Tuesday, November 27, 2007
By Preston Knight, Daily Staff Writer
The Northern Virginia Daily
TIMBERVILLE — The sale of the SIL Clean Water wastewater treatment plant to the town of Broadway became official last week, ending 13 months of legal action between the company and Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell.
The sides finalized the sale Wednesday. A decree issued by the Rockingham County Circuit Court gives Broadway enough time to upgrade the plant and comply with nutrient limits by Jan. 1, 2011, when new Chesapeake Bay regulations take effect, according to a press release from McDonnell's office.
The attorney general got involved with the facility more than a year ago, when the state filed suit against SIL Clean Water for gross violations of nitrogen and phosphorous discharge permits. The nutrients were discharged into the North Fork of the Shenandoah River, a few miles southwest of the Shenandoah County line.
The plant treats sewage from Broadway and Timberville as well as highly concentrated waste from two poultry producers in Rockingham County, using some of the nitrogen-rich wastewater on local farms.
Following the initial court action, SIL filed for bankruptcy near its headquarters in Chicago and put the plant up for auction, which Broadway won with a bid of $2.4 million.
"These are beautiful Virginia rivers, and we want to keep them that way," McDonnell said in the release. "SIL has suffered the ultimate sanction for polluting our environment and will no longer operate the facility. The company has lost its property, and there are no further assets with which SIL could pay a penalty.
"With [Wednesday's] action, we are eliminating a source of pollution of state waters and providing for the health, safety and welfare of the present and future citizens of the Commonwealth."
In May, SIL installed new pumps to reduce sewage overflows, the release states. The company also performed a one-time dosing of the storage lagoon to precipitate phosphorous, it states, and SIL just installed equipment for a chemical feed to continuously precipitate phosphorous in that lagoon.
There have been no sewage overflows since the new pumps were installed, and the chemical feed should be in operation in a few days, the release states.
Friends of the North Fork of the Shenandoah River, however, was disappointed with a consent order that gives Broadway some leniency on meeting discharge limits until 2011, said Mary Gessner, a member of the group's board of directors.
"We are glad that Broadway is taking over the facility, and hopefully in the long run it will be a better [one]," she said Monday afternoon. "In the interim ... nitrogen and phosphorous discharges to the river are increasing. The river is going to continue to be polluted for some period of time."
The group is discouraged that the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality will allow Broadway to increase the levels of nitrogen and phosphorus permitted to be discharged into the river from June 2009 until 2011, Gessner said. Also, the group wishes the two poultry producers, Pilgrim's Pride and Cargill, would have to do more aggressive treatment before sending waste to the plant, she said.
Officials from the department could not immediately be reached for comment Monday afternoon.
For the river's sake, Broadway, Gessner said, will still be a better owner than SIL.
"[The pollution is] a terrible problem they didn't create," she said.
http://www.nvdaily.com/Newstories/294466155967863.bsp