Air Quality Permits: It Just Makes Sense.
Posted: Tuesday, November 01, 2011
by Jack H. Schick
We have an electrical generator at the sewer plant. It’s huge, big enough to run all the equipment. It’s a very important part of our operations. If we ever lose power to our wastewater pumps, in a very short period of time the collection system will surcharge—the underground pipes all fill up with raw sewage and start backing up into customers’ houses and businesses, flow out of manholes onto the streets and pollute the environment. It cost us about $1.5 million to get the generator built, delivered, installed and set up. If there is a power failure it automatically takes over and keeps everything running.
As state licensed wastewater operators and public facility employees, our first concern is the quality of service we give our customers. ‘Flush it and forget it,’ is what we hope our rate payers can do. If a person has to start thinking about the sewer plant, we’re probably doing something wrong. Our second concern is satisfying all the parameters of our various permits. Accidents do happen, equipment sometimes breaks down, even the DEP understands that; but, if we negligently violate a permit parameter we can be fined more than $25,000 per day while the violation persists. Any kind of damage to rate payers property from sewer back-ups that we cause will cost us a lot of money too.
During a hurricane last month the generator came in handy. We lost electricity. We had to run our generator for a couple of days. We’re required by DEP to burn the expensive, low sulfur diesel fuel. It is a much cleaner burning than that which is used in truck or locomotive engines. The generator burns about 100 gallons an hour when it’s running the whole plant, so we went through about $14,000 worth of fuel. We kept the plant on line, though. We met every water permit parameter while putting four times the normal flow through our systems. Some people were flooded out by creeks and runoff, but not one customer suffered because the sewer plant wasn’t working right.
We were proud of our accomplishment and glad we had the generator. But, when the smoke cleared--more properly, I guess, when the waters receded--we discovered that during the two days we’d run the generator we produced too much air pollution. We have a limit to the average number of pounds of certain things (like nitrous oxide), that we can put out during a month. It’s based on the number of hours we run the generator. Since it was at full speed and burning a lot of fuel, we went over our limit. It’s all part of the “cap and trade” thing that did not pass Congress, but was instituted by EPA edict anyway.
We were in line to receive a hefty fine for polluting the air for two days during the floods and power failures. Our engineers found a way around it, though. They calculated that if we ran the generator at idle, not powering anything, just running at slow speed for another two days, it would bring our average down to below the limit. So, we turned it on. The huge diesel engine ran for two days doing nothing. Since it was on slow speed we only burned up another $6,000 worth of fossil fuel. The total number of pounds of pollutants we put to the atmosphere that month was a lot higher than it should have been, but the average during run time came down and we were off the hook.
Most of the people I work with are not engineers, or federal environmental agents or even politicians, so it didn’t make much sense. We were required to pollute more so we didn’t get fined for polluting. Of course there is little about the government’s energy and environmental policies that makes a lot of sense, unless you’re in line to make some money off of it. As a public, non-profit institution and environmental permit holders, we just play the game. It doesn’t cost us anything. We just pass the increased costs on to our rate payers.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)You are a custodian of good will, and the health of your community. Good article. With the hurricane and the October snow, how are you doing?
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