SPRINGDALE -- The federal Environmental Protection Agency and an Oklahoma-based environmental group object to changes in permits for wastewater treatment plants for Springdale and the Northwest Arkansas Conservation Authority, triggering an administrative law judge review today on whether those permits should have been issued.
The permits would allow the authority to release a higher level of phosphorus in its treated wastewater into the Illinois River watershed and reduce the amount of testing done at the Springdale plant, state Department of Environmental Quality records show. The department issued the new permits Dec. 1.
"We're going to meet the standards whatever they are," said Heath Ward, executive director of Springdale Water Utilities. "We're meeting the old standards now."
Judge Charles Moulton for the state's Pollution Control and Ecology Commission will consider the permit objections at a hearing by telephone today. The EPA made its objections about the permits to the state commission in a Dec. 30 letter sent from the federal agency's regional office in Dallas. The Pollution Control Commission oversees the state Environmental Quality Department.
The state should have submitted a final draft of the proposed permit to the EPA before granting final approval, according to the EPA's letter. "The December 1, 2021, permit is fundamentally different from the draft permit reviewed by the EPA in December 2020," the EPA letter says.
The EPA's objections to a permit already issued is unusual, and much of today's hearing will concentrate on whether objections now are timely and who has standing on further proceedings if they are, said attorney Richard Mays of Little Rock. Mays represents the nonprofit group Save the Illinois River, which also objects to the changes in the permits. The Illinois River flows from Arkansas into Oklahoma before flowing into the Arkansas River.
The EPA's letter cites objections to both permits forwarded to the federal agency by the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality -- objections the Oklahoma agency now says should never have been made, according to a Jan. 12 email sent to the department's Arkansas counterpart, the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, and to the EPA. Ward forwarded a copy of that email.
"The agency senior leadership was surprised to see that EPA referenced comments made by Oklahoma DEQ," the Jan. 12 email from the Oklahoma department said. "After researching the matter, it was determined that a program manager submitted the comments without properly vetting them through the appropriate internal process."
The comments attributed to the Oklahoma department in the EPA's letter "are not appropriate, should not have been submitted, and should not form the basis of EPA's objection to the permit," the Jan. 12 email said. A spokeswoman for the Oklahoma department said the department had no immediate comment.