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May 8, 2025

Talbot Spy

Nonpartisan Education-based News for Talbot County Community

Ecosystem Eco Lead

Md. Orders Linkwood Chicken Rendering Plant Shut Down for Corrective Actions

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Maryland regulators have ordered a shutdown of a problem-plagued Eastern Shore chicken rendering plant after a tip from an environmental group led them to discover a batch of new pollution violations there.

The Maryland Department of the Environment on Dec. 21 directed Valley Proteins Inc. to cease operations at its facility in Linkwood in Dorchester County until it can meet its wastewater discharge permit limits and reduce the risk of overflows from its storage lagoons. The MDE threatened to fine or suspend the plant’s permit altogether if it failed to comply with prescribed corrective actions.

Michael A. Smith, vice chairman of the Winchester, VA, based company, said it had agreed to a temporary shutdown until it can lower the levels of its storage lagoons and meet permit requirements.

“We are working cooperatively with MDE to resolve the issue as quickly as possible,” Smith said.

The shutdown order comes after a series of MDE inspections this month found multiple problems at the facility. According to MDE inspection reports, those included an illegal discharge into a holding pond, discharges of sludge and inadequately treated wastewater into a stream leading to the Transquaking River, and leaks and overflows from treatment tanks.

At Valley Proteins’ poultry rendering plant, workers clean up sludge that was discovered in a stream leading to the Transquaking River. (MD Department of the Environment)

The inspections were triggered by drone images provided by ShoreRivers, a coalition of Eastern Shore riverkeeper organizations, showing a grayish discharge from the rendering plant’s wastewater outfall, according to a letter MDE Secretary Ben Grumbles wrote to a Valley Proteins executive.

Choptank Riverkeeper Matt Pluta, a member of ShoreRivers staff, said that while doing aerial surveillance on Dec. 10, he saw “a large, discolored discharge” coming from the Linkwood facility and flowing downstream toward the Transquaking.

The MDE inspected the plant later the same day and reported it found acidic, inadequately treated wastewater being released into a stream, chlorine-treated wastewater leaking onto the ground, and foam and wastewater overflowing from another treatment tank.

The following week, more MDE inspections found waste sludge in a stream outfall leading to the Transquaking, continuing improper discharges both to the stream and onto the ground and inadequate cleanup of earlier detected leaks, spills and overflows. The MDE also found raw chicken waste on the ground. Regulators ordered the plant to cease discharges until the wastewater could be treated sufficiently to meet its permit limits.

“Chemical spills, tanks are overflowing, illegal discharges coming from all over the treatment process. It’s an absolute mess,” Pluta said of the conditions described in the inspection reports.

Neighbors and environmental groups have complained for years about the Valley Proteins plant, which takes up to 4 million pounds of chicken entrails and feathers daily from poultry processing plants and renders them into pet food.

The Transquaking, which flows into Fishing Bay, a Chesapeake Bay tributary, has been classified for more than two decades as impaired by nutrient pollution. The rendering plant is the river’s largest single source of such pollution, which fuels algae blooms and reduces oxygen levels in the water below what’s healthy for fish and other aquatic animals.

In his Dec. 16 letter to the company, the MDE’s Grumbles called the Linkwood plant’s operations “unacceptable.” He said the company’s recent compliance record “indicates a pattern of improper operations and poor decision-making regarding water pollution and air emissions issues.”

Another follow-up inspection on Dec. 20 found evidence of more sludge having been discharged in recent days, despite cleanups of earlier releases and leaks. The inspector also found that the plant had stopped discharging and its wastewater lagoons were filling up, despite some of the wastewater being trucked away. That prompted the shutdown order.

Valley Proteins’ Smith said the company is complying.

“We have a plan in place to move as much of our incoming supply to other [renderers] and or landfills in the short term,” he said by email. The company also has arranged, he said, to lower the levels in its storage lagoons by trucking “treated clarified water” from them to an unnamed local wastewater plant.

Sludge from the Valley Proteins chicken rendering plant in Linkwood, MD, fouls a stream leading to the Transquaking River. (MD Department of the Environment)

“We have seen our system improve over the last few days and anticipate being able to operate shortly,” he concluded.

MDE spokesman Jay Apperson said Valley Proteins is putting together a plan for returning to operation, but he said the company’s plan would have to persuade the MDE that it will comply with its discharge limits and other permit requirements.

In April, Pluta’s ShoreRivers group joined with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation and Dorchester Citizens for Planned Growth to threaten a lawsuit against the company, accusing it of repeatedly exceeding discharge limits on pollutants such as fecal coliform bacteria, nitrogen, phosphorus and ammonia.

Grayish liquid on the ground that, according to an MDE inspector, leaked from a chlorine treatment chamber at Valley Proteins’ wastewater treatment plant. (MD Department of the Environment)

The plant has been operating on an outdated discharge permit since 2006, and neighbors and environmental groups have been calling on the MDE to impose tighter requirements. Meanwhile, in 2014, the company applied for state approval to nearly quadruple its wastewater output, from 150,000 gallons to 575,000 gallons daily.

In September, the MDE released a new draft permit that would tighten limits on what the company could discharge. State regulators set caps on discharges of nitrogen and phosphorus that would require the company to upgrade its wastewater treatment facility, even if it did not expand operations.

State regulators also vowed to seek “a significant financial penalty” as well as corrective actions for a series of water and air pollution violations it had documented at the Shore facility.

