By By JONATHAN CLAYBORNE
Staff Writer
CHOCOWINITY — The town of Chocowinity is set to confront a water-treatment puzzle that might demand a million-dollar solution.
Potential resolutions involve piping treated-water byproduct to a town water-treatment plant or contracting with a trucking service to haul the discharge to municipal lagoons.
These options could prove costly as the town struggles to find cost-efficient solutions in tight budget times.
The Chocowinity Board of Commissioners may consider the possibilities in January, during its first regular meeting of 2010.
“We’re trying to save a little over a million dollars from having to run another line,” Mayor Jimmy Mobley said.
Estimates from an engineering firm show that the options on the table might range in cost from around $1.23 million to $2.17 million.
While town officials pointed out the fact that no final decisions had been made regarding these proposals, town and state documents showed that environmental officials are anticipating some sort of action.
Issue defined
A report dated November indicates the town’s Edgewood Drive water treatment plant could face “restrictions” if officials try to increase its treatment capacity.
The report also indicates the town can’t reasonably continue to release the byproduct of the Edgewood plant’s treatment process into a nutrient-sensitive waterway in the Pamlico-Tar basin.
The report was attributed to Rivers &Associates, a Greenville engineering firm contracted by the town.
The difficulty is that the Edgewood plant’s treatment process results in the release of salty water into a freshwater environment, related Al Hodge, supervisor in the surface water-protection section of the state’s Division of Water Quality.
Based in Washington, Hodge’s office oversees local governments’ water-quality operations in 21 counties in the northeast corner of the state.
The push to stop releasing the discharge isn’t a response to new regulation, but is part of a DWQ administrative effort to systematically re-evaluate water-treatment plants, Hodge related.
Salty discharge from the Edgewood facility is a consequence of the town’s water-treatment process, and there’s nothing wrong with that, Hodge said.
“The issue here is that they’re not discharging that to salt water,” he said. “They’re putting that in a freshwater environment.”
This mixing of the waters came to the fore as the town sought renewal of a state permit allowing the continuing discharge of treated-water byproduct from the Edgewood plant.
The Rivers report and state documents available online refer to the discharge point as a pipe that feeds brine effluent into “an unnamed tributary to Maple Branch.”
According to the report, “Maple Branch is classified as C-Swamp Nutrient Sensitive Water (NSW) waters in the Tar-Pamlico River Basin.”
“Salty water is not a bad thing if you discharge it into a brackish or saline environment,” Hodge noted.
But if salty water is released into a freshwater creek or ditch, “It kills critters,” he added.
“As far as harmful to human beings or folks like that, no,” Hodge said. “It’s essentially salt water. It’s not gonna harm people and stuff, but it ain’t real good for the critters in that dry ditch or stream.”
Heather Jacobs Deck, the Pamlico-Tar riverkeeper with the nonprofit Pamlico-Tar River Foundation, wouldn’t comment on the town’s permit because she isn’t familiar with the specifics of the Edgewood facility.
She did say that if the state is advising that the waterway in question is a freshwater body, the town’s saline-effluent discharge “will have negative impacts on certain aquatic life, including bugs and fish.”
“Certain organisms are tolerant and adaptive to salt and others are not,” she said.
Studies indicate that, given time, freshwater bodies will recover once salt intrusion is mitigated, Deck noted.
The options
The draft report from Rivers was released by Jeff Haddock, the town’s public-works director.
The report sets forth several options for addressing the trouble with Edgewood, but states that a no-change option is not viable.
“No change in disposal of the Edgewood Drive Water Treatment Plant’s backwash waste will result in the inability to pass a freshwater whole effluent toxicity test,” the report says.
It adds, “As such, the No-Action Alternative is not feasible.”
The town may have to pursue new treatment-plant technologies or discharge its effluent at a new location, depending on toxicity tests that will be performed under the new permit, according to Hodge.
The Rivers report apparently narrows the range of workable decisions.
“The alternatives involving hauling or pumping the Edgewood Drive (plant) waste to the (town’s) Hill Road (water-treatment plant) described within are the only alternatives considered feasible,” the report reads.
According to Haddock, the town received a draft renewal permit from the state about a week ago.
“We’re pretty much waiting on the state,” he said.
The ultimate destination of the Edgewood discharge appears to hinge partly on future toxicity tests, samples for which will be taken from the effluent, Hodge indicated.
The tests will show whether or not wildlife is being harmed by the discharge, he said.
After the tests, the town may be able to modify its treatment process, Hodge explained.
New testing requirements for effluent toxicity come with the renewed permit, he said.
A letter from Hodge to the town asserts that the Edgewood facility “discharges a saline effluent into a fresh water environment.”
“This type of discharge can be incompatible with water quality standards for fresh water,” Hodge conveys in the letter, which is dated July 24, 2006. “This letter is to notify you that upon renewal of your permit that whole effluent toxicity (WET) monitoring will be required and that requests for expansion for this type of discharge will likely be denied.”
DWQ recommended that the town commission an engineering evaluation of the plant discharge “to determine other available options.”
Haddock said the town sends its water samples to a Greenville lab called Environment-1.
The draft permit mandates a fresh list of samples that will raise the town’s testing costs and frequency, he said.
“That was pretty much doubled on what we’re currently doing,” he commented.
Haddock said he has contacted the lab seeking cost proposals.
“I guess the state tells you you’re going to test this then you’ve got to see what it’s going to cost you,” he said.
Washington declines
One option, apparently closed to the town, would have involved piping Chocowinity’s saline effluent to a city of Washington wastewater-treatment plant.
That option was shot down in a July 7 letter to DWQ from Adam Waters, water-resources superintendent with the city.
“The City of Washington will not accept brine of this concentration at the head of our (treatment plant) from any industrial pretreatment discharge, nor will we accept this discharge from any other municipality,” Waters’ letter reads. “The brine is toxic to the microorganisms upon which our activated sludge treatment process is based.”
“What the state typically requests of somebody that’s applying for a renewal for discharge is to look at alternatives, ways to get that discharge out of the stream that it’s discharging into,” Waters told the Daily News.
Speaking of the town’s byproduct, he added, “It could cause an upset in our plant and cause us not to meet our discharge limits in our wastewater-treatment plant.”