Proposed modifications to effluent standards for one of Fayetteville's wastewater treatment plants will go out for public comment after an Arkansas Pollution Control and Ecology Commission decision Friday.
The modifications would raise the limits set forth in the city's permit for the Paul R. Noland Wastewater Treatment Plant, which discharges into the White River.
The White River has water quality standards set forth by the Commission's Regulation 2. The segment of the river that receives the wastewater was placed on the state's 303(d) list of impaired water bodies in 2010 for chloride, sulfate and total dissolved solids. The standards for the river in that spot are 20 milligrams per liter of chlorides, 20 milligrams per liter of sulfates and 160 milligrams per liter of total dissolved solids.
To achieve that standard, the plant's permit is set to enforce much lower limits of those substances in the treated wastewater that will enter the White River starting in February 2018.
The standard is "unachievable," attorney Allan Gates said. Compliance would be expensive because of the nature of the substances that need to be limited, he said.
The city petitioned the commission in 2013 to have the standards for the river changed. Because of comments on the city's proposal, the city amended its request. That request went before commissioners Friday for approval of a new rule-making process and public comment period.
The latest proposal calls for a standard of 44 milligrams per liter of chloride, 79 milligrams per liter of sulfate and 362 milligrams per liter of total dissolved solids for the segment of the river that extends from the plant to a point 0.4 miles downstream of it. Additionally, a standard of 30 milligrams per liter of chloride, 40 milligrams per liter of sulfate and 237 milligrams per liter of total dissolved solids would be set for the segment that runs from the 0.4 miles downstream point to a Department of Environmental Quality monitoring station.
Commissioner Wesley Stites, chairman of the chemistry and biochemistry department at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, said he was concerned about the wastewater plant because of its sewage outfall's presence upstream of the drinking water intake for city residents. But, he said, he wasn't sure why standards were being set based on the 95th percentile of stream conditions and mentioned that the permit's new standard of 40 milligrams per liter for sulfate from the wastewater effluent was about six times cleaner than safe drinking water standards.
Commissioner Joe Bates, Arkansas Department of Health deputy state health officer and chief science officer, called the 95th percentile standard "an arbitrary thing" but noted how fast the Northwest Arkansas region was growing.
"I think the leaders in Fayetteville are going to have to make some decisions," he said, adding that he thinks over time safe drinking water standards may not be possible to meet.
Metro on 01/31/2017