3609 Hwy 24 (Ocean) | Newport, North Carolina 28570

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
 February 4, 2003

Cape Lookout COASTKEEPER^®, Frank Tursi
252-393-8185
lookoutkeeper@nccoast.org

 COASTKEEPERS^® Find Flaws in
State's Sewer-Enforcement Strategy

     Ocean – State water-quality officials rarely deny sewer permits, even when urged to do so by their own staff, and never revoke existing permits, even if the plant is a chronic polluter and has amassed thousands of dollars in fines.
     Those were the conclusions reached by the NC Coastal Federation's COASTKEEPER^® after a three-month review of state records on sewer plants in southern and central coastal counties.
     They found 55 plants in that eight-county region had violated their pollution limits so often that they were fined at least twice in the last five years by the state's Division of Water Quality. The worst ones were fined dozens of times.
     Yet, the repeated fines and stern warnings did little to prevent many of the violators from renewing their permits to continue polluting coastal waters.
     The report by Frank Tursi and Ted Wilgis appears in the Federation's recently published newsletter, Coastal Review.
     "These permits are always renewed and never revoked," said Tursi, the Federation's Cape Lookout Coastkeeper. "We found numerous instances in the files of state regulators writing stern warnings to polluters one month and then renewing the permits a couple of months later. It's a system that should give no one comfort."
     Most of the chronic violators are so-called "minor" dischargers –  those that release less than a million gallons of sewage a day. They are mainly small city- or county-owned sewer plants and private package plants that serve subdivisions, mobile-home parks and small businesses. Historically, such plants are the hardest to regulate, Tursi said.
     State officials are shackled by a system that realistically gives them few weapons to bring the plants into compliance, he said. They can fine the violators, and since beefing up enforcement in 1998, they have done so with regularity. The 55 on the Federation list were assessed more than $650,000 in the last five years. Most paid their fines, which end up in an education fund and are distributed to public schools across the state.
     The fines sometimes do as intended and force improvements, the Federation noted in its report. Brunswick County, for instance, was assessed 31 times, totaling more than $70,000, for violations at two public schools, a sewer plant and a water-treatment plant. The county shared topped billing on the Federation's "Dirty (Baker's) Dozen," a list of the most-chronic violators since 1998. The county, though, fixed the problems and remained clean last year. After years of assessments, other chronic polluters, such as Swansboro in Onslow County and Beaufort in Carteret, have agreed to replace their aging sewer plants. The fines also sometimes force the owners of private utilities to sell their plants to publicly owned systems.
     Many on the list, though, pay the small fines, ignore the warnings and continue doing business as usual because they know, Tursi said, that the state never uses its ultimate weapon: revocation. Fear of lawsuits, he said, has made the state attorney general's office uneasy and water-quality officials shy about pulling a permit.
     "No one wants to take the phone calls from angry homeowners or businessmen who suddenly can't flush their toilets," Tursi said.
     Rick Shiver, the director of the Division of Water Quality's regional office in Wilmington, became so exasperated with the Worsley Companies failure to correct the problems at its Dixie Boy truck stop near Wilmington that he took the unusual step in February 2000 of recommending that its permit be revoked. The sewer plant at the truck stop discharges about 4,000 gallons of sewage a day into the Northeast Cape Fear River.
     In operation since 1991, the plant has a long history of noncompliance. Worsley has been assessed 17 times – for more that $27,000 – since 1998 for failing to meet permit limits. His bosses in Raleigh overruled Shiver, and Worsley's permit was renewed last March.
     State law also allows water-quality officials not to renew permits, which last for five years, if the plant consistently violated its pollution limits. The Federation's report, however, shows that renewals are about as certain as Sentry Utilities blowing its permit limit on solids.
     The private utility in Onslow County was fined 31 times in five years for violating its permits. The company's plant that serves the Springdale Acres subdivision and Southwest Middle School off US 17 in Jacksonville has missed not only its limit on solids, but also those that control dissolved oxygen, nitrogen, fecal coliform bacteria, flow and biological oxygen demand. It has done so with regularity for almost 10 years. Another Sentry plant serves the Hickory Grove subdivision in Onslow. It accounted for six of Sentry's assessments.
     Daniel Furia, Sentry's owner, asked the division in 1992 for a permit to expand the Springdale Acres' plant, which was built in 1988, to 50,000 gallons a day. The division sent its field staff to assess Brinson Creek, a trickle of a stream no more than 5-feet wide. The technical staff recommended that the permit be denied because natural water flow in the creek was too meager to assimilate the waste. So there would be no mistaking his opinion, one inspector emphatically wrote "DENY" in big block letters on the last page of his report. The permit was issued in the summer of 1993.
     "Not issuing permits for bad projects is the state's first and really only defense," Tursi explained. "Here we have an instance where the division's own staff recognized the potential problems and strongly urged that the permit not be issued. It was anyway. The division has dealt with the consequences ever since."
     The technical staff revisited the issue in late 1996 because the permit was about to expire. It again urged that the permit be denied. Again, it was renewed.
     "As it almost certainly will be this winter," Tursi said.
     Division officials have already sent out public notices that they intend to renew the permit again, though Furia told state officials last year that he doesn't have the money to make the improvements they demanded. His attorney later asked the state Utilities Commission to rescind one plant's license because it could no longer serve its customers. State law requires that permit applicants be financially solvent. Owners of large private utilities supposedly can't get permits if they can't prove that they have the money to run a plant safely during the duration of the permit.
"We expect Sentry to get its permit, because permits are always renewed," Tursi said.
     To encourage better enforcement of these chronic polluters, the state should prohibit additional sewer hook-ups until the plants clean up their acts, Tursi said. "You're not putting anyone out of business," he said. "But you would be sending a strong message that this kind of irresponsible behavior will no longer be tolerated."
     NCCF will also devote a page on its website, www.nccoast.org, to sewer permits. The site will list all the permits in the coastal counties, those that violate their pollution limits and those that were assessed a fine. It will also contain information about the state permitting system, contact names and phone numbers and suggest how people can get involved in the permitting process. The site will be updated monthly, Tursi said, and should be launched on Feb. 18.

THE DIRTY (BAKER'S) DOZEN

These are the most chronic water polluters along the southern
and central coast since 1998 based on the number of times they've been
assessed by the state for violating their sewer permits.