TodaySewer plant regulations could be rewritten
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Article RatingA state Department of Environmental Protection committee agreed this week on retooled regulations for wastewater treatment plants to comply with the Chesapeake Bay Tributary Strategy.
Those involved say the changes address concerns about fairness expressed by wastewater treatment officials.
In the key change, DEP proposes to regulate treatment plants based on actual flows instead of numbers projected for 2010. DEP will meet with the federal Environmental Protection Agency on Nov. 17 to get final approval for the new plan.
The difference will make for a more fair and equitable process, says state Sen. Patricia Vance, R-31, who got involved in discussions earlier this year along with state Rep. Jerry Nailor, R-88.
"I feel much better about it," Vance told members of the West Shore Chamber of Commerce. "It's not wonderful, but it's so much better."
Treatment plants discharging at least 400,000 gallons per day are targeted by the new regulations, which propose lowering the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus released each year to the Susquehanna River watershed from Pennsylvania treatment plants by nearly 40 million pounds. That's said to be a 34 percent reduction from 2002 levels.
"The point-source committee felt that was a more equitable distribution of the pounds because it's based on design flow," says Jodi Reese, a committee member and an engineer who works with wastewater treatment plants.
The revised plan will be put on public display sometime in late November, Hines says.
As proposed, about 184 municipal treatment plants in 31 Pennsylvania counties -- including 14 plants in Cumberland County -- must meet the new regulations.
In another change, the proposal calls for three phases of compliance based on the size of the treatment plant.
Early last year Gov. Ed Rendell unveiled Pennsylvania's bay strategy, designed by DEP to achieve significant reductions by 2010 in the pollutants that have harmed the bay. These pollutants can come from a variety of sources, including agriculture, stormwater runoff, wastewater treatment plants, septic systems, air pollution and even forests.
Wastewater treatment plants account for just 20 percent of the contaminants flowing into the bay, Reese notes, adding that much more work must be done to achieve a significant effect on the bay.
DEP was moving quickly to implement the wastewater treatment regulations until Vance and Nailor co-sponsored legislation to delay it for nine months so public and legislative input could be considered.
"I believe we need clean water," Vance said. "That was never the question. The question is the way DEP was trying to implement it and the rapidity they were trying to implement it."