That represented a shift in the MDE’s approach to the rendering plant. Earlier this year, the department had planned to provide Valley Proteins nearly $13 million to upgrade the wastewater treatment system at its Linkwood facility. Some lawmakers objected to giving public funds to a private company with a history of discharge violations, and the legislature limited such grants to half of any projected cost. After finding more violations at the plant, the MDE subsequently withdrew the grant offer.

Critics of the plant welcomed the MDE’s pledge to take enforcement action. But at hearings in October and November, they demanded that the state put more teeth in the plant’s discharge permit. They called for independent monitoring of its discharges, curbs on any planned increase in the rendering plant’s operations until it corrects all deficiencies and the MDE pledges to fine and take enforcement action for any future violations.

Pluta said the latest developments add to his concerns about the rendering facility and about the state’s ability to oversee it.

“We recognize that there’s a need for this type of operation,” he said, “but if you can’t operate within the guidelines of the law, of your permit, then you shouldn’t be able to operate at all.”

Pluta also questioned whether the MDE has enough staff and resources to ensure compliance, noting that the MDE only discovered problems there after he reported seeing a suspicious discharge.

“They’ve been inspecting monthly and didn’t come up with all this stuff,” he said.

The public comment period on Valley Proteins’ draft permit, which was extended for 60 days, remains open until Jan. 14, 2022.

MDE spokesman Jay Apperson said department officials will consider all comments received in making a final decision on the company’s permit application.

But Apperson also released a statement from the MDE secretary, saying, “We are much more focused on enforcement and correcting any ongoing violations before taking any actions on a draft permit.”

By Timothy B. Wheeler

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Crowd Urges MDE to Deny Permit for Trappe East Sewer Plant

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More than 150 people largely filled the curling rink at the Talbot County Community Center to urge state environmental officials to deny a wastewater discharge permit for the Trappe East/Lakeside wastewater treatment plant.

Nearly three dozen spoke during the Thursday night public hearing on the Maryland Department of the Environment’s draft permit for the project, which would allow an annual average of 540,000 gallons per day of treated effluent to be sprayed onto farmland near the Miles Creek.

The crowd applauded every speaker, who each supported the denial or withdrawal of the permit, with most concerned about the environmental impact on the relatively pristine Miles Creek. The condition of Miles Creek is dramatically different than La Trappe Creek and an unnamed tributary of La Trappe Creek into which Trappe’s existing wastewater treatment plant discharges its effluent.

The unnamed tributary, La Trappe Creek, and the Choptank River — into which La Trappe and Miles creeks flow — are all impaired and conditions in the Choptank have been getting worse, not better.

Several speakers also challenged MDE on its failure to enforce permit limits of existing sewer plants and to ensure compliance with the federal Clean Water Act.

Tom Hughes said he has been concerned about the town’s existing plant for more than 20 years.

He said he had stood up in a similar meeting two decades ago and “asked the MDE representatives there how they could consider allowing Trappe to increase its wastewater plants discharged into La Trappe Creek when there was already way too much nitrogen, phosphorus and fecal bacteria in it.

“Here we are 23 years later, and absolutely nothing has changed,” Hughes said. “La Trappe Creek is still grossly impaired and the town is reportedly again violating its discharge permit. We have an ongoing public health hazard in La Trappe Creek and the MDE has known about it for decades.”

He said he had sought 2021 data about La Trappe Creek or the unnamed tributary to compare to data from 1998 and 2003 and had gotten little response and no information from MDE.

“Six weeks have now passed and I still haven’t gotten a direct answer to my simple question,” Hughes said.

Choptank Riverkeeper Matt Pluta said the permit should be “withdrawn and reprocessed as the surface water discharge permit that it is.” (The permit is being processed as a groundwater discharge permit as the treated effluent will be spray irrigated onto farmland.)

“MDE is responsible for setting the limits and conditions for discharging treated sewage in the state,” he said. “And these groundwater discharge permits are issued under the assumption that no pollution will end up in the groundwater or the river.

“This idea that zero discharge will occur is legal fiction. For too long the state of Maryland has been hiding pollution loads under these permits that are damaging our rivers,” Pluta said. “The Choptank River is already impaired and recognized by the state and federal agencies as trending in the wrong way and incorporating more pollution; water quality conditions in the Choptank are getting worse. And it seems that we’re prepared, through this permit, to let that pollution trend continue.

“In fact, in 2015, USGS reported that 70% of the nutrients in the Choptank come from groundwater, which is exactly what this permit is regulating,” he said. “Here we’re talking about a groundwater discharge permit for which the state believes zero discharge to the groundwater will occur.”

He said more than half of the groundwater discharge permits on the Eastern Shore are in non-compliance with permit limits and conditions.

Pluta also said groundwater discharge permits for treated effluent aren’t “even applying common farming practices.

“When the farmer puts down nutrients they do it at the right time and the right rate,” he said. “When a wastewater operator applies nutrients, they do it to control volume, their incentive is to control volume and put as much down as they can.”

While comments largely focused on the permit for the new treatment plant, Tom Alspach of the Talbot Preservation Alliance argued that MDE could not consider the Trappe East project separately from the town’s existing plant.

“You can’t do that. It’s not intended to be a separate undertaking by this developer for this one particular permit,” he said. “It is integrally related to the existing plant. The two facilities are going to be connected by a pipe. It is is intended that flows will go back and forth for an indefinite period of time.

“Ostensibly the first 120 houses from this new development to be served by the spray field are to be connected instead to the existing plant,” Alspach said. “That 120 can be an illusory number, there is no limit on how many houses can actually be connected. The only people that can limit it are the Town of Trappe and the developer. They may have no interest in limiting it if the circumstances are such they can accommodate more.

