Authority in hot water over debris
DEP determines AWA violated Solid Waste Management Act
The state Department of Environmental Protection has filed a violation notice against the Altoona Water Authority for its long-standing practice of putting mildly contaminated debris collected on the screens of its combined sewer overflows to dry in open pits before sending it to a landfill.
In keeping with a remedial plan, the authority has trucked in sawdust, mixed it with the material -- which includes grit from street inlets and silt from the Mariner II East pipeline project -- and moved most of it under a storage pavilion in preparation for transport to a landfill.
"The authority made a mistake," said Wastewater Operations Director Todd Musser on Thursday, the day after City Council was informed of the violation by former authority custodian Rick Alberts. He was fired in 2017 after complaining about Musser, a firing that violated discrimination laws, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which also found that Musser hadn't actually harassed Alberts as charged.
The DEP has determined that in depositing the material in pits, the authority violated the Solid Waste Management Act, which prohibits the placing of "any solid waste onto the surface of the ground without a permit," according to the violation notice, provided to the Mirror by Musser. The pits and storage pavilion are located at the Westerly Sewer Treatment Plant.
While it violated the Solid Waste Management Act to place the grit from the inlets and the pipeline sit in the pits, the real environmental issue is the screening debris from the two overflows, because it comes into contact with sanitary sewage, as it mixes with storm runoff in the combined sewer systems that serve the center of Altoona -- and because the pits in which the screenings have been placed are unlined, Musser said.
That means water leaching from the contaminated debris could percolate to the groundwater, theoretically, Musser said.
The CSOs are activated an average of 38 times a year, during significant rains, when the sewer plants can't handle the increased flow, according to Musser and the authority website.
The flow is diverted, first to the 1 million-gallon-plus CSO tanks, one at Tuckahoe Park and the other on Bellwood Avenue. When those tanks are filled, the overflow is diverted to nearby streams.
As the water enters the CSO tanks, screens with 2-inch openings catch debris that had accumulated in the combined sewer lines and from the streets -- leaves, paper, cans and bottles, Musser said.
As the water enters, it automatically activates rakes rotating on chains around a vertical frame to pick the debris from the screens and deposit it onto a conveyor belt, which carries it to a bin within the CSO building for removal after the storms.
The debris is only slightly contaminated because of the great volume of rainwater that mixes with sanitary effluent residue washed from the bottom of the sewer lines or released from laterals during the actual storms, according to Musser.
Musser couldn't say whether the DEP is likely to impose a fine.
"(This is) neither an order nor any other final action of the department," the notice states. "It neither imposes nor waives any enforcement action available."
The authority was fortunate in having room in the pavilion to place the material from the pits for now, according to Musser.
The pavilion is there for storage of biosolids from the Westerly plant, and in the past has been full of that material awaiting disposal on farm fields.
The authority recently was able to get rid of much of its biosolid after getting approval for disposal on four additional farms, bringing the total to seven.
The pit material will be kept separate from the biosolids in the pavilion.
The authority will hire a hauler to take that pit material -- "grit, screenings and silt" -- to a landfill, after testing shows it qualifies for landfill disposal, Musser said.
It should qualify with no trouble, Musser said.
While acknowledging that the pit disposal practice was improper all along, Musser wondered about the attention it's receiving, given that the potential environmental harm is slight -- probably less than that created by the discharge of 100 million gallons or more of actual combined sewer overflow water to streams during big storms at the CSO sites.
The authority has been placing the material from the CSO screens, from the inlets and from the pipeline borings in the pits to dry before taking it to landfills because landfilled material must not be wet enough to cause seepage through a paint filter and because it's cheaper to landfill when material has lost the weight of the water it carries, Musser said.
Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.