Proposed treatment plant that would send discharge through Lake Conway irks neighbors

Facility stirs fear of harm to lake

A proposed private wastewater-treatment plant that eventually would release its discharge through Lake Conway has upset nearby residents concerned about the potential effect on the lake.

RELATED ARTICLE

http://www.arkansas…">Law hinders repairs, plant foes say

Pointed questions, grumbling and occasional shouting accompanied dialogue at the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality's public hearing earlier this month in Conway regarding a wastewater plant that would be placed in a subdivision less than a mile east of Conway.

About 100 people attended the hearing, many of them homeowners near Lake Conway or the creeks connected to it. A few were developers of the subdivision who want to build the treatment plant.

"We're for the developer," said Lake Conway Home Owners Association President Robert "Larry" Hill, who is opposed to the wastewater treatment plant. "We're for all of Conway, but we want it to happen in the right way."

Most at the meeting opposed the wastewater plant for the Woodsland Edge subdivision, for which the Environmental Quality Department will decide whether to issue a permit later this year. The plant would discharge up to 30,000 gallons per day of treated wastewater into an unnamed tributary of Little Creek, which drains into Lake Conway, which eventually drains into the Arkansas River.

The debate over the proposed Woodsland Edge subdivision, less than a mile east of Conway off Skunk Hollow Road, is just one of a handful in central Arkansas. Proposed subdivisions outside Conway and Little Rock are pushed by developers who want to attract homebuyers where city corridors eventually might expand. They are opposed by neighbors in part because of wastewater treatment plants that have histories of violations in other locations and out of concern for their continued proliferation.

A wastewater-treatment plant for a proposed subdivision outside Little Rock -- Mountain Valley -- was disapproved earlier this month by the Little Rock Planning Commission, which had permitting authority over the project because of its location within the city's 3-mile extraterritorial jurisdiction. It was disapproved on grounds that the density of the subdivision was incompatible with its surroundings. A wastewater plant for another proposed subdivision -- Trails -- just outside Little Rock has bounced between the Environmental Quality Department and the city without getting formal approval or disapproval.

The Environmental Quality Department gave the Woodsland Edge treatment plant preliminary approval for a permit earlier this year, noting that the proposed plant was within standards.

The plant also received approval from Conway, which has to approve such plants in its extraterritorial jurisdiction. The department is compiling responses to all public comments submitted on the permit and will publish them when the department publishes its final decision on whether the plant can be built.

Opponents of the Woodsland Edge subdivision have expressed concern about the wastewater-treatment plant after years of worry over pollution in Lake Conway. Opponents argue that Lake Conway only recently eliminated problems it's had and a new plant could reintroduce them. Also of concern is that the proposed treatment plant's operator has been responsible for numerous water-quality violations in four other subdivisions in Faulkner County, and that the Environmental Quality Department would set a precedent for permitting more wastewater-treatment plants to discharge into the lake.

Subdivision developer Kevin Watson, who is working with his brother, Tom, said the subdivision's proposals have been vetted thoroughly during the permitting process.

"We spent over a year to make sure the plant was environmentally safe," he said.

Further, he said, the city may expand into the subdivision soon and extend its wastewater services there, meaning the plant wouldn't be around for the entirety of its estimated life span of 20 years or more.

QUESTIONS OF VIOLATIONS

Violations of proposed wastewater plant operator Waste Water Management -- and violations at four other locations -- aren't a concern for the department when it comes to issuing another permit to the operator, said Caleb Osborne, associate director of water quality for the Environmental Quality Department.

Not all the violations are the fault of Waste Water Management Inc., operator Alan McEntire said. McEntire said he took over operations of three wastewater plants -- in the Shadow Ridge, Eaglebrook and Huntington Estates subdivisions -- from the Tyler Group after violations had already occurred.

Violations at his other plants were minimal, McEntire said. The line is firm on the permit limits and even small exceedances can knock a plant out of compliance, he said.

"It's not like they're big catastrophes or anything," he said.

A look at the plant in the North Hills subdivision just outside Conway shows that McEntire's facility had numerous violations regarding discharge over several years of operation, including 23 that prompted the department to request a Corrective Action Plan from McEntire. Many of those violations were more than double the limit for things like fecal coliform and nitrogen.