“There is no period of time limiting for how long the new houses in the Trappe East project may be connected to the existing plant. Those things, again, are a matter of contract between the town of Trappe and the developer,” he said, suggesting home sales would be slow and the spray field would not be developed “for a long, long time” and the developer would pay connection fees and send sewage to the existing Trappe plant “for as long as they can.”

“So in essence, you’ve got to look at these two things together, they’re going to be part of one system,” Alspach said. “And you gotta find a way to keep the new houses from connecting to this existing plant and exacerbate the problems you’re already having.

“I know you applaud yourselves for the fact that despite testimony that the (town’s current) plant is failing that there has not been that many exceedances under the permit,” he said. “That’s because the permit has such lousy standards. It’s not an ENR (enhanced nutrient removal) plant, which is the state of the art (and which) the new facility is going to be built to.

“It’s not even a BNR (biological nutrient removal) facility. It’s less than BNR,” Alspach said. “It’s so bad that MDE would not even allow 11 houses on Howell Point Road to be connected to the plant that have septic systems, because it’s not at least a BNR standards. And you can’t use Bay funds to do that connection.”

Anne Hill said she lives on La Trappe Creek and worries about her grandchildren.

“I’m not a scientist. I’m not an activist. I hate public speaking. I would rather be home. But I came out here because I’m a grandma,” she said. “And I live in constant fear that one of my grandchildren is going to fall into that creek and get seriously sick. It is that bad. You’ve seen the reports. This is a real issue for me. I have a well, it’s a real issue. I’m not talking about maybe, maybe not; this affects my life today.

“I really get upset because every single person has kicked this can down the road. I listened to the planning commission. I listened to the county council. They all said whoa, MDE will take care of it,” Hill said. “You are all gatekeepers. Every single one of us is a gatekeeper to these waterways and we cannot keep kicking the can down the road.

“Where’s the person that’s going to say no, I am responsible for these waterways. It is my job … to stop these things from polluting our waters. You are all gatekeepers, please be a gatekeeper. I’m just a grandma.”

Jim Smullen focused his comments on the need for “quantitative enforceable language” in the permit. Smullen has worked in water resources, engineering and science for 49 years, representing large dischargers for the last 31 years.

He said the state agriculture department”has requirements for 75 days of no nutrient application by farmers on cropland and pasture land.

The Trappe East permit talks about 75 days of storage, but does not detail December 15 to February 28, as a no-spray period, Smullen said.

“The permit needs to do that, that’s critically important,” he said. “The other thing that permit needs to do is to tell the applicants that there is no other way to get rid of sewage once the prohibition is on for no spraying. The permit should say they should have contracts in place for waste haulers for when they can’t spray that’s taken away to other sewage treatment plants. You cannot have a situation where they argue that we need to spray because the tank’s full.”

Smullen also said prohibitions against spraying based on precipitation, high winds, freezing conditions, or saturated soil conditions needed quantitative limits “to make those an enforceable part of the permit.

“So much rain. Stop. Such a temperature. Stop. (D)on’t allow the operators to make subjective decisions about when to spray and when not to spray,” he said.

Alan Girard of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation said there were issues with several analyses in the permit and some factors, such as historic precipitation and extreme weather potential, had not been considered.

At the start of the meeting, Dr. Suzanne Dorsey, MDE’s assistant secretary, said the “hearing is focused on the proposed discharge permit” for Lakeside/Trappe East, but acknowledged concerns about the town’s existing plant.

“MDE regulates the Trappe plant under a separate permit for discharge to surface water. And when our inspections of early last summer found excessive nitrogen levels, we required immediate action to fix the problem,” she said. “An inspection later in the summer determined that the plant had returned to compliance. MDE continues to investigate the cause of this failure and to determine what additional action or corrections may be needed. Continued inspection and oversight will ensure that the plant is capable of managing the existing waste stream and any additional load allocation from growth approved by the local authorities.

Dorsey also noted that the permit “review process is rooted in science, engineering and state regulation and law” and MDE has no authority over land use decisions.

“We do require a permit applicant to demonstrate that a proposed facility has received county and town approvals, such as zoning and land use. Once a local government approves the land use for the facility, MDE evaluates a permit application,” Dorsey said. “And we evaluate it to ensure that the proposed facility’s engineering capacities will lead to results that meet the standards of state and federal law, including limits in the water discharge itself and limits on pollution to any affected groundwater and waterways.

“If MDE’s science-based review finds that all such requirements are met, then the draft permit is open and available for public comment. That’s why you’re here tonight,” she said.

Written comments on the draft permit (19-DP-3460) must be emailed by 5 p.m. Monday, Dec. 6, to [email protected] or mailed, with a postmark no later than Dec. 6, to: Maryland Department of the Environment, Water and Science Administration, Attn: Mary Dela Onyemaechi, Chief, Groundwater Discharge Permits Division, 1800 Washington Blvd., Suite 455, Baltimore, MD 21230-1708.

Permit documents are available online at https://mde.maryland.gov/programs/Water/wwp/Pages/19DP3460.aspx.

The MDE permit is one of two ongoing processes related to Trappe East, a mixed-use project of up to 2,501 homes and commercial uses on about 800 acres on the northeast side of Trappe.

While the MDE is reviewing the discharge permit, one Talbot County Council member has introduced a resolution to rescind changes to the county’s water and sewer plan related to the Trappe East project.

