Over the last several years, the Cape Charles wastewater plant has found itself out of compliance with the nutrient loads it dumps in the bay, so much so that the town has had to pay fines to the Department of Environmental Quality for the violations. Last year, the State levied compliance fines of $70,000.00. This last May, the plant once again had a huge spike in phosphorus—the limit is .4, our plant registered a 1.5. From May to July, the plant has been trying to get the phosphorus number under control. Whether the plant will be able to adjust enough to get the year-to-date average below the limit and avoid another fine is still in question.
In order to keep track of waste water compliance, the town sends samples across the Bay to be tested by DEQ. The issue is that by the time the town is notified of a problem by DEQ, large spikes may already be building.
In an effort to be more proactive, Public Works has purchased its own testing kit. By testing on a weekly basis, staff will become aware of issues, such as phosphorus spikes as they are occurring, instead of waiting to find out via test reports from DEQ. This will allow staff to be more proactive when dealing with nutrient imbalances. Below is a graph of this month’s test surveys. During the last Town Council meeting, the Mirror questioned Town Manager Brent Manuel about what appeared to be high level spikes. Manuel told the Mirror that the readings had to do more with the test kits and how the readings were compiled–the actual tests from the HRSD lab were well below the .5 baseline.
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How long will it take to realize the current Management of the wastewater plant is, and has been, incapable. I believe Aunt Bea, of Mayberry, could get elected in Cape Charles. It’s incredible that we routinely send samples across The Bay. This is not rocket science.
I am very confused by Mr. Manuel’s explanation of the reason that the field test results did not match the results obtained from the HRSD lab for duplicate samples (two samples collected at the same time; one sample analyzed by the CC staff using the field test and the other sample analyzed by the staff at the HRSD lab).
“Manuel told the Mirror that the readings had to do more with the test kits and how the readings were compiled–the actual tests from the HRSD lab were well below the .5 baseline.”
Either the test kit is not the appropriate kit for wastewater, the staff is not reporting the data properly, the test kit does not measure the same parameter as the HRSD lab (elemental phosphorous versus PO4 or some other phosphate compound) and comparison of the values requires some mathematical computation to convert the field reading to the same chemical compound or the CC staff are not accurately and consistently completing the field test procedure. The field test result should match the lab result within less than 5% of the reading; the lab results are between 3 and 4 times as high as the HRSD results.
Mr. Manuel owes residents and property owners in the town more transparency about the ability of the PW staff to accurately measure the phosphate concentration of the waterwater. These test kits for analyzing wastewater parameters are designed for non-chemists – a high school student should be able to follow the procedure and obtain an accurate result.
And by the way – the industry standard for testing phosphate in wastewater is once per shift (8 or 12 hours) – not once per week. The simplest and fastest way to avoid fines is to adhere to the industry standards for the frequency of phosphate measurements, train the operators in the proper lab techniques to make the correct adjustments for “high values within the phosphate specification range.”