TCWN is partnering with the Watershed Association of the Tellico Reservoir (WATeR) to enforce the City of Madisonville's NPDES permit through a citizen suit notice and complaint filed in the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee. The City has been in chronic violation of its permit: based on records obtained from TDEC, Madisonville has reported more than 5,200 days of violation of numeric effluent limits from August 2009 to May 2014 as well as 136 overflows totaling millions of gallons of untreated sewage discharged to area streams.
These problems are not new: Madisonville has had more than enough time to fix them. In 2007, TDEC issued an enforcement order with a modest $5,000 penalty that required Madisonville to fix its compliance problems by December 2011. Madisonville proposed a corrective action plan to close its aging wastewater treatment plant and discharge via an 8.3 mile force main to a modern plant operated by the Tellico Reservoir Development Authority. It even got nearly $6 million in heavily subsidized taxpayer funds through TDEC to make this happen. After it built the force main, Madisonville decided it did not want to pay the true costs of sewage treatment and stopped work on the plan it had proposed. Since January 2012 - the compliance date TDEC established in the 2007 order - Madisonville reported 3,550 days of numeric effluent violations and 63 overflows, including 33 overflows at the headworks of its WWTP. This level of violations is extreme, and has caused severe pollution in Bat Creek, a tributary of the Tellico Reservoir. TCWN and WATeR seek a permanent, timely solution to these problems to protect both Bat Creek and the Tellico Reservoir, as well as substantial penalties for past violations.
TCWN filed its comments to TDEC regarding the proposed Brownsville Energy Administration permits to expand its discharge to include industrial wastewater from the proposed TVA megasite project in West Tennessee. One of the permits would authorize an increased discharge to the Hatchie River, a state scenic river with endangered mussels and a National Wildlife Refuge. The other permit would allow the discharge of metals to the South Fork Forked Deer, an impaired waterway. The permitting process is currently on-hold as EPA and TDEC discuss antidegradation issues.
The City of Cookeville operates a sewage treatment plant that discharges an average of about 7 million gallons per day (MGD) of treated sewage to Pigeon Roost Creek, a small urban stream with a low flow of only .65 MGD. The maximum design flow of the plant is 14 MGD, and during rain events, this discharge can jump to nearly 25 MGD. Pigeon Roost Creek is listed by TDEC as polluted by nutrients, pathogens, and sediments. The Falling Water River is also designated as polluted by nutrients and sediment from its confluence with Pigeon Roost Creek, downstream to Burgess Falls.
In November 2011, TDEC issued a renewed permit to the City of Cookeville. TCWN appealed this permit in December 2011, arguing that TDEC had failed to impose limits on nutrients as required to protect water quality. Cookeville also appealed its permit, seeking to eliminate all requirements (including monitoring) related to nutrients and to retain outdated permit provisions related to in-plant bypasses and overflows in the collection system.
TCWN then learned that Cookeville has appealed every permit issued to it since 1993. Because TDEC had declined to defend itself for this nearly 20-year period, Cookeville may be operating under limits established in the 1980s that do not reflect current federal rules. Instead of bringing the current permit appeals to the Board so there could be a final resolution of these matters, TDEC decided to issue a new draft permit on November 27, 2012. TCWN submitted comments on the new draft on January 14, 2013. The final permit was issued on March 4, 2013, Cookeville and TCWN appealed on April 2, 2013. The appeal is pending.
On April 22, 2013, TCWN sent the City of Cookeville a 60-day notice of intent to sue regarding serious and chronic violations of permit conditions, including discharging nitrogen and phosphorous in amounts detrimental to aquatic organisms, sanitary sewer overflows, failure to properly operate and maintain the sewage collection and treatment system, and causing nuisance conditions. For more information about water quality impacts, click here.
The City of Gatlinburg wastewater treatment plant discharges treated wastewater to the West Prong of the Little Pigeon River, which is listed by TDEC as biologically impaired due to excessive phosphorous. In response to recent EPA guidance, TDEC is developing a statewide nutrient reduction strategy, which it applied for the first time in the renewal permit for the City of Gatlinburg's sewage treatment plant. The permit imposes a new limit on phosphorous discharges. While this limit is a step forward in reducing nutrient pollution, it is insufficient both because it is applied as an annual limit (rather than monthly) and is not sufficiently stringent to protect water quality. Because of these shortcomings, TCWN filed a permit appeal on December 31, 2012. TCWN voluntarily dismissed the appeal in February 2014 to allow the City time to bring its new treatment plant online and determine whether existing nutrient limitations are sufficient to protect water quality.