A public hearing on Resolution 308 was held Oct. 12 and will be continued at a future meeting of the county council.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Report: Majority of Md. Poultry Farms Failed Inspections But Faced Few Penalties

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Eighty-four percent of poultry farms in Maryland failed their first state inspection over the last several years, most due to inadequate waste management and failure to keep records — but the state rarely penalized poultry farms for their violations, according to a recent report by an environmental watchdog organization.

Out of 182 poultry farms that were inspected, 153 failed their initial inspection and 78 failed follow-up inspections from 2017 to 2020. Two thirds of the inspected poultry farms failed due to waste management problems and 95% failed to file annual reports to the state or maintain records about their operations, the report by the Environmental Integrity Project on Maryland’s poultry industry found.

Despite the failed inspections, the report found that the Maryland Department of the Environment, which is responsible for issuing water pollution control permits for animal feeding operations and for enforcing the federal Clean Water Act, imposed fines on only eight of the 78 facilities with repeated violations, and collected fines from only four poultry farms.

Jay Apperson, a spokesman for MDE, said he could not comment on the report’s findings because MDE has not seen it. But, he said, “The Maryland Department of the Environment, in coordination with the Maryland Department of Agriculture, maintains a strong program to enforce environmental regulations pertaining to poultry operations. A high percentage of violations that are found are associated with record-keeping requirements, as opposed to water quality issues. Where we do find environmental concerns we focus on returning facilities to compliance with regulations, but we will go after polluters and impose financial penalties when needed.”

The Environmental Integrity Project report is based on public records obtained from MDE and MDA from Maryland’s Public Information Act law. For the last nine months, EIP reviewed more than 5,000 pages of poultry operation inspection reports and other state records to evaluate how much oversight there is of the state’s poultry operations.

The state has limits on how much manure farmers can apply to fields that already have high soil phosphorus levels. Adding manure to fields can help provide nutrients for crops, especially when soils are low in phosphorus. However, excessive phosphorus on fields can get into waterways after storms, which risks algal blooms and sucks up the oxygen needed by fish.

According to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, agriculture runoff is the largest source of pollution into the Chesapeake Bay, contributing to 40% of the nitrogen and 50% of phosphorus in the Bay.

Twenty-nine of 57 poultry farms that EIP reviewed reported to the state that they had been applying illegal amounts of animal manure on their crop fields in 2019. Most farms are required to have nutrient management plans when fertilizing crops and managing animal manure in order to prevent excess nutrients going into waterways, and the Maryland Department of Agriculture is responsible for enforcing these plans.

But MDA has not issued any fines on poultry farms for spreading excess poultry manure, according to Jason Schellhardt, the spokesman for the agency.

Currently, there are 553 permitted poultry concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and Maryland animal feeding operations (MAFOs) in Maryland, according to Apperson. In 2019, Caroline County had 108 poultry farms that produced almost 50 million birds, the highest number in any county, according to the report. Dorchester County had 45 poultry farms in 2019, which yielded 28 million birds.

The report also found that 174 poultry operations on the Eastern Shore are within 400 feet of a house, which increases residents’ exposure to ammonia, dust and manure particles. Only 64 of these poultry farms had vegetated buffers such as a row of trees between the poultry house and residents’ homes, which is a way to divert emissions, the report said.

In 2016, Wicomico County residents formed Concerned Citizens Against Industrial CAFOs to oppose construction of what was going to be the largest poultry operation in the state near Salisbury, citing health concerns from air pollution and manure that could pollute drinking water sources. Two years later, the chicken farm operators canceled their plans.

During the 2020 legislative session, Del. Vaughn Stewart (D-Montgomery) introduced a bill that would have blocked the expansion of industrial poultry operations in the state by precluding MDE from issuing stormwater permits for any animal feeding operations producing more than 300,000 chickens annually. However, the bill never made it out of committee.

MDE has just three employees who perform in-person inspections at poultry farms and MDA has nine employees who oversee nutrient management plans of over 5,000 farms across the state. The report found that the number of poultry farms inspected by MDE fell by 40% since 2013.

To improve poultry farms’ compliance with the federal Clean Water Act and state laws, EIP recommends that MDE and MDA impose more penalties against poultry farms in violation with their nutrient management plans and water permits. The report also recommends that the state hire more inspectors, increase water and air monitoring near poultry farms and enforce the state’s new manure application rules for farms.

“MDA is failing to provide any reality-based ground-truthing or accountability for the largest single source of pollution in the Bay, the agricultural industry,” the report states. EIP also described state oversight over poultry operations as “an empty paperwork exercise that falls well short of what is needed to control agricultural runoff pollution or protect the Chesapeake Bay.”

By Elizabeth Shwe

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Talbot Planning Commission Will Discuss Resolution 281 at Thursday Night Meeting

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The county planning commission heard public comments Wednesday morning on Resolution 281 and will discuss Thursday night what actions, if any, it will take on the matter.

Resolution 281 amended Talbot County’s water and sewer plan to:

• reclassify and remap certain areas of the Lakeside/Trappe East property from W-2 to W-1 and from S-2 to S-1. (W-1 is immediate priority status for water; S-1 is immediate priority status for sewer.)

• add the Trappe East water and sewer systems to the list of capital improvement projects.

The commission’s agenda for Wednesday described the issue as “Discussion of Planning Commission’s previous certification of consistency with the Talbot County Comprehensive Plan with respect to Resolution 281 and possible recommendations and/or other actions, including undo, consider, reconsider, rescind or amend the previous certification.”

After hearing Wednesday morning from environmental groups and attorneys for a neighboring property owner, the developer, and the Town of Trappe, among others, Talbot County Planning Commission Chairman Phil “Chip” Councell asked for another meeting to be scheduled for the planning commission to consider the comments and discuss its course of action.

