Sewage

East Caln's Board of Supervisors is scheduled to meet tomorrow to discuss plans for the expansion of the Downingtown Area Regional Authority's sewage treatment system. The authority recently completed an expansion program that allows the facility to treat up to seven million gallons of sewage a day. Phase III, now being considered, would further increase the plant's capacity, to 12 million gallons daily. The supervisors are to discuss which of 17 construction options, developed by Gannett Fleming Environmental Engineers of Harrisburg, are best suited to expand the system.

The Brookhaven Borough Council's Republican majority has voted, over the objections of the council's Democrats, to scrap the town's aging sewage treatment plant and send the sewage that it now handles to a treatment facility in Aston. The decision came as the council voted, 4-2, at its meeting Monday to sign a contract with the South West Delaware County Municipal Authority for the treatment of the sewage. Democrat Harry Seth abstained. Affected by the decision will be 722 homes, businesses and apartments in an area west of Edgmont Avenue and north of Brookhaven Road.

The Birmingham Township supervisors have approved the concept of community sewage systems in planned residential districts as part of a comprehensive sewage facility plan. The township, which has been using the Chester County Master Sewer Plan drawn up for the Chester County Planning Commission, soon will have its own guidelines under the comprehensive plan. The supervisors and two township Planning Commission members met Monday night to discuss changes in the plan. Fred Turner, a sewage consultant from SMC Martin Inc., consulting engineers of Valley Forge, answered questions and gave advice.

Washington Township sewer authority members have vowed to buy a new generator for the Altair Drive sewage-treatment plant after a power outage last week, which resulted in raw sewage being pumped into nearby Kandle Lake. Until the new generator is purchased, they have put work crews on round- the-clock call because emergency power must be switched on manually. For about a half-hour during a rainstorm and power outage on Thursday, the Altair Drive pump station spilled sewage into the watershed for Kandle Lake, the centerpiece of Jay Kandle's 87-acre family-owned swim club and campground.

When Edward Swager bought the three-bedroom ranch house on 1 1/4 acres in Willistown Township in 1989, he didn't know about the defective septic-tank system. Now he needs a new system that he says will cost him about $25,000. On Tuesday, Willistown supervisors approved an agreement that says Swager will hire a certified sewage-treatment operator to maintain his sewer facilities after they are installed. The township is not responsible for maintaining sewer systems. According to Peter Stevens of Chromaglass Septic Systems in Malvern, many of the homes like Swager's that were built in the 1950s installed sewer systems based on the size of the house and property - not on whether the soil could absorb the sewage.

"Dead sludge" that piled up during a job action at a Southwest Philadelphia sewage plant romped out of its tanks to cause another violation of the plant's discharge limits Friday. Heavy rains sent water from storm sewers racing through the plant, washing dried-up sludge out of primary treatment tanks where it had accumulated, the Water Department said yesterday. The result: a violation of the legal discharge limit of 60 milligrams of treated sewage solids per liter of water.

Media Borough officials were advised Thursday that Thornbury Township gave only "conceptual" approval, not final approval, on March 9 to a developer's plan to dump treated sewage upstream from the borough's water-intake system on Chester Creek. A report of the approval in a local newspaper indicated that the developer had been given the go-ahead by a vote of the township supervisors to build an in-line system dumping 120,000 gallons of sewage daily into Chester Creek. Borough Councilman C. Barry Sherwin, chairman of the council's water and sewer committee, said the report prompted an immediate inquiry by the borough.

Upper Uwchlan supervisors, getting their first look at the sewage treatment planning module for the Waldengate and Walden III developments, had some questions about what they saw. During their regular board meeting Monday, the supervisors questioned project engineer Russell Tatman, of Tatman & Lee in Wilmington, about the two types of treatment systems shown on the project's planning module. Sewage from the developments would be treated by two systems within the Waldengate development along Dorlans Mill and Township Line Roads in the township.

Jack and Judy Luby knew something was wrong at their split-level home in the Forest Hills development in Monroe Township as soon as they pulled into the driveway. They had just returned from visiting his parents in Pennsylvania early that Feb. 8 evening when they found their garage door open and their son, John, 19, motioning for them to come inside. When Jack Luby opened the front door of his Silverbirch Road residence and looked inside, his reaction was, "I couldn't believe it. " Every room on the lower level of his home - including the recreation room, laundry room and his son's bedroom - was covered with a foot of raw sewage.

Mounting concern about the availability of ground water and pollution of the Brandywine is forcing regional sewage-facility planners to take a closer look at sewage-disposal alternatives. In a memo distributed to Phase III members of the Downingtown Area Regional Authority, or DARA, on Thursday night, the authority's engineering consultant, Tom Brown of Gannett Fleming Environmental Engineers, suggested that member municipalities take another look at the potential for spray irrigation.

