Wastewater

State, county and township officials say they don't know what prompted federal agents to take the unusual step of confiscating records at the Bristol Township Wastewater Treatment Plant in June, and a federal grand jury to subpoena workers there in March. The Environmental Protection Agency sent criminal investigators to the plant on the Delaware River on June 30. Agents with search warrants carted boxes of documents from the plant. "It does seem pretty unusual to me," said Bob Wendelgass of Clean Water Action, a lobbying group that monitors enforcement of the Clean Water Act. The act is one of about a dozen laws the EPA enforces nationally.

Agents for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency served federal search warrants at the Bristol Township wastewater treatment plant yesterday, EPA spokeswoman Bonnie Smith said. No other information was available, she said. On March 30, federal officials served subpoenas on behalf of the EPA on four employees of the Bristol Township Sewer Department, requiring them to testify before a grand jury in April. Messages left for officials at the township office were not returned.

A plan to convert 99 acres of fertile Chester County farmland that was under permanent protection for agricultural use to a field for wastewater disposal has been struck down by a Chester County Court judge. The ruling, issued last week by Judge Thomas G. Gavin, upheld an earlier decision by the Chester County Agricultural Land Preservation Board that said the proposed use violated the terms of a 10-year-old agreement between the county and Ox-View Farms. Gavin's ruling also chided the landowner for trying to double-dip into the public purse, and it has prompted county officials to close the loophole to preclude others from trying the same thing.

The City of Reading agreed yesterday to pay $239,000 to settle federal and state allegations that it repeatedly fouled the Schuylkill with insufficiently treated industrial and household wastewater. The city's aging treatment plant discharged excessive levels of various pollutants, including mercury, "suspended solids," and ammonia-nitrogen, more than 750 times, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Such pollutants are an issue not only in Reading but downstream in Philadelphia, which gets much of its drinking water from the Schuylkill.

A Valley Forge chemical company has agreed to resolve charges that it violated the federal Clean Water Act at plants in Chester, Baltimore and St. Louis. Federal prosecutors in Philadelphia and Baltimore filed felony environmental charges Monday against PQ Corp. It is accused of knowingly discharging improperly treated wastewater on several occasions in the 1990s. A grand jury in St. Louis returned an indictment last week concerning a plant in that city. Michael Imbriani, PQ's executive vice president, said "the company looks forward to appearing before the court with the government" to resolve the issues.

Let's hope new law gets EPA to clean up its act On Dec. 16, Gov. McGreevey signed landmark legislation to protect New Jersey's drinking water and ensure safer cleanups of Superfund sites, such as the GEMS landfill in Gloucester Township ("Governor approves GEMS sanction," Dec. 17). The new law prohibits sewer systems from accepting wastewater from Superfund site landfills, and requires onsite cleanup and discharge when radioactive contaminants are present. The legislation, sponsored by State Sens.

Coal mines dump millions of gallons of unwanted wastewater into rivers every day. A nuclear plant needs millions of water a day for its cooling process. While the two have tried to work things out before, the deal always fell through. Not this time. By the end of this month, the Limerick nuclear power plant will reduce its take from Point Pleasant on the Delaware River, turning instead to wastewater from a coal mine in Schuylkill County. "It's a very novel and innovative concept," Cathleen Meyers, Delaware River Basin commissioner, said before voting to approve a four-to-five-month trial run of the plan last month.

Four years after an overextended sewage plant spewed partially treated wastewater into the Neshaminy Creek, the Bucks County Water and Sewer Authority continues to connect customers, even though the agency has used up its available capacity, plant operators say. The Chalfont-New Britain Joint Sewage Authority, which runs the plant and shares capacity with the county, seeks an injunction that would halt connections to the plant by the county authority...

Foes in the battle over building Seneca High School found themselves back together this week, arguing again over how to handle wastewater that the school will generate. The state Department of Environmental Protection provided the occasion when it held a public hearing on a wastewater permit for a treatment plant at the school - even though the school, on a 153-acre former sod farm in Tabernacle, is more than half-built. A permit was issued a year ago with no hearing, but the new DEP commissioner, Bradley Campbell, decided this year that one was needed.

When Bob Jones steps to the first tee at Hershey's Mill golf course in Malvern, he said, it never crosses his mind that the ground he's treading is irrigated with treated wastewater. "I do not think about the recycled water at all," Jones, who plays the 18-hole course at least twice a week, said recently. "The course is in great shape, and the recycled water has helped. " The course at Hershey's Mill, an upscale retirement community in Chester County near West Chester, was one of the first golf communities in the region to embrace wastewater as a resource instead of dumping it into a nearby stream.