Councell asked for that meeting to be held before Tuesday, when the county council will hold a public hearing on Resolution 308, which would rescind adoption of Resolution 281. Resolution 308 was introduced by Council Vice President Pete Lesher, the sole council member to vote last year against Resolution 281.

Resolution 281 had been introduced Dec. 17, 2019, by Talbot County Councilmen Chuck Callahan, Frank Divilio, and Corey Pack, with public hearings held Feb. 11, 2020, and July 21, 2020.

The Talbot County Planning Commission considered the resolution in January, May, and June 2020, and voted 3-2 that an amended resolution was consistent with the comprehensive plan.

The county council voted 4-1 on Aug. 11, 2020, to approve the resolution as amended, sending the matter to the Maryland Department of the Environment for its approval, which the state agency subsequently granted. Councilwoman Laura Price joined Callahan, Divilio, and Pack in voting in favor of Resolution 281.

Earlier this year, petitioners asked the county council to rescind Resolution 281, claiming the county council and the planning commission were not provided with full information last year and noting that the discharge permit for the wastewater treatment plant that will serve Lakeside has been sent back to the state environment department for additional public comment and a public hearing.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Major Pollution Violations Found at Maryland’s Two Largest Sewage Treatment Plants

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Baltimore has long been plagued by sewage leaks and overflows fouling its waters. Now, the city has a new pollution woe: poorly maintained municipal sewage treatment plants that for more than a year have been daily dumping millions of gallons of bacteria– and nutrient-laden wastewater into rivers that flow into the Chesapeake Bay.

Following a watchdog group’s discovery of high bacteria levels in wastewater coming from one of the city’s two sewage treatment plants, an inspector for the Maryland Department of the Environment has found “numerous deficiencies and violations” at both facilities.

In visits to the city’s Patapsco Wastewater Treatment Plant in May and to the Back River plant in June, the MDE inspector found operational and maintenance problems, with key treatment equipment malfunctioning or out of order, staffing shortages and botched sampling for toxic contaminants in the wastewater.

The laundry list of problems uncovered at Maryland’s two largest wastewater plants threatens Bay restoration efforts, environmentalists warn. It also raises questions, they say, about the diligence of state regulators in ensuring compliance with pollution limits.

City public works officials are scheduled to meet Friday with state regulators following an Aug. 23 letter from the MDE demanding immediate corrective actions and warning the city that it faces fines of up to $10,000 per day and possible legal action by the state attorney general.

“We’re going to hold [the Department of Public Works] accountable,” MDE Secretary Ben Grumbles said in an interview. “They have a lot of explaining to do.”

In response to press queries, a spokesman released a short statement from Public Works Director Jason Mitchell. He said that his staff “has developed a strategy to get back into compliance and will be providing a timeline for compliance to MDE.”

Alice Volpitta, the Harbor Waterkeeper, said she and her colleagues at the nonprofit watershed group Blue Water Baltimore were “pretty shocked” by the scope and severity of problems uncovered at the city’s wastewater plants after the group reported detecting high fecal bacteria levels in the Patapsco plant’s discharge in April and early May.

In prior years, Volpitta said, Blue Water Baltimore’s monitoring program had picked up occasional bacteria spikes at the Patapsco plant, usually when it was overwhelmed by inflows from heavy rains. But this past spring, she and her team detected “consistent ongoing high bacteria readings” unrelated to rainfall at the plant’s outfall just upriver of the Key Bridge.

The city has spent $1.6 billion since 2002 to comply with a state-federal consent decree requiring an overhaul of its sewer network to halt frequent overflows and leaks of untreated sewage. At the end of 2020, city officials announced the near completion of a $430 million “headworks” project at the Back River plant, which officials predict will eliminate 83% of the overflows. The city is also spending millions annually to curb polluted stormwater runoff from streets, parking lots and buildings.

But because those two plants treat a high volume of wastewater, their discharges of inadequately treated sewage threaten to offset those efforts, environmentalists contend. Back River discharges about 72 million gallons of wastewater daily, while Patapsco releases about 55 million gallons.

According to Blue Water Baltimore, the combined daily discharge of the two plants would fill a 2.5-foot deep wading pool the size of the city’s 155-acre Patterson Park. By sheer volume alone, not the amounts of pollutants, the plants’ daily combined discharge is on par with the cumulative amount of rain-diluted sewage that overflows each year across the city.

“If we can’t trust our wastewater treatment plants to actually treat the sewage,” Volpitta said, “it doesn’t really matter much what other … best practices we’re putting on land.”

Documented violations

The MDE inspection reports detail numerous violations at each plant, many of them similar.

At the Patapsco plant, the MDE inspector found it had repeatedly violated limits since July 2020 on levels of harmful bacteria, phosphorus, nitrogen and total suspended solids. Overall, the plant exceeded its total authorized nitrogen discharge for 2020 by nearly 140,000 pounds and surpassed its total phosphorus load by 47,800 pounds. Fewer than half the units used to screen incoming sewage were operational, and those were so clogged with trash and debris they couldn’t work properly, the inspector found.

Plant managers blamed the exceedances on equipment failures and on a worker shortage because of the coronavirus pandemic, the MDE report said.

But the MDE inspection found that the Patapsco plant also has failed to comply with a 2016 consent order requiring it to reduce discharges of fats, oils and grease into the river. The city had yet to upgrade or replace equipment needed to remove the pollutants, despite a 2018 deadline, and only 5 of 18 settling tanks to be used for the removal were working at the time of the visit. Some were so full of scum the inspector warned they would also fail soon without prompt maintenance.

