Wastewater plant operator charged with water violations

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20080423/APN/804230885/Wastewater_plant_operator_charged_with_water_violations

Published Wednesday, April 23, 2008

A man who operated the wastewater treatment plant in Dallas has been indicted for dumping pollutants into the Catawba River Basin.

The U.S. Attorney's Office in Charlotte said Wednesday that Kirby Case faces two felony counts for violating the federal Clean Water Act. Case is accused of discharging pollutants from the plant between July and December last year.

The indictment said Case also helped file documents that falsified pollutant levels in water samples taken from the plant. Case faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

Court documents released Wednesday did not list his attorney, and a phone number listed under his name has been disconnected. Case has said he did what was expected of him at the plant and wanted to discuss the case publicly but was advised not to do so by his attorney.

Case and former plant supervisor George Hughes were fired after state officials fined the town a record $141,000 for improper operation and maintenance of the plant. The problems resulted in discharges of poorly treated or untreated wastewater into the Dallas Branch stream, which was blanketed for a half-mile with sludge 4 inches to 8 inches deep.

During an inspection last November, regulators found the wastewater treatment plant severely noncompliant.

[Snarkoleptic]

1. Dumping of raw sewage is a classic antisocial "me first" stunt.

Every summer in Chicago we suffer lengthy beach closures due to high bacteria count and 'fecal greaseballs' that wash ashore.
Needless to say, most won't set foot on the beaches. It's been determined that most of the raw sewage that we see comes from Milwaukee. There are around 6 million people in Chicago and the suburbs who get their tap water from lake Michigan.
Those who dump raw sewage are some of the most rotten scumbags in existance.

[Strelnikov_]

2. The little guy is getting thrown under the bus

Additional coverage.

http://www.wcnc.com/news/topstories/stories/wcnc-041608-krg-dallaswater.6d9589f5.html

Aerial of the plant.

http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&q=Dallas,+NC,+USA&ll=35.308253,-81.133379&spn=0.006514,0.009999&t=h&z=17

Activated sludge plant w/ what appears to be primary clarification and some tertiary treatment (ammonia removal?).

Sounds like they had an equipment failure resulting in activated sludge being discharged. Probably failure of one of the secondary clarifiers, resulting in hydraulic overloading of the remaining clarifiers.

Worked a number of systems like this, and for myself, I believe the plant worker in that he was being instructed to pencil whip the documentation. Knowing what goes on in 'small town' government, I have no doubt that the administration all the way up the ladder knew about the problems, and failed to make the resources available to remedy the situation. Why would Mr. Case, the low man on the totem pole, just up and decide to pencil whip results versus informing the managers about the problem.

The only times I saw problems like this covered up (kept from the municipal officials) was in cases of for-profit contract operators (companies who ran the municipal owned plants) who were cutting corners to maximize profits.

One for-profit plant I was aware of was turning off the activated sludge aeration to save electricity costs. They were continually bouncing along right below the permit limits, limits that are intended to be maximums, not a target value to be consistently attained to maximize profits.