Several sewer spills earlier this month required the state Environmental Protection Division (EPD) to be notified.
Ellijay-Gilmer County Water and Sewerage Authority Director Gary McVey discussed the spills at the wastewater treatment plant, located at 64 Merk Davis Road, with water and sewer board members in a meeting last Monday.
The water authority issued a public service announcement about the spills and results of testing last week, although the spills occurred May 9, 10 and 12. McVey said test sample lab results had to come back before the authority knew whether or not a violation had occurred.
“We put the notice out as soon as we got the results back,” he added. “If we’re over our limits, we have to issue a notice.”
The spills, which consisted of a total of 2,936 kg of total suspended solids (TSS, waterborne particles such as sand, sediment and plankton), and 784.16 kg of biological oxygen demand (BOD, the amount of oxygen consumed by bacteria and other microorganisms while they decompose organic matter), were short in duration, said the public advisory. McVey said the wastewater was released into the Coosawattee River, which is the facility’s discharge site for treated wastewater.
“EPD was notified during the time we were having these issues,” he added.
The spills consisted of wastewater that had already been partially treated, not raw sewage, McVey noted. The discharge was still out of EPD limits on several things including TSS, BOD and phosphorus content.
“We have several violations in exceeding our limits (in those areas),” McVey said. “Because of the events that occurred on those three days, we did not meet our weekly limit for those things. By EPD’s definition, if you’re over your limit by so much (you have to call it a spill). During all this, we were able to keep our ammonia and other things within limit.”
Planned equipment outages for rebuild projects at the plant and prolonged high influent flows could have contributed to the spills occurring, noted the advisory.
One of those pieces of equipment, an automated bar screen that removes large solids from wastewater being treated, was removed in April and expected to soon be replaced. The manufacturer of the bar screen supplied the crews to replace the device. Issues at the plant started shortly thereafter, as the screen replacement took longer than it should have, McVey told board members Mike Gibbs, Hubert Parker, Billy Rowe and Ricky Wimpey.
“That seems to be one of the major contributing factors. That is a major piece of equipment for the plant, and it did cause us some problems, especially during the week of May 7-13,” he said. “(First), they sent a crew in, and they took the old unit out and removed the screen. That crew was pretty incompetent and wasn’t able to complete the job. They left, and we started having issues due to that screen being down. They finally got a competent crew that is now fixing the issues. Hopefully we will have that screen back up and running (this week).”
A temporary replacement screen was put in place and the new automated bar screen was installed last week, McVey said on Monday.
He told board members that the plant has been in compliance since after the third spill and the plant staff did a good job “trying to mitigate the situation the best they could” and, without those steps, “it could have been a lot worse.”
In accordance with Georgia EPD protocol, signage has been placed along the river for public notice and water samples will be collected upstream and downstream for the next year, McVey noted.
Gibbs, the water board’s chairman, asked if any EPD fines have resulted from the spills. McVey said they probably won’t know for another month or so.
If fines are levied, they will be the responsibility of Woodard and Curren, he added. The Maine-based engineering and infrastructure operations company, which has an Atlanta office, has overseen operation of the wastewater plant since being approved to do so by board members in 2020.
“Most likely Woodard and Curren will take care of (any fines). That’s in the agreement with them,” McVey said.