Administrators with the Beaver Water District have asked the Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission to reconsider a wastewater permit issued earlier this year to one of the first breweries in Northwest Arkansas.
Alan Fortenberry, the district’s chief executive officer, said the district requested the hearing after the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality failed to address concerns raised by attorneys for the district after Steven Rehbock, owner of Saddlebock Brewing LLC, filed a permit application with the department in May 2012.
“Our concern is anything within the Beaver Lake watershed, anything that has potential to offer any type of contamination,” Fortenberry said.
The commission will hold a hearing on the permit Sept. 4 at the Environmental Quality Department’s headquarters in North Little Rock. As a result of the water district’s filing, the department has issued a stay onthe brewery’s no-discharge wastewater permit, requiring Rehbock to collect the brewery’s industrial waste above ground and dispose of it through an approved facility.
Rehbock said Thursday that he intends to relinquish the brewery’s wastewater permit and dispose of the facility’s waste by other means. He said that over the past month, he has been disposing of most of the industrial waste by giving it to a local farmer who uses it as chicken feed. Rehbock also has the option of using local wastewater treatment plants to handle the waste.
“I’m not that cost-conscious about it,” Rehbock said. “I just want to do things right.”
The water district filed comments with the Environmental Quality Department in November, during the public comment period for Rehbock’s application for the no-discharge wastewater permit. The permit would allow the facility, which produces a variety of microbrewed beer for wholesale distribution, tocollect wastewater from the brewery and store it in an underground septic system.
Attorneys with the water district complained that the brewery was in violation of several Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission regulations, including its construction and operation without having received a final wastewater permit from the state; that Rehbock’s waste-management plan - a 48-page document outlining the design and function of the brewery - seemed to have underestimated the amount of wastewater that the brewery would produce, and that the septic tanks described in the plan were “significantly undersized.”
The brewery does have a manufacturing license from the Arkansas Department of Health, but that permit covers only the disposal ofhuman waste.
In correspondence dated Nov. 3, 2012, between Rehbock and Environmental Quality Department permit engineer Casey Vickerson, Rehbock also said he had installed a 2,000-gallon holding tank to contain industrial waste from the brewery.
But the Beaver Water District reiterated its previous concerns in its request for the hearing and review of the wastewater permit, and noted that the brewery was discharging wastewater from a PVC pipe behind the facility.
In a letter dated May 24, Alison West, a Department of Environmental Quality field inspector, listed five violations that were observed during a May 10 inspection of the brewery, including discharge from the pipe. In an e-mail dated May 13, Richard Murphee, the northwest region manager for the state Department of Health and Human Services Health Department, said that discharge from the pipe had a “strong beer odor.”
Murphee said in the e-mail that Rehbock said he believed the heavy flow from the pipe was the result of a “cross connection in the plumbing.” Murphee also identified a small sump pump in the brewery that was intended to collectwastewater from several floor drains which apparently had been “discharging directly to the ground surface via the observed discharge pipe. It was designed to pump up to a holding tank.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 9 on 06/21/2013