At the Back River plant, the MDE inspector said the discharge exceeded permit limits on pollution every month but one from August 2020 through May 2021, with excessive levels of nitrogen, phosphorus, total suspended solids and ammonia, and a couple of instances of elevated bacteria. Plant managers said there had been a malfunction of a key piece of equipment, a centrifuge used to separate solids from liquids. But the inspector noted that the exceedances began months before that breakdown and that managers had failed to report excessive discharges promptly to the MDE, as required.

During his June walk-through, the MDE inspector also found “malfunctioning equipment because of maintenance problems” and that only two of 76 plant operators had permanent licenses, an indication of their level of training and expertise to run and maintain the facility properly. Plant managers told the inspector that some staff had failed to pass the licensing test and others had declined to take it because there was no incentive to do so.

The inspection further found defective sampling at Back River for toxic contaminants, particularly for polychlorinated biphenyls or PCBs, which rendered the results useless in gauging how much is being removed or discharged into the river. Fish consumption advisories throughout the Baltimore area advise recreational anglers to limit their meals of locally caught fish because of the buildup of PCBs in them.

Oversight questioned

MDE Secretary Grumbles said it is a “high priority” for state regulators to quickly rectify the situation.

“We know how important of a partner the city is in reducing pollution and helping the state meet its [Baywide nutrient reduction] requirements,” Grumbles said. “When there are problems at a treatment plant [involving] operation and management of the facility, that’s a heightened concern for us.”

Volpitta praised the MDE for taking action but said she was perturbed that the agency didn’t catch the problems sooner. She noted that in the year before Blue Water Baltimore’s sampling, the city had been filing required monthly discharge monitoring reports with the MDE and EPA, which made it clear that some pollutants were exceeding permitted levels.

“That’s the big question,” she said. “Why did it take so long for anything to come of that self-reporting?”

Grumbles said that MDE staff started looking at the plants’ monthly reports and getting information from the city in March. At that time, he said, they saw a “trend that was totally unacceptable” and began preparing for inspections.

The first inspection took place the day after Blue Water Baltimore gave the MDE its water quality findings. At the time, Volpitta said, MDE officials didn’t give any indication they were already aware of problems at the Patapsco plant.

“I think there’s a lot of questions to be answered here,” she said. “We’re very concerned about the lack of oversight that appears to have occurred.”

For the safety of its staff during the coronavirus pandemic in early 2020, the MDE cut back on physical inspections of facilities discharging into state waters. But even before that, it had begun conducting a growing number of compliance checkups without leaving the office, by reviewing plants’ self-reported data.

Before this year, the MDE had physically inspected the Patapsco plant twice in 2016 and once each in 2017, 2018 and in June 2020, according to a spokeswoman. The Back River plant was inspected once in 2016, five times in 2017, twice in 2018 and once in 2019, she said. Three of the 2017 inspections were in response to complaints, the spokeswoman noted, without providing additional information.

Mitchell, the city’s public works director, said in his statement without elaborating that “the root causes for the violations have been identified by DPW and will be addressed systematically to ensure we achieve 100% compliance.”

Grumbles said, “it’s a priority for us to get this resolved as quickly as possible.”

But Volpitta said that, given the findings of the MDE inspections, she doubts there’s a quick fix to all the problems.

Josh Kurtz, Maryland director of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, called for swift enforcement action against the city, but also questioned the state’s oversight of such facilities.

“Marylanders depend on government agencies to be transparent and accountable when problems arise,” Kurtz said in a statement Tuesday. “In this case, it appears Baltimore’s Department of Public Works failed for years to address known problems at the city’s two wastewater plants, which led to months of partially treated wastewater flowing into the Baltimore Harbor and Chesapeake Bay during the previous year.”

And even if the MDE was investigating the plants before Blue Water Baltimore reported its findings, Kurtz found fault with the low-key way it was handled until this week.

“Neither DPW nor Maryland Department of the Environment, the agency tasked with enforcing state pollution regulations, publicly addressed these ongoing issues at the plants until the nonprofit Blue Water Baltimore issued their findings in a news release [on Monday],” he said.

The MDE has relied heavily on upgrading wastewater treatment plants to meet its nutrient reduction obligations under the Bay’s “pollution diet,” formally known as the total maximum daily load, which the EPA imposed in 2010.

“With such a heavy reliance on these upgrades,” Kurtz said, “the state must prioritize oversight of these facilities to ensure proper operation and impose penalties for violations.” Failures at large plants like Patapsco and Back River can undermine the overall Bay restoration effort, he added.

Kurtz also said the city and state owe more diligence to the health of Baltimore area residents. “Both plants serve and discharge into rivers and streams where underserved and frontline community members live,” he said. “These communities have suffered from a legacy of disproportionate impacts of dangerously high levels of pollution, especially harmful bacteria.”

By Timothy B. Wheeler

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Public Comment Invited for Trappe Wastewater Permit

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Maryland regulators are taking public comment again on plans to handle wastewater from a massive new development on the state’s Eastern Shore by spraying it on farm fields.

The Maryland Department of the Environment had issued a wastewater permit in December 2020 for Lakeside, a proposed community of 2,501 homes and apartments plus a shopping center in the small Talbot County town of Trappe. But a judge ordered the department to give the public another opportunity to comment on the permit because of changes made in it before being issued.

The proposed permit allows the developer to eventually spray an average of 540,000 gallons of wastewater daily on grassy fields. It must be treated using enhanced nutrient removal to lower the levels of nitrogen and phosphorus. A lagoon is also required to store wastewater for up to 75 days during winter and when it’s raining or too windy to spray.

