(12/8) At the December City Council workshop, Taneytown City Manager Jim Wieprecht proposed establishing a policy to govern the pace of future developments that would utilize the City waste Water treatment plant.
Wieprecht expressed concern over repeated non-compliance letters the City has been receiving from the State’s Department of the Environment over the Waste Water Treatment plant’s ongoing struggle with meeting total nitrogen and total phosphorus limits.
While the plant can handle the average flow of one million gallons per day, flow can increase to up to 7 million gallons in inclement weather, overloading the plant’s dilution system, resulting in the plant discharging more pounds of nitrogen or phosphorus than normal, and often exceeding the state imposed limits.
As the plant is most challenged when ‘inflow’ is greatest, minimizing unnecessary inflow into the sewer system from groundwater leaking into old piping is a primary according to Wieprecht.
While the City is actively working on fixing old sewer lines, some of the work is not scheduled to be completed until December of next year. While the fixing of old leaky sewer lines will reduce inflows to the treatment plant, every new house built in the city will increase the flow.
Wantz said it will take at least 18 months before the city can get it hands around how successful they have been in addressing the wild water issue, and with it, the total amount of water the plant can expect to have to process in bad weather. By limiting the increase in normal daily treatment flows resulting form new homes – the greater the amount of wild water inflow the treatment plant can work with.
To limit the growth in daily normal wastewater flow, Wantz recommend a moratorium on new water or sewer allocations for new homes or developments until the effectiveness of the repairs are known.
Wieprecht recommend that the City develop a policy, or plan on allocation that could be made public and updated frequently.
While agreeing on the need to minimize the frequency of the violations in wastewater discharges, City Attorney Gallo recommend that any allocation plan take into account that there are developments already approved that need to be factored in, and that any decision on future allocations be focused on future developments not those currently in the approved pipeline. In addition, he recommended that a policy be developed that spaces out new developments within the town going forward.
