Monroe County sewage discharge into Lake Ontario above legal limits
After standing by while a series of breakdowns turned a Monroe County sewage treatment plant into a chronic violator, state environmental officials may be about to step in.
Problems at the Frank E.Van Lare Wastewater Treatment Plant, the largest municipal sewage plant on the American shore of Lake Ontario, have caused at least 75 violations of the plant's pollution-control permit in the last 5½ years.
The worst episode took place in December, when two different problems caused 10 violations. Organic material was discharged into the lake in concentrations 670 times higher than the lawful limit in one case.
“It was a bad month. The plant was very sick,” said Michael Garland, the county’s environmental services director.
While the severity of the problems is debatable, the difficulties have gotten so bad — and solutions so elusive — that the state is weighing stepping in after keeping an eye on the situation for several years. The state, which also might be accountable for letting the situation fester, could levy fines or a consent order.
The county has wrestled with the problems — one involving an unwelcome bacterial growth, the other a puzzling inability to remove biomass from treated sewage — since the summer of 2011. Both have come amid a $24 million project to upgrade the part of the plant where this biomass collection is supposed to be accomplished.
The string of failures and the county’s inability to cure them has raised questions about its ability to run the plant and also the role of regulators, who have taken no action against the county.
Staff members at the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which inspects the plant and enforces its pollution-control permit, say they have been kept apprised of Van Lare’s struggles, and have met with the plant’s operators.
But regulators have avoided taking any formal action to compel the county to get the plant in proper working order.
Asked why the DEC had sat on its hands, an agency official agreed that was "a fair question."
“We have not taken any action yet but that doesn’t mean that we’re not going to,” said Paul D’Amato, the director of the 11-county DEC region that includes Monroe. “We’re looking at that step … because of the issues in December when they had another series of numerous exceedances. We are considering that.”
Enforcement could take the form of fines or, more likely, a legally binding consent order that would lay out a plan to resolve the problems and commit the county to a timetable. Failure to abide by such orders usually brings financial penalties.
Other DEC regional offices have entered into numerous consent orders with operators of flagging sewage treatment plants, including New York City, Westchester, Nassau and Columbia counties and the cities of Binghamton and Olean, Cattaraugus County.
In this region, D'Amato said orders have been signed with Watkins Glen, Waterloo and Springwater, Livingston County.
Monroe County has so far avoided that legal entanglement, D’Amato said, because it had a reputation of good environmental stewardship.
"Because we saw them diligently trying to figure it out — it’s not like they were hiding from it or not devoting the resources to it — we showed some restraint in the hopes they could resolve it," he said.
Some suggest the DEC should have been more aggressive.
"While we want to help communities address problems, we must also hold them accountable when problems linger and fail to be addressed," said Brian Smith, associate executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, which has lobbied for years for stricter enforcement and better public notification by sewage treatment plants.
"It's critical that DEC provides oversight, and when needed, take enforcement action to ensure that our sewer systems are maintained and our environment and public health are protected," he said.
One other group that could have stayed on top of the situation, the Monroe County Legislature, appears not to have done so.
“It’s news to me that we had a major violation in the last three or four months,” said Joshua Bauroth, a county legislator from Rochester who is the ranking Democrat on the environment committee, which has oversight responsibility for wastewater treatment.
“I’ll be asking about the violations," he said. "I had thought that had been resolved years ago.”
Discharge permits exceeded 75 times
The Van Lare plant, next to Durand-Eastman Park, had its first violations in early September 2011. They were caused by the explosive growth of long, stringy filamentous bacteria, which proliferated to the point that solids didn't clump and settle out of the wastewater. Plant operators were forced to disinfect the material and release it into Lake Ontario.
County officials said at the time that they were still investigating, but hoped it was a one-time excursion.
► Pollutants roil into Lake Ontario, 2011
Since that time, the plant has exceeded its permit discharge limits 75 times, according to records maintained online by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
In the two years prior to the start of the ongoing problems, Van Lare had exceeded its permit limits only twice.
Most of the violations involved excess phosphorus, suspended solids and settleable solids. All stemmed from the same issue, inadequate removal of solids from the waste stream.
Large pieces of solid material settle out early in the treatment process. Wastewater then moves to aeration tanks, where smaller particles of organic matter are removed by carefully nurtured colonies of useful bacteria. The bacteria feed on the organic matter, clump together and then settle to the bottom of the tank, where they can be removed.
But after taking up this organic matter, clusters of useful bacteria have repeatedly failed to settle out, forcing the county to release them and associated nutrients into the lake.
"A lot of people think it’s sewage that’s going out, but it’s bugs that we grow in the treatment process," Garland said. Everything is chlorinated so all bacteria, including any pathogens, should have been killed, he said.
But those releases are still undesirable because the bacteria consume life-giving oxygen as they decompose in the lake. They also are laden with nutrients such as phosphorus that act as fertilizer for nuisance algae, aquatic weeds and possibly cyanobacteria when released into Lake Ontario.
County and state officials say the repeated discharges are undesirable but probably had limited impact on water quality in Lake Ontario, given its size in comparison to Van Lare's releases. Garland said the plant's discharge pipe is three miles out in the lake and 100 feet below the surface.
"If there's good news in this saga, it’s that it's a huge water body," D'Amato said. "I can't imagine a tangible environmental impact coming out of this."
But Smith, of the environmental group, said any excess releases are to be avoided.
"What comes out of this plant goes into our region’s most important natural resource, the Great Lakes," he said. "Even if the environmental impact is not as egregious as other sewer-related malfunctions, we must exercise great precaution when the health of our fresh water is at stake."
Problems began with new tanks
The county began replacing Van Lare's 20 aeration tanks in 2011, and experienced its first bout with out-of-control filamentous bacteria shortly after work got under way. Garland said that episode was caused by a decision to replace too many tanks at one time.
Van Lare returned to normal until early 2014, when solids suddenly stopped settling to the bottom of the aeration tanks. Plant operators were baffled, Garland said.
The problem recurred early the following year, as installation of the last of the new aeration tanks was under way. Solids weren't settling out, and the violations piled up, but the cause remained elusive.
► Work finished but woes recur, 2015
Officials hoped that once the new aeration system was broken in, the problem would disappear.
It didn't. Van Lare exceeded discharge limits over and over in 2016, culminating in a dreadful burst of violations in December. The mysterious settling problem recurred and was compounded by another explosion of the filamentous bacteria population in the tanks.
"I would characterize it as a major upset," Michael Garland said.
The county has now replaced the engineering firm that designed and oversaw the $24 million installation of the new tanks with another consultant that believes it has already found an explanation for the recurring settling problem: making subtle adjustments in the flow of wastewater to encourage the useful bacteria to clump together properly and settle out.
Van Lare treatment plant exceeded discharge limits
The flow is being adjusted and pilot studies being done. "We’re taking very proactive steps," Garland said.
But he acknowledged it remains unclear if the solution now being implemented will finally resolve the problem.
"We’ve got a ways to go. Our evaluation is still under way," he said. "It’s too early to tell."
D'Amato said DEC officials met with the new consultant in January, and warned the county then that the state's patience may be nearing an end.
"The possibility of going a more traditional enforcement route was discussed. They do know it’s a distinct possibility," he said.
"I’d like to know if we're really at the tail end of this, or if we have a long road ahead of us. That goes into whether an enforcement action is called for," D'Amato said. "If we need to go down that road, we’ll go down that road."