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PLANNING SCHOOLS ENVIRONMENT EROSION
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November 6, 2004
Director, Division of Water and Waste Management, DEP
Attn: Anne Howell, Public Information Office
601 57th Street SE
Charleston, WV 25304-2345
Re: Comments on draft WV/NPDES permit, Appl. No. WV0105724
Dear Director:
Please accept the following comments on the draft NPDES
permit prepared by the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) in
response to an application from Old Standard, LLC., to discharge effluent into
the Shenandoah River from a sewage treatment plant near Millville in Jefferson
County.
Our comments fall into two major categories: the apparently
incorrect information in the draft permit and public notice and the need to
strengthen the permit requirements to protect West Virginia and Chesapeake Bay
waters.
I.
Because of apparently incorrect information in two critical areas in the public
notice and draft permit on this application, a corrected public notice and
draft permit should be issued. A new public comment period should be
established to allow members of the public who may be interested in this case
because of the new, correct information to comment on the draft permit.
First, the public notice appears to wrongly inform the
public of who will be served by the plant. The notice indicates that the sewage
treatment plant is to serve only the Sheridan Subdivision of approximately 3570
people. However, the permit application, which is not printed along with the public
notice and which a person would not request unless information in the notice
aroused interest, indicates that a school, a restaurant, and another
development will be served by the plant. The public notice, as printed, appears
to be incorrect and to therefore mislead the public.
Second, the public appears not to have been accurately
informed as to who is to operate and maintain the system. The public notice
indicates that the sewage treatment plant is privately owned and the draft
permit indicates that Old Standard, LLC, is granted a permit to “acquire,
construct, install, operate, and maintain” the system. Only if members of the
public were to obtain the application would they learn that, according to the
developers, the Jefferson County Public Service District (PSD) “is to operate
and maintain the system and wastewater treatment plant.”
The DEP’s use of apparently inaccurate information in the
public notice and draft permit, including withholding the PSD's role,
is disturbing to us as it seems to favor the developers and place
the public at a disadvantage.
Already this unusual sewage treatment plant arrangement,
put in motion in May 2004, between Old Standard developers and the PSD, has
aroused considerable concern in Jefferson County. For example, one of the
authors of these comments, Susan Rissler Sheely, has filed a complaint about
the PSD/developers’ arrangements with the West Virginia Public Service
Commission (PSC) (04-1026-PSD-C). A September 19, 2004, draft memo from the PSC
staff takes a dim view of this arrangement (1). This questionable situation
comes on the heels of the developer and PSD withdrawing an earlier questionable
arrangement after complaints from the PSC.
The issue of who would operate the plant is significant
in the PSC review as it is to citizens in the county. The PSC case shows that
the PSD will actually own the plant, which is also significant to the citizens.
A PSD-owned plant will have a duty to handle customers outside Sheridan, which
Old Standard would not, since Old Standard is not a utility, and this duty
would entail more issues of pollution from future customers.
Because
of the controversial nature of the PSD/developer activities, we believe the
public ought to be informed in the public notice and in the draft permit if, in
fact, the PSD, a public entity, will be accepting responsibility for operating
and maintaining what the public thinks is a private treatment plant.
We reiterate that the DEP, if it has been in error as we
suggest, should publish a corrected public notice and draft permit on Old
Standard’s NPDES application no. WV0105724 and should offer a new public
comment period on the corrected draft permit.
Without a corrected public notice and draft permit and a
new comment period, the DEP would appear to be favoring the developers’
interest over the public interest.
II. We are concerned that the draft permit does not go far
enough to protect the waters of the Shenandoah River, the Potomac River into
which it flows, and the Chesapeake Bay. As you know, development in the
Eastern Panhandle of West Virginia is contributing to the degradation of the
Chesapeake Bay (2). Most polluting nutrients from point sources arise from
waste water treatment plants and are increasing as a result of population
growth in this region of West Virginia (3). Moreover, the quality of the
Shenandoah and Potomac River waters is critical not only to the health of the
people and the environment in the Eastern Panhandle and the rest of the
watershed but it is also critical to the health and vibrancy of Jefferson
County’s valuable tourist industry.
The permit requirements should be strengthened in several
major respects to ensure no further degradation of these waters. The
revised DEP permit should require:
--Antidegradation determinations for each pollutant (60 CSR
5-5.6);
--Limits for effluent turbidity (47 CSR 10-6.3 implementing
40 CFR 122.44(d)(1));
--Continuous measurement of effluent turbidity;
--Statistically representative effluent sampling: a sample
size of 12 samples per year results in too much variance to be
"representative," especially for an entity with no experience, since
neither the PSD nor Old Standard has operated a treatment plant;
--A description of contingency plans for situations where
the volume of sewage arriving to be treated exceeds the plant’s capacity;
--Monitoring to identify pipe leaks;
--Reporting of pipe leaks and spills.
Finally, we are pleased to note the extreme water-saving
nature of this subdivision, using only 14 gallons per person per day. We urge
the DEP to hold other projects to this same standard.
We are grateful for your consideration of our comments.
Sincerely,
Susan Rissler Sheely
142 Long Marsh Lane
Charles Town, WV 25414
Patricia Rissler
443 Long Marsh Lane
Charles Town, WV 25414
Jane Rissler
6V Plateau Place
Greenbelt, MD 20770
Endnotes:
1) “Staff’s
opposition to motion to dismiss.” PSC staff statement on case no.
04-1026-PSD-C. To S. Squire, PSC Executive Secretary from R. Robertson, PSC
staff, September 19, 2004. Available on the internet at
http://listeners.homestead.com/files/sew-th-psc.htm.
2) “W.Va.
plans to protect bay.” Martinsburg Journal, March 17, 2004.
3) “West
Virginia’s Potomac Tributary Strategy.” Submitted to Chesapeake Bay Program,
March 5, 2004 draft.