Authority hopes for quick decision on treatment plant
BROWNSVILLE – The Brownsville Municipal Authority is hoping the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) will provide a definitive answer on how large the new treatment plant needs to be during a special meeting on Dec. 18. The session comes three days after the Nov. 15 deadline the DEP set in a consent order for the authority to submit designs for a new plant. The authority has sent several letters to the DEP, emphasizing that minimum-size guidelines are needed before the design can be completed.
“They haven’t officially given us an extension on the consent order,” said Rusty Mechling, the authority’s engineer.
The authority could face fines for not meeting deadlines in the consent order. The authority has asked for an extension in the past, noting that if the DEP did not give it information on its size requirements for the plant by Sept. 15, the firm preparing the plans would not be able to meet the Nov. 15 deadline.
The authority has been under a consent order to upgrade its facilities and to either flood-proof the current plant or build a new plant outside the flood plain. The authority has decided to construct a new plant.
The current plant has a million-gallon-a-day capacity, which the DEP has said is too small to prevent overflows during heavy rainstorms. The authority has provided flow data to the DEP from the various pump stations in the system. A number of the sewers carry both storm water and sewage. The DEP has said that if the authority is to take all of the flow into consideration, a 10-million-gallon-a-day plant would be needed.
Mechling said he anticipates that the authority will need a plant with no more than a four million-gallon-a-day capacity.
“The bottom line on what we want them to get back to is a reasonable-sized plant,” Mechling said.
Mechling said a plant that is too large for the average daily flow at the facility will not work properly.
Mechling said the undiluted sludge coming from the Pennsylvania-American Water treatment plant could also be a sticking point with the DEP.
Mechling said the DEP might require the authority to pump that sludge directly to H Station, near the midpoint of Water Street, instead of letting it go from J Station near the treatment plant to H Station by gravity feed. The authority, meanwhile, is still awaiting payment from the water company for the sludge treatment. The water company has only paid for the service through June.
Mechling said the DEP is also asking for evidence that combined sanitary/storm sewers along Water Street were designed as combined sewers and that permits should be issued for them.
If the permits are not given, the authority may need to separate the storm sewers and the sanitary sewers.