Neighboring residents and environmental groups questioned the MDE’s assurances that the nutrients and other contaminants in the wastewater would be soaked up by the grass in the fields. They fear it could seep or run off into nearby Miles Creek, a tributary of the Choptank River.

The MDE is taking comments until July 26. It also plans to hold a public hearing, but a date had not been set.

Written comments should be mailed to the Maryland Department of the Environment, Water and Science Administration, 1800 Washington Blvd., Baltimore, MD 21230-1708, Attn.: Mary Dela Onyemaechi, Chief, Groundwater Discharge Permits Division.

For more information and to check on the hearing, visit mde.maryland.gov/programs/Water/wwp/Pages/19DP3460.aspx.

By Timothy B. Wheeler

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

New Md. Hearing Planned for Discharge Permit for Lakeside Project in Trappe; Petition Asks County to Revoke Sewer Plan Approval

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As supporters and opponents of the Lakeside development in Trappe await a new state hearing on the project’s wastewater discharge permit, Talbot County is being asked to revoke its approval of changes to the county sewer plan related to the project.

Petition 21-01 would rescind Resolution 281, which primarily amended the county water and sewer plan to:

• reclassify and remap certain areas of the Lakeside property from W-2 to W-1 and from S-2 to S-1. W-1 is immediate priority status for water; S-1 is immediate priority status for sewer and

• add the Trappe East water and sewer systems to the list of capital improvement projects.

The petition notes that the discharge permit for the wastewater treatment plant that will serve Lakeside has been sent back to the state environment department for additional public comment and a public hearing.

The proposed resolution included with the petition would not allow the county to consider any changes to its water and sewer plan related to the Lakeside project until after the state issues a final discharge permit, the final permit’s terms and conditions have been reviewed by the county planning commission and public works advisory board, and ShoreRivers’ case regarding the permit has been “fully resolved.”

ShoreRivers Inc. had sought judicial review of the final discharge permit issued by the Maryland Department of the Environment for the Lakeside project. The environmental group asked the court to send the permit back to MDE for additional public comment and hearing. (The Chesapeake Bay Foundation had filed a separate case also seeking judicial review of the permit.)

In seeking a remand to MDE, ShoreRivers said the final permit issued by the state differed substantially from the draft permit that had been the subject of public comment and a public hearing. The group also said the nutrient management plan for the project also had not been available for review and comment.

Lawyers for the property owner and the town had agreed with the request to send the issue back to MDE and Talbot’s circuit court judge entered an order April 27 remanding the permit to MDE for “… a public comment period of not less than 30 days and a public hearing to hear comments on, and any objections to, the nutrient management plan and the final terms and conditions of the (p)ermit….”

An MDE spokesman said Friday that the department has not yet finalized the opening date for the public comment period and has not scheduled the public hearing.

The petition notes the arguments in the ShoreRivers case, suggesting that the council’s approval of Resolution 281 relied on recommendations from the county planning commission and the public works advisory board that were based on a review of the draft permit.

A lawyer for Lakeside’s owner, Trappe East Holdings Business Trust, said it “strongly disagrees” with the premise of Petition 21-01.

“The County Public Works Advisory Board, Planning Commission and County Council reviewed complete information regarding the pending resolution and further considered the resolution after the County Council introduced Amendment No. 1,” attorney Ryan Showalter said in a statement. “One of the principal reasons the applicants initiated the Resolution 281 amendment was to update the provisions of the County Comprehensive Water and Sewerage Plan to provide for current, state-of-the-art ENR wastewater treatment technology, rather than the BNR specification that has been in the County Plan since 2002.

“Contrary to TEHBT’s intention, the draft MDE discharge permit was written for BNR-level treatment, not the ENR treatment the developer intends to utilize,” he said. “If there was any inconsistency between MDE’s discharge permit actions and Resolution 281, it was the draft discharge permit, not the final permit, that was inconsistent.”

“The wastewater plans for Lakeside remain entirely consistent with Resolution 281, as adopted,” Showalter said.

The Talbot County Council discussed the petition during its May 11 meeting, with Vice President Pete Lesher seeking clarification on the process. Lesher was the only council member to vote against Resolution 281, which was approved 4-1 on Aug. 20, 2020.

Acting County Attorney Patrick Thomas said the council’s rules of procedure, Section VI, B, say that “once a petition has been presented to the secretary, it shall be certified, presented to the Council and numbered, and the secretary shall maintain a file on the petition.

“Pursuant to section nine of the rules, the secretary shall read the petition by name and title, as she has. And then at that point, the Council may, but is not required, to consider the petition and take any appropriate action,” he said.

Thomas said the petition was asking the council “to adopt a resolution rescinding Resolution Number 281 without prejudice. And under the Council’s rules of procedures, in order to initiate legislation, a member of the council would need to direct the county attorney to prepare” the legislation.

Councilman Corey Pack expressed concern about rescinding Resolution 281, suggesting that doing so could open the entire Lakeside property to immediate development.

“I think we worked very diligently with both the Trappe Planning Commission and the developer to come to a consensus on how the parcel will be built out. And 281 did that,” he said. “It split it up so that one-half will be developed in S-1 and the back half in S-2.

“Removing 281 and opening up that entire parcel up to S-1 development zoning is something that I dread,” Pack said. “I do not think that is advantageous to do that.”