In the five or so years that Larry MacCluen has taught tennis on the courts of the Wedgewood Swim Club, there have been smells so bad it was enough to make his students gag. He'd move them to a more distant court. "This [the bad smell] has probably happened three or four times a year" for the last four years, MacCluen said. But on March 10, the smell, he said, was "ungodly. " He went to investigate - something he had not done before. In a wooded area not far from the tennis courts, with vegetation bare due to the time of year, he viewed a round cement structure that was spewing smelly, nasty stuff out of a manhole.

A sewage spill in March that has been a concern to some Haddonfield residents has been adequately cleared away and the area has been remediated, according to a spokesman for Camden County. But even if the mess is gone, the furor rages on, with a contested Board of Commissioners race less than a week away. A county Health Department inspector issued no violations to the borough during site visits this week and last, but instructed that the solid matter on the site, in a wooded area not far from the Wedgewood Swim Club, be raked up and the area spread with lime to control bacteria growth, county spokesman Ron Tomasello said.

NEW YORK - New York and New Jersey communities hit by Sandy will get $569 million for improvements to sewage treatment and drinking water facilities, the federal Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday. New York will get $340 million in federal disaster relief funds and $229 million is going to New Jersey, EPA officials said. The massive storm released 11 billion gallons of sewage from East Coast treatment plants into bodies of water from Washington to Connecticut, a report released this week by a science journalism group found.

LANCASTER - A 77-year-old central Pennsylvania man who still uses an outhouse has run afoul of environmental regulations that could cost him tens of thousands of dollars. Wilson Huyett was recently informed by Salisbury Township officials that his outhouse has to go. Township officials said he had to replace the outhouse with a septic system that includes three underground tanks, a pump and a three-trench sand mound. Huyett estimates the cost at $20,000. "I'm not going to spend that much money to put something in I don't really need," the self-reliant Huyett told the the Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era . He insists the outhouse on his 140-acre farm, separated from his closest neighbors by a quarter mile of fields and woods, is not bothering anybody.

A sewage pipe in Burlington Township broke Saturday night, leaking raw sewage into the Burlington Center Mall at the height of the holiday shopping season. Firefighters, the Burlington County Health Department, and other responders were called to the scene, where some shoppers reported feeling sick Sunday morning. No one was taken to the hospital, a spokesman for the county Office of Emergency Management said. The mall never closed, he said. - Andrew Seidman

Sharks or syringes, forget about it. That would totally ruin a beach vacation.   But people are more placid about poo, apparently. Although a raw-sewage spill prompted authorities to ban swimming at three of the busiest beaches in Ocean City, N.J., earlier this week, sunbathers crowded back into the ocean Tuesday afternoon, after Cape May County health officials declared the currents safe. "Considering that Ocean City is seven miles long, I think it's a little bit overblown," said John Millon, 56, of Havertown, who spent Tuesday on the beach at Third Street.

Construction is set to begin on a $50 million project to expand sewage service in undeveloped sections of eastern Camden County, including portions of the Pinelands, laying the groundwork for 10,000 new homes. The county plan - paid for with a low-interest loan from a state environmental fund - comes as the region wrestles with tight municipal budgets caused by the real estate slowdown and shrinking property values. "That part of Camden County that has remained stagnant because of water and sewer issues," said Camden County Freeholder Jeff Nash.

Among the many renewable energy sources — wind, solar, hydroelectric, biofuels — there is one to which we all contribute that has not yet managed to attract the romantic advocates who have embraced other forms of green energy. We're speaking about the gray river of warmth flowing right beneath our feet: sewage. A Philadelphia company, NovaThermal Energy L.L.C. , wants to heat and cool buildings by tapping into the constant, guaranteed heat contained in wastewater.

Swallows usually go south in winter. But in recent years, a particular group seems to have picked one place in all of North America, aside from a slim edge of the balmy Gulf Coast, to spend the coldest months. It's not a pristine forest. Or a pretty field. Hard by Delaware Avenue, in a heavily industrial area where 18-wheelers rumble by and power lines crisscross the sky overhead, is the spot they've picked: the sewage-treatment plant in Northeast Philadelphia. Sewage-treatment plants tend to attract birds - at least part of the time - but apparently this one is way off the charts.

Add flushing a toilet to the list of ways to help the environment. PSE&G is funding a $1.3 million project at Camden County's sewage treatment plant using geothermal technology to heat buildings with raw sewage. The technology is used in Europe and China. Paris' historic sewer system - a popular tourist destination - also has a project in the works. But the local project is believed to be the first of its kind in the United States, said Jack DiEnna, executive director of the Geothermal National and International Initiative, an industry group.