"In the instances where these facilities have had violations, the operator has worked with the department to identify corrective actions to again achieve compliance at these facilities," Osborne said.

Getting back into compliance can take some time.

McEntire said some of the plants he's taken over need to be redone entirely. The operator of the plant nearby in the Flushing Meadows subdivision has proposed a 19-month compliance plan after numerous violations, a counteroffer to the department's proposed 33-month compliance plan.

Hill said if he were reviewing permits, he would look at the performance history of the permit applicant.

"I would say no," Hill said. "We need someone else to do it."

Plant operators are required to report discharge amounts as often as four times a year, and the department inspects the facilities every couple of years, Osborne said.

Private wastewater-treatment plants have hundreds of violations across Arkansas, Hill and opponents of other treatment plants near Little Rock have said. Not all of them have violations, Hill said, but he noted that private plants aren't subject to the scrutiny of public boards the way city utilities are.

The Flushing Meadows plant has had repeated violations into a tributary of Lake Conway, and Hill said he is concerned about how the proposed plant for Woodsland Edge would add to that.

When considering a permit, Osborne said, the Environmental Quality Department considers the cumulative effect of multiple sources discharging into a body of water if the body of water already has been determined as impaired. In such cases, a Total Maximum Daily Load study can be used to determine permit limits to reduce pollution.

If testing over a five-year period shows consistent impairment or pollution, it can be listed on the department's list of impaired water bodies. The list is called the 303(d) List, in reference to the section of the federal Clean Water Act that requires states to have the lists.

Once the water body is on the list and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency approves of the list, the department can conduct a Total Maximum Daily Load study on the water body that determines how much certain entities that discharge wastewater and other runoff into the water body should be allowed by permit to discharge.

The EPA has not approved of any of Arkansas' proposed 303(d) lists since 2008, citing disagreements over the state's method for assessing impairment of water bodies.

Lake Conway, a major fishing lake, has not been on any of the lists dating to 2008, but complaints about pollution from a former Conway wastewater-treatment plant that used to discharge into the lake led the city to build the Tupelo Bayou treatment plant that discharges into the Arkansas River. That plant -- comparatively larger than a subdivision plant -- opened in July 2014 and meant treated wastewater that once went to the lake was now bypassing it, alleviating neighbors' concerns of pollution.

The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission also opposes the Woodsland Edge wastewater-treatment plant and sent the Department of Environmental Quality a copy of a study done by contractor FTN Associates on Lake Conway in 2013. That study notes that the lake has faced a risk of harmful algal blooms and recommended that no additional discharges be permitted into the lake.

The department has dismissed the study, arguing that the 2013 data is moot because the Tupelo Bayou treatment plant had been completed since then, diverting wastewater from the lake.

ALTERNATIVE SOLUTION

Given that the proposed Woodsland Edge subdivision is less than a mile from Conway's city limits, many opponents of the treatment plant have asked developers to see if they can connect to the city, which runs its utilities through Conway Corp. The city discharges its wastewater into the Arkansas River instead of Lake Conway.

Utility officials have met three times with the developers since the public hearing to see if an arrangement can be worked out.

Developers approached officials earlier in the year about connecting to city wastewater, but Conway Corp. rejected the idea of maintaining certain structures outside the city or doing billing for the area, CEO Richie Arnold said.

Conway Corp. has never connected its wastewater services to areas outside the city limits, and the city doesn't allow the utility to build infrastructure outside the city limits, Arnold said.

But a deal where developers are responsible for constructing and maintaining the wastewater infrastructure outside the city limits is on the table now.

"We're moving forward on the assumption that as long as we can figure out the business terms, then we'll probably allow it," Arnold said.

Kevin Watson said he and his brother would prefer to connect to the city to ease community concern but said he didn't know if he would connect to the city if the Environment Quality Department permit were granted first.

Watson's group wouldn't be able to build any of the infrastructure to connect to the city until it secures about 4,000 feet of rights of way in between the subdivision and the city.

Watson said he doesn't have a cost estimate for connecting with the city. It likely won't be cheaper, he said, but it would be "more compatible with everybody's wishes."

Metro on 07/27/2016

Upcoming Events