Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
A twist on what it is being asked by the Washington State Department of Ecology for Palouse’s wastewater treatment plant has led to the city requesting more time to meet the rule.
Originally on a December deadline to adjust to new limits on nitrogen levels and a cooler overall effluence for the plant, the city now reacts to a pending change regarding Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCB).
The city was told in a meeting Aug. 23 that PCB requirements are likely to shift.
It was information that made moot the city’s original plan on nitrogen levels and effluence.
“If we had known about the PCBs, it wouldn’t make sense to do anything in the river in the high-flow period,” said Mayor Michael Echanove.
The Palouse city council has subsequently asked for a concession from the consultant it hired, Varela & Associates, of Spokane, to work with them on a plan for the December deadline.
“We knew that the water quality standards have been changing, and had changed,” said John Patrouch, project engineer for Varela. “(Department of) Ecology had not indicated that the toxics/PCBs would be an issue until that meeting. I don’t think we missed something.”
Last week, Palouse sent a letter to DOE asking for an extension of 16 months, as Varela recommended.
The new deadline, if approved, would fall in April 2019.
The expected change in PCB rules comes from the Washington State DOE in conjunction with the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
PCBs – a group of 209 man-made compounds used in manufacturing – were produced for commercial use from the 1920s until the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act banned certain uses and restricted PCB concentrations.
The DOE put the potential change in motion in August 2016, when it adopted new water quality standards for protecting human health. The EPA subsequently approved the standards in November 2016, while further increasing the limits on PCBs.
In turn, this is why the DOE – and Varela – have advised Palouse to expect a new rule.
“Since you’re already in the planning phase, PCBs are likely coming down as a requirement,” said Brook Beeler, spokesperson for DOE.
For the original nitrogen and effluence issue, the city had decided on a plan to build a storage lagoon, which would keep treated wastewater during low-flow periods on the Palouse River and release it during high-flow periods.
The Aug. 23 meeting changed that.
“We’d all been in agreement for what we were gonna do,” Patrouch said. “The whole purpose of that meeting was a final check; here’s the plan.”
Found in old electrical transformers and capacitors, PCBs were also contained in carbonless copy paper and caulk used to seal cracks in buildings. PCBs are still produced – either in regulated lower levels or inadvertently in manufacturing of chemicals such as dyes and pigments.
Garth Meyer is a former Whitman County Gazette reporter.
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