pennstate sewage news (not vti)

Posted on Fri, Jul. 15, 2005


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Millheim to pay for sewage violations

Households could see rate increase

By Pete Bosak

[email protected]


MILLHEIM -- The borough has reached an agreement with the state Department of Environmental Protection to pay a fine and correct a laundry list of violations at its sewage-treatment plant that may end up costing customers as much as $1 million.

Millheim agreed to pay a $6,853 civil penalty and to correct ongoing discharge violations from its Penn Township treatment plant, DEP Regional Director Robert Yowell said Thursday. The DEP said the borough is guilty of 54 discharge violations between January 2000 and May 2004.

Under the agreement, the borough has 150 days to evaluate the plant's troubles and present the DEP with its corrective-action plan, which could affect rates for 338 households served by the facility.

"We don't really know, but it could be half a million to $1 million," said Bob Decker, president of Nittany Engineering and Associates, the borough's engineer, as to potential correction costs. "We won't know until we do the evaluation. It's not going to be cheap.

"That plant's had trouble from day one," Decker said. His firm did not have a part in building the plant 10 years ago.

He said the borough will aggressively pursue grants to offset costs of the repairs, but customers may wind up absorbing some of the bill. "At this point, we don't know what this will mean ... to user rates," Decker said. "It probably will (affect rates) to a certain degree."

Borough Council President Linn Auman could not be reached for comment Thursday.

The evaluation must provide specific target dates for repairing each deficiency. The DEP must review and approve corrective actions before they can be implemented.

"Millheim's sewage-treatment plant has had discharge violations for several parameters going back to 2000," Yowell said. "The borough did attempt to make some changes to correct the violations but they were not successful."

Most of the violations were for exceeding total suspended solids and biochemical oxygen demand -- essentially, exceeding acceptable discharge into Elk Creek. At this point, there are only theories as to why the plant is exceeding discharge content rates, Decker said.

When the plant was built, the borough took out a 40-year loan to pay for it, Decker said. He did not know how much the borough yet owes. It can't recoup costs from the plant's builders. "Now," Decker said, "we have to look forward and find what we need to do to fix it and get this plant working properly."