Wastewater plant tackling problems Received unsatisfactory rating in 6 categories;
Allgood said most are paperwork issues

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Kathy Helms
Diné Bureau

WINDOW ROCK — Gallup Wastewater Treatment Plant management is working to correct problems identified in a state inspection report, and Gallup Joint Utilities Executive Director Lance Allgood believes they are on their way to getting things back on track.

The plant received an “unsatisfactory” rating in July in six of seven categories pertaining to its federal discharge permit, and a “marginal” rating in the seventh category. The city also was issued a notice of violation by New Mexico Environment Department for not having two certified Level 4 wastewater operators on staff.

“It’s going to take us a while to get things ironed out and get folks up to snuff on the training, but I think we’re on our way,” Allgood said Monday.

GWTP received unsatisfactory ratings in record keeping and reporting, operation and maintenance, self-monitoring, flow measurement, and effluent/receiving waters observations. It was rated marginal in the laboratory category.

Allgood met Monday with GWTP staff to receive a status report and go over the city’s responses to the findings, which are due to the state by Sept. 1. The meeting included the city’s new Level 4 operator, Robert Sikeya, Acting Assistant Wastewater Superintendent Michael DeClercq, and Superintendent Ernest Thompson.

Allgood attributed many of the findings to lack of documentation because workers were unable to locate records. In some instances, such as questions about GWTP’s salinity reporting, employees were new to their jobs and didn’t know where to find the reports.

“We have had some recent retirements, so we’re trying to go through the files and find stuff from the previous folks that were down there. We did find the last 12 months and we’ll be sending them what we have found, but prior to the last 12 months we haven’t found those records yet. They may be in a box somewhere,” he said.

Dave Bary of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in Dallas said Monday that he spoke with the Enforcement Division about GWTP’s findings and “the matter is still under Enforcement review.” NMED performs the inspections for EPA to evaluate the plant’s compliance with its federal National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System, or NPDES permit.

The state noted that GWTP only reports gross effluent values for salinity discharged to the Colorado River, and may need a permit modification.

“We have found over the years that sometimes the state’s filing system is about like ours is right now — some of the records are missing,” Allgood said.

There were two issues with the salinity. “One is they couldn’t find the reporting papers, the documentation for the last 12 months, and they didn’t think we were adequately sampling because they couldn’t see a correlation between our effluent and the influent.

“We’re not supposed to increase salinity going to the Colorado River tributary more than 400 milligrams per liter, and we never have, but the state was concerned there was no way to check that,” he said. “We actually have been doing TDS (total dissolved solids ) on the water side and reporting it for years. I think that will be cleared up pretty easily by some documentation.”

One of the findings was because DeClercq signed a May 1-31 Discharge Monitoring Report without proper authorization. A delegation of signatory authority for DeClercq and Sikeya will be included in the response to the state.

The state alleged that GWTP was pulling “grab” samples when the permit requires composite samples. Allgood said that is somewhat of a misunderstanding too. “We have always done the proper composite sampling. In that particular incidence we’re not sure what the deal was there.

We’re trying to look at it.

“We have to take one sample every hour for like six hours. Historically that’s always been a manual process. We are looking into buying a composite sampler, or actually reactivating a composite sampler so it won’t be such a burden on the operators to run out there every hour,” he said.

On June 24, GWTP’s lab technician noticed power out to parts of the plant and sewage backing up. About 1,800 gallons of raw sewage went into the Rio Puerco. There was no loss-of-power alarm sent to the operator.

At the time of the state inspection, the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system which controls the alarm dial-up system was not functioning.

“That’s an automated system that runs the plant and also allows for alarming during hours when nobody is at the plant. It’s functioning now,” Allgood said, and backup uninterruptable power supplies are on order.

“Since this occurrence, we have gone from utilizing pagers to utilizing cell phones,” he said. Also, before the operator on stand-by leaves work, he now dials in to make sure the system is working. It is set up to call four different numbers in order of priority.

“If it doesn’t get the first number, it will continue to the next number, so we shouldn’t have any more incidences. There’s never a 100 percent chance, but we’re like 99.9 — as close as you can get, I think — to being able to say that if we have an issue, it will be alarmed out,” Allgood said.

In June a feed line that supplies chlorine to one of the injection points developed a leak that went undetected for a short time so the chlorine wasn’t making it to the effluent. That has been repaired and now there is a backup system in place so if one fails, the other can be activated.

Since the inspection, Allgood said workers are doing increased monitoring of chlorine residual and GWTP is looking at purchasing an automated chlorine analyzer and pacer. The utility also is working to improve the level of education for existing staff and is providing extra training.

Two employees are expected to test for Level 4 wastewater operator certifications.

Allgood said it would be nice to be able to increase salaries, but “we’re paying off a lot of debt from the improvements out at the plant about seven years ago and the recent $11 million improvement.” Salary increases “would probably help to attract and retain qualified folks,” he said.

“Unfortunately, some folks don’t look at our benefits package. We have some of the better benefits packages in the state. The city offers 70/30 on the health insurance, we pay 70 percent on the retirement, and then we have

Municipal Plan 3, which is really a good retirement plan through PERA.

“We have some really good benefits here in the city, but sometimes folks don’t look at those. They look at the hourly wage.”