The City of Bartlett wastewater treatment plant discharges treated wastewater to the Loosahatchie River, which TDEC has determined to be polluted by too much phosphorous. The plant discharges nearly 14,000 pounds of phosphorous year, and is thus contributing significantly to this impairment. Unfortunately, when TDEC issued the most recent discharge permit, it allowed Bartlett to continue discharging as much phosphorous as it has in the past. Because the permit failed to impose a required water quality-based effluent limit, TCWN filed an appeal petition to challenge the permit on October 30, 2012. The appeal is pending.
In October 2010, TCWN filed a complaint against the City of Chattanooga for violating the Clean Water Act by discharging untreated sewage into the Tennessee River and nearby streams. Chattanooga had reported numerous sanitary sewer overflows, including illegal discharges of tens of millions of gallons of untreated sewage from its West Bank and East Bank outfalls to the Tennessee River. Chattanooga also operates a combined sewage system downtown, resulting in large volumes of stormwater being mixed with sewage, and combined sewage discharges to the Tennessee River and Chattanooga Creek.
After several years of negotiations, on April 23, 2013, U.S. District Judge Curtis Collier entered a consent decree between TCWN, EPA, TDEC, and the City of Chattanooga resolving all claims. The Consent Decree calls for a comprehensive fix to the City’s entire sewer system, which will result in a substantial improvement in water quality over time. The Consent Decree will be implemented in two phases. During the first phase – which lasts five years – the City will focus on the high priority projects (the Early Action Capital Projects listed in Appendix C) it has identified as causing the bulk of the alleged permit violations. The City will also develop and implement a Phase I sewer repair program that will rehabilitate approximately 15% of the sewershed in areas with streams polluted by pathogens typically found in sewage. These improvements are expected to eliminate discharges from the West Bank and East Bank outfalls and reduce SSOs. In the second phase, the City will develop and implement a full suite of additional plans designed to improve operation and maintenance of its sewer system.
The consent decree also requires the City to complete the process of bringing its combined sewer system up to current federal standards. Under the terms of the settlement, the City will develop a Long-Term Control Plan to better manage its combined sewer discharges and will address the Central Avenue and William Street CSO outfalls, which discharge to Chattanooga Creek.
The Consent Decree requires the City of Chattanooga to: pay a $238,200 civil penalty to the United States; implement an approximately $800,000 supplemental environmental project to restore a tributary of South Chickamauga Creek in lieu of additional federal penalties; and implement an approximately $238,200 Highland Park Green Infrastructure Project in lieu of state penalties.
TCWN members in Memphis brought our attention to problems at the M.C. Stiles sewage treatment plant, which discharges to the Mississippi River north of downtown. In response, TCWN submitted comments on the draft NDPES permit renewal and conducted several file reviews at TDEC and EPA. We were disappointed to learn that Memphis had reported more than 1,000 sanitary sewer overflows - basically, discharges of raw sewage to the streets and streams of Memphis - over the previous 5 years. We were also concerned about the visible discharge of foam to the Mississippi River. Because there had been no enforcement action at that time, TCWN sent a 60-day notice to the City of Memphis. On day 60, EPA and TDEC jointly filed suit against the City of Memphis in federal court regarding violations at both of the city's treatment plants and throughout the sewerage system. TCWN filed a motion to intervene in that enforcement suit, and participated in lengthy negotions to resolve these long-running problems.
On September 20, 2012, U.S. District Judge Samuel H. Mays entered a consent decree among TCWN, USEPA, TDEC, and the City of Memphis resolving all claims. Through the consent decree, Memphis has committed to approximately $250 million in rehabilitation projects to prevent future SSOs.
In July 2003, TCWN sent a 60-day notice of intent to sue the Knoxville Utility Board (KUB) for serious and chronic violations of the Clean Water Act, including millions of gallons of sanitary sewer overflows throughout the city. This case resulted in a consent decree entered in February 2005, which is being implemented through the $530 million PACE 10 sewer improvement program. Sanitary sewer overflows have dropped dramatically as a result of this settlement.
The settlement also included two supplemental environmental projects. The first is a lateral program to reduce SSOs by repairing residential lateral and removing illicit connections to the sewer system. The second funded creation of the Williams Creek Urban Forest by TCWN.
The KUB settlement was the first major action against a Tennessee municipality, and set the stage for later consent decrees in Nashville, Chattanooga, Memphis, and elsewhere.
