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The people who will be most affected by an upcoming decision on wastewater disposal – Rehoboth Beach sewer customers – had a chance to air their concerns and get some answers.
Rehoboth Beach is sweating it out under a consent decree to end its wastewater discharge into the Lewes-Rehoboth Canal by December 2014. That decree is part of the total maximum daily load requirement, which says no point sources of nitrogen and phosphorous can be dumped into the environmentally sensitive Inland Bays.
The public turned out Wednesday, March 19, at a workshop at the Rehoboth Beach Convention Center to hear details of the city’s options from state environmental officials, consultants, Sussex County and two private utilities that are proposing the city opt for spray irrigation systems.
Stearns and Wheler, consultants hired by Rehoboth Beach, investigated the city’s dilemma and recommended an ocean outfall as the best option. An ocean outfall would pipe treated wastewater onto the ocean floor more than a mile off Rehoboth Beach. An outfall would satisfy the consent decree, which says the city may discharge no nitrogen and no phosphorus into the Inland Bays.
Even better, said Rip Copithorn of Stearns and Wheler, ocean outfall could be a joint project between Rehoboth Beach and Sussex County. The consultant recommendation led Rehoboth Beach to ask for funding from the Clean Water Advisory Council (CWAC), which hosted the workshop to further educate council members and the public.
Stearns and Wheler also investigated land application options – shallow or deep well injection, rapid infiltration beds and spray irrigation – and found each option unsuitable. The consultant said not enough land was available to meet Rehoboth Beach’s needs. The city would need more than 700 acres to spray irrigate.
But more recently, two private utilities, Tidewater Utilities Inc. and Artesian Water, have said spray irrigation is feasible and is the best long-term option for both Rehoboth Beach and Sussex County, whose sewer clientele is growing. Both companies proposed land-based solutions – Tidewater would spray on farmland in the Inland Bays watershed while Artesian has a “forever” lease on property outside Milton, in the Broadkill River watershed.
Stearns and Wheler might not support those plans, but proponents of spray irrigation have quite a backing.
“My farmers want that water,” said Delaware Farm Bureau President Ed Jestice.
“Come get it. Come get some of ours,” said Rehoboth Beach Mayor Sam Cooper.
Members of the Clean Water Advisory Council agreed that neither option – ocean outfall or spray irrigation – could be considered superior for environmental reasons. Costs to the end-user as well as public perception were issues of more concern.
Chris Weeks, chairman of the Rehoboth Beach-Dewey Beach Chamber of Commerce, said he saw Sussex County engineer Mike Izzo’s statement that wastewater treatment is a labor-intensive business as a good thing. “I see that as jobs, that’s a place to put people to work,” Weeks said.
While there was some discussion about the cost associated with pumping treated wastewater to farms, Jestice dismissed them, saying, “I spent $40,000 to pump water last year. There are a lot of farms on Delmarva that needed water too. This is the same water pumped by the same energy.”
The water would be treated so that only trace amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus remain. “I would starve to death trying to grow a good crop of corn on that tiny bit of nutrients you have left in that water,” Jestice said. That means if the water is used for spray irrigation, nutrients will have to be added to the water in accordance with a nutrient management plan for farming.
Even with a good nutrient management plan, small amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus will get into the bays if the system is located within the watershed, said Chris Bason, science and technical coordinator for the Center for the Inland Bays.
Bason cautioned that people can’t assume all fertilizer applied to crops would be absorbed or that no technical problems would arise with spray facilities. “They said the Angola Neck site is a good site with good soils. They didn’t say if they’ve tested to see if the soils are already saturated with phosphorus, like other Inland Bays sites are. And a lot of those sites are in close proximity to creeks,” he said.
Tourism a concern
Support for spray irrigation went beyond providing water to farmers.
“We are a tourist-based economy and, technically feasible or not, I don’t think the city wants to fight the fight of explaining ocean outfall in a public forum,” Weeks said.
Diver Jose Maramante was adamant that waves would push effluent back toward the beach, putting the health of beach-goers at risk. “Nobody has even considered the viruses that will be in this water,” he said. Spray irrigation exposes wastewater to more ultraviolet light, purifying it further by destroying viruses, he said. That means water sprayed on land is not the same as water discharged into the ocean.
Maramante cited a California ocean outfall system that he said harmed aquatic life. Bason suggested a more appropriate comparison would be the ocean outfall at Bethany Beach. No appreciable harm to aquatic life has been noted there, Bason said.
Bason said the Center for the Inland Bays wants the city’s decision to be based on zero nutrient discharge to the bays. But the center is not supporting any of the options. “We are happy that things are moving at such a quick pace so they can get their discharge out of the bays,” said Bason.
It is now up to Rehoboth Beach or Sussex County, or the two together, to return to the Clean Water Advisory Council with a proposal and request for funding if it is necessary, said council Chairman Jeff Bross. The CWAC gives municipalities grants and loans at below-market interest rates. The council cannot fund projects by private companies.
Contact Leah Hoenen at leah@capegazette.com
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