with honesty and responsibility, the story can change, from damage and distrust to repair and renewal.

A Crisis That Almost Landed Elsewhere

The Great Lakes Cheese plant was not always planned for Franklinville. It was originally sited for Allegany County, along the banks of the Genesee River. That plan was blocked. It did not go forward. And thank God.

Because if this same disaster, with the same discharges and the same failure of oversight, had played out on the Genesee, the cost would have been staggering. Picture thousands of dead fish flowing over the cliffs of Letchworth. Carp, pike, and trout washing through the gorge, past hikers, tourists, and cameras. You can hear the headlines. See the outrage. The DEC would have been on it overnight.

Do not misunderstand me. The tragedy on the Ischua is horrific in its own right. Hundreds, maybe thousands of fish dead. Habitat lost. Amphibians gone. A coldwater stream shaken to its core. The damage is real. But because it happened in a quieter place, the response has been quieter too.

That should not be.

Facing Forward

The only difference between the Genesee and the Ischua is visibility. One draws crowds. The other draws silence. Both carry life. Both are part of New York’s living systems. And both deserve protection.

The publicity generated by this disaster has at least forced daylight onto a problem long in the making. Whether the creek recovers will depend on whether we learn from it, or whether we let it fade. As Senator George Borrello put it, “You would think there would be an escalation every time to the next level… it is concerning that there were this many violations.”

We cannot wait for another kill to force action.

The Ischua will either remain a dumping ground, or it will be restored to what it was always meant to be. The choice is ours, and the time is now.