The City of Fredericksburg will pay a $14,775 civil fine to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) for raw sewage spills and failure to meet reporting deadlines.
City Council voted unanimously at their January 24, 2017, meeting, to authorize City Manager Tim Baroody to execute a consent order with the State Water Control Board.
In addition to the fine, the order requires the city to:
1 – Complete a review of the wastewater treatment plant’s high flow operations and update its operating procedure for high flow based on the results of that review;
2 – Prepare an engineering analysis of the Snowden Pump Station and Force Main hydraulic surge problem, and submit to the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality a plan and schedule for addressing the problem.
The city will also pay costs associated with correcting the hydraulic surge. These costs will be determined during the engineering study.
In its October 2015 report to DEQ, the city indicated it had exceeded discharge limitations into the Rappahannock River. “As a result of the weather [four days of heavy rain] a significant increase in influent volume occurred, causing the city to operate the facility in high flow mode, reducing the contact time in the oxidation ditch, and the effectiveness facility,” the city wrote in response to the DEQ.
On December 22, 2015, city staff reported to DEQ that a broken force main 150 feet upstream of the Snowden Pump Station resulted in “less than 5,000 gallons of raw sewage discharging into the Snowden Marsh that drains to the Rappahannock River.”
On February 29, 2016, city staff reported to DEQ “a Sanitary Sewer Overflow from Manhole #8017 of the Fall Hill sewer line with a volume of 1,000 gallons of raw sewage discharging into an unnamed tributary to the Rappahannock Canal.”
Read the complete report at: Wastewater System Consent Order
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