During the process of reviewing Resolution 281 in 2020, the planning commission was told by County Engineer Ray Clarke that the Maryland Department of the Environment considered the entire Lakeside parcel suitable for S-1 designation. The parcel was given the W-2, S-2 designation in 2002, meaning it was suitable for development in three to five years.

Clarke also said during the 2020 review that while MDE put water and sewer plans in the county’s hands, the state agency has final approval. Even if the county had rejected Resolution 281, the town of Trappe could have gone directly to MDE and asked for its approval of the W-1, S-1 designations.

Thomas, in response to a question from Lesher, said a council member could tell him to prepare a resolution based on the petition or the council could gather additional information first.

Councilwoman Laura Price said additional information was needed.

“I think it makes sense for us to gather our own information and make sure that everything is fact based,” she said. “And I think we also understand that this is remanded back to MDE to look at this permit again. So I think it would make sense to wait and see what happens with that and meanwhile gather our own information and we’ll go from there.”

In public comments, Dan Watson, who initiated the petition, said it had been signed by more than 60 people, along with the Talbot Preservation Alliance, as of mid-afternoon May 11.

Watson said he had asked to present the petition to the council, in addition to the secretary’s reading of the short title, but that request was ignored.

While the petition involves the Lakeside project, Watson said “I’m not here to try to stop it, but to see things go right. This petition is about protecting the integrity of Talbot County and its review processes.

“So the purpose is to introduce the resolution so that, in Ms. Price’s words, we can get the information and look into it,” he said. “It isn’t the case that one gets information and looks into it and analyzes it and talks with the planning commission and hears from the public and the public works advisory board in order to determine whether or not to introduce a resolution. It is a resolution is introduced and sets in motion that process.”

In a subsequent letter, Watson said the county council had mishandled the petition by not allowing him to present it.

The council’s rules of procedure (at Section XIII, C) say “When petitions are made to the Council, the persons or parties presenting same shall have the opportunity to state their case by presenting witnesses, exhibits, and other evidence.”

“I am sure the Council will not argue that accepting an unannounced, time-limited phone call from me an hour later, during the public comment period of the meeting, fulfills that requirement,” Watson said in his May 21 letter.

He also suggested that “proper submission of a Petition in and of itself initiates a regular legislative action, and does not require the more familiar step of a Council Member introducing the proposal ….”

But the council’s rules of procedure do not seem to suggest that. Even if the rules did, the state constitution does not allow citizens to initiate legislation.

Section 216 of the Talbot County Charter would have allowed voters to put proposed legislation on the ballot via direct initiative, but the state’s highest court ruled that section unconstitutional in a 1988 case. The Maryland Court of Appeals has repeatedly ruled that voters may not initiate local legislation, including legislation disguised as charter amendments.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

New Hearing Ordered on Lakeside Wastewater Discharge Permit

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Those worried about the potential for water pollution from a massive residential and commercial development planned in Trappe will get another chance to voice their concerns.

A Talbot County Circuit Court judge has ordered the Maryland Department of the Environment to hold another hearing and give the public another opportunity to comment on sewage discharge plans for Lakeside, a proposed community of 2,501 homes and apartments plus a shopping center, in the small town of Trappe.

The April 27 ruling by Judge Stephen Kehoe came in a case filed by ShoreRivers, which had appealed the groundwater discharge permit the MDE had issued to Lakeside’s developer, Trappe East Holdings Business Trust. Development plans called for discharging treated wastewater by spraying it on fields of orchard grass in a corner of the 860-acre tract near the headwaters of Miles Creek, a tributary of the Choptank River.

Lawyers for the developer and the town of Trappe had filed a joint consent to ShoreRivers request that the permit be sent back to the MDE for further review.

State regulators originally granted the project a wastewater discharge permit in 2005, around the time Trappe voters approved annexing the undeveloped land into town limits. Development plans stalled after that, but the MDE tentatively approved a new permit in 2019 and finalized it in December 2020.

ShoreRivers contended that the final permit was different in key respects from the version MDE asked the public to comment on in 2019. The final permit was based on a nutrient management plan that spells out the terms and limitations of the treated wastewater spraying — but that plan was submitted after the public comment period had ended, and the MDE refused ShoreRivers’ requests to reopen the case.

“The nutrient management plan is a core component of the permit,” said Matt Pluta, the Choptank Riverkeeper. “Whether or not the details in [the plan] are adequate in protecting water quality warranted a review from the public.”

The final permit required the developer’s proposed sewage treatment plant to use enhanced nutrient removal, significantly lowering the levels of nitrogen and phosphorus in the wastewater before spraying it on up to 88 acres of grassy fields. The developer also was directed to build a lagoon to store wastewater for up to 75 days during winter and other times of the year when it’s raining or too windy to spray.

Pluta conceded that those changes could reduce chances of degrading nearby waterways. But he and others still question whether the system would prevent pollution from getting into the creek or the Choptank, both of which are already impaired by nutrients.

MDE spokesman Jay Apperson said the state regulatory agency will comply with the court order. But he added that the MDE “has not yet determined when the public comment period will open, and we have not yet scheduled a public hearing.”

The ruling put on hold a separate lawsuit filed by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation challenging the MDE’s approval of the Lakeside discharge permit. CBF spokesman AJ Metcalf said the environmental group would pause its litigation while new comments are taken on the permit.

“We welcome this additional opportunity for the public to weigh in on the nutrient management plan associated with this project’s discharge permit, as well as another chance to comment on the terms and conditions of the permit,” said Alan Girard, CBF’s Eastern Shore director.

Lawyers for the developer of Lakeside and for the town of Trappe did not respond to emails seeking comment.

By Timothy B. Wheeler

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.