Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Disbanded plans are back on in Palouse as another round of discussions on the city’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System have led them back to where they were earlier this year.
The change comes after a meeting Nov. 6 with Washington Department of Ecology (DOE) representatives on the subject of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB), which may lead to further mandates for the Palouse wastewater treatment plant and its discharge into the Palouse River.
The PCB question is new to Palouse, which has been working the past two years on a requirement to reduce the temperature of discharge by 2.5 degrees and eliminate inorganic nitrates.
In August, a meeting with DOE representatives led to scrapping of a city plan developed with consultants Varela & Associates, Spokane, for storage and winter discharge – to build two double-lined lagoons in Palouse with 12-15 million-gallon capacity on a 15-acre site.
This would address the temperature and inorganic nitrates.
The plan, however, did not account for a target for reducing PCBs – which are a group of 209 man-made compounds used in manufacturing.
The change/suggestion/reminder on PCBs, depending on whom you ask, came from DOE three months before Palouse’s deadline to set a plan by Dec. 1 to address nitrate levels and a cooler overall effluence for the plant.
In turn, the city regrouped this fall to file for an extension on the deadline and look for a way that would get them completely out of discharging into the river.
“After deliberations, I think we all felt, wait a minute, let’s ask DOE for additional clarification on the city’s original decision,” said Dana Cowger, civil engineer and principal for Varela & Associates.
For the Nov. 6 follow-up meeting with DOE, Cowger and John Paprouch, also of Varela, attended while Palouse Mayor Michael Echanove and City Administrator Kyle Dixon were on conference call.
“Our position hasn’t changed,” said Brooke Beeler, spokesperson for DOE. “We suggested to them to think about toxics in the future...”
“They clarified, you don’t have to do anything now,” said Cowger, referring to the PCB issue.
“We don’t even know that there will be a requirement for them,” said Beeler, of PCBs. “... What we are asking Palouse to do is just to be thoughtful.”
What Palouse does have to do now is address the original matter: to reduce the temperature of discharge into the Palouse River by 2.5 degrees and eliminate inorganic nitrates.
Varela has estimated a $6-$8 million cost for the two lagoons.
“People ask, can we wait?” said Cowger, of holding out to see what comes of PCB requirements. “The problem now is to bring into compliance for the first (temperature, inorganic nitrates), so no, you can’t wait. The city has to do something now.”
Palouse has until 2024 to construct whatever needs to be built for this.
“The risk is to go down a road that doesn’t fulfill any future requirements,” said Echanove.
As the original plan is back on, the PCB question may affect where lagoons are built.
“We need to have something figured out if the boom is lowered on PCBs,” Echanove said.
Addressing PCBs would likely require the Palouse wastewater plant to not discharge into the river at all. This would mean a lagoon and land application – the treated wastewater going to irrigate a non-edible crop, instead of into the river.
Because the Palouse plant discharges into the Palouse River, the city has a special permit administered through DOE. In 2015, when the permit came up for review, the temperature of the facility’s discharge water was deemed too high.
The DOE thus directed Palouse to reduce it, as well as cut the nutrient totals from the plant, particularly for nitrogen and phosphate.
The high nutrient levels are a problem because it is feeding the algae in the river. When algae thrive, it depletes the water’s oxygen.
PCBs were produced for commercial use from the 1920s until the 1976 Toxic Substances Control Act which banned certain uses and restricted PCB concentrations.
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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