Dumping water-treatment sludge into lagoons could stop

CHESAPEAKE

For more than 20 years, the city has buried truckloads of mucky sludge - a byproduct of the water-treatment process - at a site in southern Chesapeake.

Now, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality says that relatively high levels of sulfate from the lagoon have oozed into the groundwater. That means the water under the site could have a rotten egg smell.

City and state officials say there are no health concerns and that the elevated sulfate levels have not migrated off-site.

The whole situation could cost the city several million dollars, however, if DEQ says the city cannot continue to bury the sludge there or at another nearby lagoon. City officials call that a "worst-case scenario."

To allay DEQ's concerns, the city has spent $50,000 to hire consultants and develop a plan to reduce the sulfate levels by injecting several sugar-based solutions into the groundwater.

That will be a little higher-tech than the city's previous response.

In a 2009 visit to the lagoon, a state environmental inspector learned that the city had been pouring pancake syrup into the wells whenever sulfate levels were high.

The city has been using the syrup since at least 2001 after a recommendation from a consultant.

City Attorney Ronald Hallman said city officials are confident the new plan will satisfy DEQ, and they hope the agency will allow Chesapeake to continue using the lagoons.

The city first got DEQ approval to dispose of the sludge at a site off Indian Creek Road in the mid-1980s, city officials said. It opened a second lagoon in 2003 next to the city's Northwest River water-treatment plant.

The sludge is not made of sewage water. It is a sediment from the process of treating water from the Northwest River. Typically, the city brings one truckload of sludge per day from its Northwest River water-treatment plant to the sludge lagoon, public utilities officials say.

The sludge looks like chocolate pudding when it is wet and more like dirt when it is dry. Earlier this month, a huge pile of the stuff was sitting in a trench that will be covered when it is full. There, it will mix in with the groundwater.

Each trench is "like a pond that's filled with chocolate pudding," said Deputy City Manager Amar Dwarkanath.

Other South Hampton Roads cities, such as Norfolk and Portsmouth, take their sludge to landfills, said DEQ Water Permit Manager James McConathy. Chesapeake officials say they're not the only ones who dispose of sludge by burying it in the ground.

Chesapeake's sludge lagoons historically have run into few problems with environmental authorities, McConathy said.

But a May 2009 inspection by DEQ found elevated levels of sulfate that would put the city in violation of its state permit, records show. The inspector also said that the city failed to monitor several wells. Some monitoring reports contained errors.

City officials say the instances of elevated sulfate levels have been limited. "Out of over 1,000 samples taken over the last nine years, there have been only 24 exceedances of the sulfate limit, all of which have been under continuous remediation," Hallman wrote. Many of those elevated levels have been detected since 2007, a DEQ report shows.

"Our main consideration is to make sure there isn't a groundwater problem," said Frank Daniel, DEQ's regional director for the Tidewater office.

To reduce levels of sulfate, city workers had been pouring two to eight gallons of cheap, generic pancake syrup into the appropriate wells as needed, said Chesapeake Public Utilities Director Jim Walski. The city gets the one-gallon jugs by piggybacking on a contract with the Chesapeake Conference Center, officials said.

"It's not the kind of thing where we run to the grocery store and clean out the shelves," said A. Craig Maples, Water Resources Management administrator for Chesapeake.

The sugars from the syrup help break down the sulfate, but "I don't know that we were in agreement with the methodology they were using," said the DEQ's McConathy.

The city's DEQ permit to operate the sludge lagoons expires in May 2011. If the state agency does not allow the city to continue using the lagoons, Chesapeake would have to spend millions on other options, such as hauling the stuff to landfills.

"That's one of the things that might come out of what we're doing," McConathy said. "Should they have to exercise other options than what they're doing now, it's going to raise their costs."

Mike Saewitz, (757) 222-5207, mike.saewitz@pilotonline.com