UAJA lifts hold on sewer design approvals

The University Area Joint Authority has lifted a hold on sewer design approvals after Monday action by the Centre Region Council of Governments General Forum.

The UAJA announced in a Thursday memo that its board had taken action to halt the approvals until a nutrient policy is in place. According to the memo, the state Department of Environmental Protection revealed plans to reboot the Chesapeake Bay Tributary Strategy in attempts to meet Environmental Protection Agency-imposed milestones.

If the DEP doesn’t meet these milestones, the EPA has threatened “backstop requirements” primarily targeted at state municipal wastewater treatment plants, the memo said.

The UAJA board “first and foremost” wanted input from the host municipalities on how to deal with the issue, UAJA Executive Director Cory Miller told the General Forum on Monday.

Each municipality is allocated a certain amount of nitrogen it can allocate to all of the functions in its portion of the bay, he said, including wastewater treatment, agricultural use, industrial use and so on. While plants in the Susquehanna River basin have responded to the requirements, other components are not meeting their allocations.

“The farms and the other entities are the problem, but (the EPA) can only go after treatment plants,” Miller said. “So when the EPA has to turn the thumbscrews, they do that by threatening to ratchet down on the wastewater treatment plants.”

The EPA only has the ability to enforce regulations on entities with discharge permits, he said. Treatment plants have them, farms do not.

When the UAJA addressed meeting nitrogen regulations in 2011, he said, one way was purchasing credits off the trading market — buying unused capacity from other treatment plants in municipalities that were no longer growing. At 75 cents per pound, the plant was spending about $300,000 per year to meet regulations.

“It was expensive, but not impossible to absorb while not raising rates,” Miller said.

Now, he said, DEP has eliminated credit trading under pressure from the EPA, saying more than half of the nitrogen market has disappeared with one stroke of the pen. Nitrogen credits are expected to rise up to $11 over the next year or two.

It takes 25 pounds of nitrogen to offset one residence per year, he said. Current sewer rates are $104 per quarter. If UAJA continues to purchase credits off the market, rates could double in the coming years.

Miller said he was seeking direction from the forum on how it wants to proceed. Under Act 537, the sewer facilities plan, capacity decisions must be addressed by the host municipalities.

“We want to know if you want us to continue going on knowing we will have a plan soon and eat the cost of additional connections, or if you want to hold off until we figure out what’s going on,” he said.

Centre Region Planning Agency Director Jim May encouraged the forum to consider directing the UAJA to continue approving plans, saying halting plans puts “more than a damper on the development community.”

Halfmoon Township Supervisor Barbara Spencer said municipalities with farms need to take action on this issue, suggesting farmers could work with the UAJA to reduce nitrogen deposits.

“For the municipalities that have farms, this is something we can do as leaders in the community to help encourage that,” she said.

The forum unanimously agreed to direct UAJA to continue to allocate capacity pending the development of a nutrient management plan.

In other UAJA business, the forum unanimously requested that the UAJA perform a special study to consider extending the reuse water system in the direction of the Mountain View Country Club and Spring Creek.

As an alternate to the third phase of the beneficial reuse water lines, which were initially proposed to run into Slab Cabin Run, Miller said an alternate opportunity has come up. Beneficial reuse water can be diverted to the country club golf course, similar to what was done for the Centre Hills Country Club off East Branch Road.

“One of the biggest goals of the beneficial reuse project is to make sure as much water stays in the aquifer as we possibly can,” he said.

By UAJA supplying water to Mountain View, he said, the discharge capacity of the plant is increased. The water can also be used by the Tussey Mountain Ski Resort, which uses a significant amount of water in wintertime.

Water diversion would follow U.S. Route 322 toward Boalsburg, he said, heading down Spring Creek to Mountain View. An estimated 20,000 feet of pipe would be used.

This story was originally published February 23, 2016 at 8:47 PM with the headline "UAJA lifts hold on sewer design approvals."