As parties await an appeal hearing before the Pennsylvania Environmental Hearing Board, residents publicly released findings from its hired professional engineer on the May 2014 Joint Act 537 Sewage Facilities Plan Update for Hegins and Hubley townships.
The report questions if the proposed wastewater treatment plan is properly sized, if other options were explored and if expected flows and costs have been underestimated, among other concerns.
Meanwhile, the state Department of Environmental Protection disputes the conclusions in the report, but is withholding details until the April 19 hearing.
Library copies
The citizens distributed copies of the report from Frederick E. Ebert, of Ebert Engineering Inc., Skippack, to the Tri-Valley Public Library in Hegins a few weeks ago, and encouraged taxpayers to take a look.
Ebert concluded, “The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection failed to require Hegins and Hubley townships to properly prepare the 537 Plan in accordance with the requirements of Pennsylvania Code Title 25, Chapter 71. The document that was retained at the townships for public comments did not contain all of the required information necessary for public review of the 537 Plan.”
Hearing appellants
Ebert was hired by a group of residents, Roger Wetzel, William Wolfgang, Randy Shadle, Kenneth W. Richter, Kenneth Graham and Harry Mausser. Those citizens are also listed as appellants in the appeal, and are represented by attorney Donald G. Karpowich, Drums. Bruce D. Klouser, Sandra J. McCullough and Darrell Huntsinger withdrew their names from the appeal. Klouser and McCullough are current Hegins Township supervisors.
The appeal hearing is slated to begin 10 a.m. April 19, before presiding Judge Richard P. Mather Sr., in Room 1, at the EHB offices, second floor, Rachel Carson State Office Building, 400 Market St., Harrisburg. The citizens filed the appeal May 14, 2015, in regard to the joint Act 537 plan update approved by DEP April 17, 2015.
Response
Representatives from DEP and the townships declined to discuss specific points raised by the Ebert engineering report.
“The document to which you refer is a report prepared on behalf of six people who are appealing the department’s approval of a joint sewage facilities plan developed by Hegins and Hubley townships. The department disputes the findings and conclusions expressed in the report and will respond accordingly at the hearing associated with the appeal,” Colleen Connolly, DEP community relations coordinator, Northeast Regional Office, Wilkes-Barre, said Tuesday. According to the EHB website, Joseph Cigan III, Wilkes-Barre, is slated to serve as chief counsel for DEP during the hearing.
“At this point, I believe it would be prudent to withhold comment on the Ebert report,” attorney Paul J. Datte, Pottsville, who was initially selected by both Hegins and Hubley townships to represent them in the appeal, said. Hegins Township has since chosen John G. Dean, Scranton, to represent the township in regard to the Act 537 Plan and appeal.
“I would be more than willing to comment on the report at an appropriate time, but with the proceedings unresolved as of this time, any comment would be ill-advised,” Datte said Tuesday.
A call to Dean on Tuesday afternoon was not returned.
Act 537 Plan
According to Republican-Herald archives, the plan that DEP approved includes the construction of a 600,000 gallon-per-day wastewater treatment plant located along Fearnot Road in Hubley Township. Sewer service is proposed for the Sacramento, Spring Glen and Fearnot areas of Hubley Township and the Hegins, Valley View and Lamberson areas of Hegins Township. The collection system consists of approximately 45,000 feet of 8-foot gravity pipe, 7,425 feet of low pressure sewerline, 30 grinder pumps, 11,270 feet of force main, four pump stations in Hubley Township and 121,610 feet of 8-foot gravity pipe, 2,870 feet of force main and three pump stations in Hegins Township. The plan also provides for an on-lot sewage disposal system management program for the area of the municipalities not within the proposed sewer service area. Costs are in the $26 million to $29 million range.
The DEP plan approval does not include approval of the system design. The system design will be evaluated and approved as part of the Water Quality Management (Part II) permit application review.
Engineer analysis
Among the Ebert Engineering findings:
• The plan summary would need to include the change of charter and identification that the Hegins-Hubley Authority would own and operate a wastewater system within Hegins and Hubley townships.
• The plan summary section does not contain an estimated construction cost or the projected user fees.
• Several commitments that are required to implement the plan were not included. The first municipal commitment is to adopt various ordinances including the ordinance to mandate the connection of all residences within 150 feet of the collection system. The second municipal commitment that must be identified is how either the townships or the authority will obtain the necessary easements across private property for the installation of the collection system.
• There is no documentation of how the number of Equivalent Dwelling Units at inception being 1,603 was calculated. There is no documentation of the total number of residential and non-residential properties within the service area. This would include the flows allocated to the various school buildings and industrial users. It appears that the Tri-Valley High School is included in the service area, but only one EDU appears to have been assigned to this property when clearly the actual flows will exceed 300 gallons per day. Since the number of EDUs is the basis for the overall sewage flow projections, it is not possible to verify that the wastewater treatment plant is properly sized, as this information is incomplete.
• The plan proposes 135 EDUs be allocated toward future growth and 196 EDUs to be reserved to service the existing Mountain Road area of Hegins and Hubley townships and the village of Fountain. The potential for redevelopment of more intense non-residential uses within sewer service areas should be discussed and factored into the overall flow projections. It is noted that there is an existing 20-acre industrial park that has significant development potential now that public sanitary sewers are available. The potential for new non-residential users was not evaluated as part of the future growth projections.
• The plan identifies that from the period of 2001 to 2013, an average of five dwelling units per year was constructed. This would result in a projected increase of 100 dwelling units for the next 20 years. However, the plan only projects a total of 75 units over the same time period. The plan does not justify why the availability of public sanitary sewer service would actually decrease the projected number of future dwelling units in the public sewer service area.
• The choices for the collection and conveyance systems only include options to convey all of the wastewater to a single location for the treatment of the wastewater. The option to provide either a small package wastewater treatment plant with stream discharge, or a community system with land application was not considered.
• Another option that should be evaluated is providing treatment capacity for the Fearnot or the Lamberson area in the wastewater treatment plant, while allowing the opportunity for the repair or replacement of the existing on-lot systems.
• The conceptual design of the various pump stations will need to be included in the cost estimate. This would include identifying which pump station will be supplied with emergency generators, flow meters, type of control building or control enclosure and determining the size of the force main for each pump station. He noted an estimated cost of $75,000 was extremely low, with the average cost for a small pump station normally in the $200,000 to $300,000 range. The reasoning of why the pump station costs in the Hubley Township collection system are significantly less than the cost estimates for the pump station in the Hegins Township collection system should be explained in the narrative and a more detailed construction cost estimate provided.
• The plan does not include sizing calculations to verify the size of all sanitary sewer interceptors. The construction cost estimate for the wastewater treatment plant is significantly lower than recent construction cost estimates for similar-sized facilities.