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Warsaw's wastewater treatment plant superintendent Dave Henderson testified at the Statehouse a couple weeks ago before the Senate committee on energy and environmental affairs.
Henderson and other operators are supporting legislation to revise National Pollution Discharge Elimination Standard permit rules outlined in Senate Bill 620. NPDS permits run in five-year cycles. Part of the permitting process reviews outflow from combined wastewater and storm drain pipes.
Communities with combined wastewater and storm drain pipes were directed by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to come up plans to eliminate outflow. Warsaw was one of 103 communities submitting long-term control plans in accordance with the 2001 deadline. The plans call for communities either to separate sewers and storm drains or add to a wastewater treatment plant's capacity to eliminate overflow.
In the last four years, Michigan City is the only city to have its plan approved.
"Only a handful of communities have been assigned case workers to review the projects for approval and we're not one of them," Henderson said. "If everything is built into the NPDS permit, you have a five-year deadline to eliminate overflow. A lot of these projects are going to take a number of years to work through to complete. IDEM has had the plans for four years."
SB 620 addresses the ties between zero outflow compliance and granting of the NPDS permit. Without the permit, a treatment plant cannot operate.
There are 104 communities with combined sewer overflow. Many have overflow - untreated sewage going directly into a ditch, creek or river - during periods of heavy rain, Henderson said. The city's combined line is treated at the old plant in Boggs Industrial Park.
"We are in better shape than most communities. Warsaw only has one CSO. It is about 5-1/2 miles long. The city had many projects to separate sewer and storm lines. It's a rare thing for it to overflow. In Indianapolis, there are more than 100 outflows every time it rains.
"The legislation provides protection, a means of having long-term control plans to reduce overflows over the next 10 to 15 years."
If the Warsaw wastewater treatment plant is at capacity, an overflow event is allowed.
"All we have to do is report it," Henderson said. "Even with the recent rains, we haven't had a problem. As long as doing what we're supposed to be doing, outflow is permissible under certain circumstances."
Henderson said the bill was making progress, and will be taken up in committee again today, amended and sent to the full Senate after that.
"I'm cautiously optimistic," he said about the bill's passage.
