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Show Sewage Surplus Grows Daily Sewer District Resorts to Open Pit Sludge Dumping The Snyderville Basin Sewer Sew-er District treatment plant near Kimball Jet. can't dry the amount of sludge that is being treated at the facility so the district has begun dumping "digested" liquid sludge into open pits near East Canyon Creek, according accord-ing to the State Department of Water Pollution Control. And, the state says, it had no choice but to approve the dumping plan. Ron Roberts, an engineer in the water pollution office, says the green light was given to Snyderville Basin in a letter July 27. Roberts said the dumping plan is the best temporary solution to a series of problems and he conceded that, even though the state approved the open pit, it still "isn't a very good situation." situa-tion." The district's sludge drying beds, full to overflowing, needed relief, Roberts said, and the pit was dug as a site for drying the overflow sludge. he said the treated sludge is being dumped in liquid form and it could carry the potential of working its way through the soil and into the water table where it might foul East Canyon Creek. But, he said, the soil in the area is tight, and there is a chance that nothing will happen. Roberts said allowing sludge to overflow the beds could have resulted in direct dumping into the creek. "This could be saving the creek from being polluted," he said. Roberts said the state is monitoring the creek to see if it is being polluted, but Russ Hinshaw of the water pollution pollu-tion control division says he is not sure if water in the Please turn to page 4 More Sewage . . . Continued from Page ia nitrogen' State law prohibits liquid sludge from being applied to the top of the ground as a soil amendment, he said, but injecting it could be an excellent method of disposal. Roberts said, before a treatment plant can sell of give away sludge as fertilizer, fertili-zer, it must hold it for a year if it is to be used as a topical soil agent. It is also illegal to use sludge to fertilize vegetables in Utah, Roberts said. Decker said injected sludge would be used for crops such as hay. Decker also said the treatment treat-ment plant is having severe problems with grease that is being dumped in quantity into the sewer lines. "It would be safe to assume that the majority of it is coming from Park City restaurants," he said. Decker said, because grease in the system destroys des-troys the ability of the bacteria to digest raw sewage sew-age if it exceeds 15 percent, he said there will be a crackdown on Park City restaurants. "If they are not keeping their grease traps clean, we are going to cut them off from the sewer and they will have to dispose of their own waste," he said. "State law allows us to do that." He said grease levels have been as high as 23 percent at the plant and that the levels have been a serious problem. He said he was going to launch a crackdown immediately. immedi-ately. "When you have a lot of skiers and they like to eat steaks and Mexican food, you have grease and there is no reason to assume that the levels are up for any other reason," Decker said. creek below the site of the sludge pits is being taken for samples. "I don't know if the test area is below the pit or just below the sewage treatment plant," Hinshaw said. He also said the creek has not been recently tested and that there is no data that would be readily available to determine if the sewage dumped into the pit if fouling the creek. According to Roberts, the dumping will continue until the treatment plant can build a new de-watering facility. Roberts said plans for that have been submitted to the state, but no time limit has been placed on the dumping. Roberts said he has no idea how the district would finance the expansion of the facility. Bruce Decker, Synderville Basin district manager, says the problem dates back to the construction of the plant when designers and the state underestimated the size needed for beds used to dry sludge. "With the slow rate of evaporation and the high precipitation here, we would really need 20 acres," Decker said. The woefully short-in-space beds have been able to hold the sludge that the treatment portion of the plant is turning out. The result has been the trucking and dumping of treated liquid sludge at the Park City landfill. But the high skier turnout during the holidays forced the plant to send its sludge into a two pits on Justice of the Peace Jim Kilby's property near the plant. Those storage pits were called on three weeks ago to cut down on the travel time trucks were taking to dump at the landfill. "Because of the travel time, we just couldn't keep up with the flow of solids," Decker said. He said there are about three weeks of storage left in the open pits before they are full. That will force the trucks back to the Park City landfill. "It's like bouncing five basketballs at once," Decker said. He also said that the pits should have no percolation rate of sludge to the water table, because the district had a Salt Lake firm that specializes in studying soil tell the district exactly how to build the pits. "I don't think that is a concern," he said. Decker said the district has plans to build a de-watering facility to dry the treated sludge at an estimated cost -of $600,000 "unless a more cost-effective method comes along." One other method being examined, he said, is one that is used extensively in the farming , country of the midwest. "They take the liquid sludge and inject it directly into the ground," Decker said.! "It is very rich in ; |