HomeMy WebLinkAboutStatus of Appeal of Montana Pollutant Discharge Elimination System1
COMMISSION MEMO
Memo
To: Mayor Jacobson and City Commissioners
From: Debbie Arkell, Director of Public Services
Chris Kukulski, City Manager
CC: Tom Adams, Water Reclamation Facility Superintendent
Richard Hixson, City Engineer
Date: April 7, 2008 F.Y.I. Topic
Re: Status of Appeal of Montana Pollutant Discharge Elimination System
(MPDES) Permit for Water Reclamation Facility (a.k.a. WWTP)
RECOMMENDATION: None. Memo is F.Y.I. for the Commission
BACKGROUND: On October 1, 2006 the City of Bozeman was issued a new
MPDES discharge permit for the Bozeman wastewater treatment facility (WWTP).
This new discharge permit contained numerical discharge standards or nutrient caps
for both Total Nitrogen and Total Phosphorus. The standards and caps were not
shown in the draft permit, so the first time we became aware of these limits was upon
issuance of the final permit. This presented an immediate problem because the
existing Treatment Plant was not designed to remove either nitrogen or phosphorus
and this permit would have caused the city to go into almost immediate non-
compliance with the permit requirements.
When new permit limits are imposed, it is customary and common practice for state
regulatory agencies to grant the permit holder a reasonable period of time to make
the plant modifications needed to ensure the facility can meet the requirements of the
permit. In spite of the fact our existing facility was incapable of meeting the standards
in the new permit, the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) chose
not to include a routine compliance schedule in this new permit.
Representatives from the City of Bozeman met with DEQ personnel several times to
voice our concerns about these new nutrient caps and lack of compliance schedule
before the permit was finally issued. DEQ chose to issue the new permit without the
customary compliance schedule.
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On September 30, 2006 Staff Attorney Tim Cooper filed an appeal of the permit with
the State Board of Environmental Review. In this appeal Mr. Cooper argued that the
city’s new nutrient caps were derived arbitrarily and without the benefit of a TMDL
water quality study of the East Gallatin River which would normally precede the
development of new water quality standards for a receiving stream. In other words,
the DEQ had not followed its own administrative rules in establishing nutrient
limitations for the City of Bozeman. Furthermore, the City argued that it had been
denied due process by not being allowed to provide formal comment to the DEQ on
these proposed new nutrient limitations because the limits were not included in the
draft permit.
OUTCOME AND BENEFITS DERIVED FROM THE CITY’S APPEAL:
After meeting with the DEQ regarding our appeal and concerns, the DEQ advised us
in March 2007 that they would modify our permit based on the information we
submitted to them. They agreed that our commitment to upgrade our wastewater
treatment plant to a biological nutrient removal facility justified a compliance schedule
for the new permit limits. Because they agreed to modify our permit, the appeal was
put on-hold. A public hearing on the revised draft permit was held in Bozeman on
December 18, 2007. Other than City representatives, the only person attending the
meeting was the president of the Montana River Action who voiced concern that we
were upgrading our existing plant rather than constructing a regional plant located by
Belgrade or Manhattan.
On March 5, 2008, we received a Notice of Final Decision from the DEQ advising us
our permit had been amended to include a reasonable compliance schedule. This
compliance schedule gives us until September 30, 2011 to complete the construction
of our new biological nutrient removal (BNR) facility. The new nutrient caps will not
be imposed until we have successfully completed start up and commissioning of the
new treatment process. The BNR process will be capable of achieving the nutrient
limits specified in our new permit.
Because the permit was modified, our appeal has been withdrawn. However, we
have advised the DEQ for the record that we still dispute their justification for setting
nitrogen and phosphorus limitations.
FISCAL EFFECTS:
The compliance schedule of the modified permit also eliminates the need for us to
immediately begin chemical precipitation of phosphorus, which would have been
necessary to meet the DEQ’s proposed new limitation. Chemical precipitation of
phosphorus is a very costly process which would have resulted in annual chemical
expenditures (ferric chloride costs) in excess of $220,000 per year. Therefore, by
appealing our initial MPDES permit and being granted a reasonable compliance
schedule for the reduction of plant nutrients, the city saved an estimated $1,100,000
over this 5-year period from October 2006 to September 2011.
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