This commentary is by Jeff Wennberg, former commissioner of public works for Rutland and former commissioner of the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation.
I was disappointed to read that the Vermont Natural Resources Council has appealed the new Rutland Wastewater Treatment Plant operating permit. The basis for the appeal — the fact that combined sewer overflows are not regulated through the permit — is wrong on every level.
The Natural Resources Council demands that the city not just control and minimize combined sewer overflows, but eliminate them. Elimination of combined sewer overflows would result in dramatically more pollution flowing into Otter Creek, exactly the opposite of what the permit seeks to achieve.
The only way to eliminate the possibility of a combined sewer overflow is to separate all the storm sewers from the sanitary sewers. Currently the sewers are combined and deliver 700 million gallons of stormwater to the treatment plant each year. As a result, the stormwater discharged to Otter Creek is cleaner than the creek itself. If the sewers were separated, all of this stormwater would end up in the creek with little or no treatment, dramatically increasing pollution.
For example, in a recent year the city estimated that all the combined sewer overflows that year caused 76 extra pounds of phosphorus to be discharged to Otter Creek. During the same year, the Rutland Wastewater Treatment Plant removed 1,276 pounds of phosphorus from stormwater. Had the sewers been separated, 76 pounds would have been stopped and 1,276 pounds would have been released.
And it is not as though combined sewer overflows are being ignored. The state regulates them through the CSO Rule, which requires the city to submit a long-term control plan and then implement the plan over time.
Rutland has already expended more than $20 million to reduce combined sewer overflows and will be required to expend many times that amount to implement the control plan. This makes sense because combined sewer overflows occur in the collection system, not the wastewater treatment plant. The wastewater treatment plant permit is for the wastewater treatment plant — not the plumbing connected to it. The collection system is regulated through the CSO Rule and enforced through the imposition of hefty fines and sanctions if the city fails to comply.
Notwithstanding the dubious legality of putting CSO requirements in the wastewater treatment plant permit, it makes no practical sense. If the requirements in the wastewater treatment plant permit are identical to those under the CSO Rule, then they are redundant. If the requirements are different from the CSO Rule, then it could create a conflict that the city can’t satisfy without causing a violation — a classic bureaucratic catch-22; something the Vermont Natural Resources Council and others could exploit.
The goal of every clean water regulatory effort should be improving water quality. Mandating massively expensive actions that result in increased pollution, or protracted litigation that delays necessary clean water investments, serves neither the environment nor the public interest.
