Sewage operator ponders options

By Antigone Barton

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, December 06, 2006

The sewer plant that sought permission last year to continue discharging
partly treated waste into the ocean for another five years now has asked
the state to hold off on issuing a permit while the plant investigates
alternative ways to dispose of the waste.

For the past year, the sewer plant serving Delray Beach and Boynton
Beach has continued to discharge 13 million gallons a day of partly
treated sewage without a current permit while negotiating a plan to
monitor the effects on a nearby coral reef. The state received that plan
Tuesday, setting the stage for a new permit, Department of Environmental
Protection spokesman Stephen Webster said.

But a DEP official agreed to delay drafting a permit until the sewer
plant's board meets next week to discuss other disposal methods.

As the plant's proposal to further filter and disinfect the sewage and
then inject it deep into the ground would take at least two years to
implement, the agency probably will proceed with its plan to issue a
two-year permit. That permit would require testing but set no limits on
the amounts of potentially algae-feeding pollutants the plant can
discharge, DEP assistant district director Tim Rach said.

County environmental officials have asked the state twice to restrict
the amount of nutrient-laden pollutants that the plant can discharge
into the ocean. Palm Beach County Environmental Resources Management
officials have cited reports linking a bloom of toxic algae on the reef
to the amounts of nutrients the plant discharges into the sea, and cited
the economic value of the reef, estimated to bring $194 million a year
to Palm Beach County and to sustain 6,000 jobs here.

The DEP did not respond to the requests, said resources management
Director Richard Walesky, but the DEP's Rach recently said the agency
has not seen proof that partly treated sewage harms the ocean.

(This is the kind of horseshit we face. The department of environmental
protection is unaware of thousands of studies proving harm, resulting in
closure of hundreds of thousands of sewer outfalls. They say this sh.t 
with a straight face. - esg)

After divers noticed toxic algae on the Gulf Stream Reef directly
downstream of the plant's discharge pipe four years ago, they formed the
nonprofit Reef Rescue which reported the bloom to DEP officials. When
DEP officials did not respond to that report, the group submitted three
more reports, using data from the sewer plant and showing a correlation
between the amount of nutrients discharged and the growth of the algae.

The DEP has since invited Reef Rescue to review the plant's monitoring plan.

DEP Secretary Colleen Castille sent an e-mail to Reef Rescue Director Ed
Tichenor in August saying she and other agency officials, "frankly just
don't believe it is good policy to have low-treated wastewater spewed
onto our reefs."

Studies dating to the '90s have linked ocean sewage discharge to algae
blooms and the resulting death of coral reefs.

Recently, however, the DEP chalked up county environmental officials'
concerns to "some sort of relationship between the county and the Reef
Rescue group," Webster said.

Tichenor reacted by saying, "That's like, if we say it's a good idea to
wash your hands after you go to bathroom, and the county agrees with us,
that means we have a relationship?"

Walesky said, "We certainly share some of the conclusions they've drawn
from the utility's data."

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