ILLINOIS POLLUTION CONTROL BOARD
October
28,
1971
CITY OF OLNEY
#PCB 71—223
v.
ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY
MR. PAUL A. CROEGAERT
(BRAZITIS
& CROEGAERT)
appeared on behalf
of the Petitioner;
MR.
DELBERT D. HASCHEMEYER,
appeared on behalf of
the Agency
OPINION OF THE BOARD
(BY MR. DUMELLE):
The City of Olney,
a town of 9,153
(R.14)
in Richiand County
in Central Illinois, operates
a two—year—old secondary treatment
plant designed to serve
a population equivalent of 40,000 people
(R.15)
.
The plant discharges into
an unnamed tributary of the
Fox
River
(R,90,
EPA Ex.
2)
On July
30, 1971, Olney petitioned the Board
for a variance
from the deadline date requirements
in Sanitary Water Board Rules
and
Regulations
SWB-14
(hereafter SWB-l4)
Instead of the series
of dates
in the rules which conclude with completion of construction
of improved facilities by July,
1972,
Olney sought to be allowed to
conform to the following deadline
dates:
Submit plans and specifications
January 1972
Begin construction
April 1972
Complete construction
January 1973
The plant improvements which need to be made
are provision for ter-
tiary treatment,
storm runoff retention, provision for sludge handling
and effluent chlorination.
Regulation SWB-l4 was enacted by the Sanitary Water Board,
one of this Board~s predecessors,
in 1967, with
the implementation
plan section of the regulation being enacted in March,
1968,
The
tertiary
treatment
requirement
has
thus
been
on
the
books
for
more
than
three
years.
SWB—14
is
a
comprehensive
water
pollution
abate-
ment
regulation applicable to all intrastate waters
in Illinois not
covered by other specific stream standards.
The City is not only
obliged to
meet the effluent
criteria
specified in SWB-l4 by July
of
1972 but
it is required to meet
the
timetable
requirements in
2
—
727
Modern Foundry for violations which occurred later than eighteen
months
ago.
As
a result of the admission the Agency did not present
any primary case,
and the first evidence in the record is that
of,
Modern Foundry offered in mitigation of
any possible penalty to be
imposed by
the Board.
Modern Foundry submitted
a Letter of Intent to the Air Pollu-
tion Control Board in July of 1967.
Based upon the process weight
of the cupola and the calculated emissions
gotten from the Letter
of Intent,
Modern Foundry was violating the regulations
then passed
by the Board.
The Board required that Modern Foundry submit an Air
Contaminant Emission Reduction Program
(ACERP)
and so advised
Modern Foundry on many occasions,
The initial date
the ACERP was
due was April
15,
1968, but such
a program was not submitted until
September
4,
1969.
(Comp.
Ex.
7)
The program was
that Modern
Foundry would have
a wet scrubber installed by the National Dust
Collector Corporation, which scrubber would guarantee
a collection
efficiency of 99.6.
The scrubber was
to be installed during
Modern Foundry~stwo-week shutdown
in July of 1970 and by September
of
1970 Modern Foundry ,would have made the necessary adjustments
to
have the equipment properly operating.
The ACERP was approved by
the Air Pollution Control Board on September
23,
1969.
In
a
September
30, 1969 letter to Modern Foundry advising it that the
ACERB had been approved,
Mr. Klassen,
the Technical Secretary to
the Air Board,
also advised Modern Foundry that under the Board
regulations
“periodic reports” would be necessary.
(Comp. Ex.
8)
Only two “reports” were sent by Modern Foundry.
One was
a letter
dated February
13,
1970,
in which Modern Foundry advised the Tech-
nical Secretary that the originally proposed control device would
not work and that
a new one was being installed.
(Comp.
Ex,
10)
The Technical Secretary responded
in
a letter dated March
19,
1970
and said that “from your progress reports”
it appeared that Modern
Foundry would not meet its compliance date.
If this were true,
the letter went on, Modern Foundry was requested to file
a revised
ACERP,
It
did not,
and it wasn~tuntil August
19,
1970,
that
Modern Foundry again communicated with
the State
--
this time with
the then—new Environmental Protection Agency,
Modern Foundry
advised the Agency that the emission control equipment had been
delivered,
and that it expected a December
31,
1970 completion date,
In addition,
the Agency was advised of
the problems faced by Modern
Foundry in obtaining water from the City of Mascoutah for use in the
wet scrubber.
The Agency advised Modern Foundry in
a letter dated
September
21,
1971 that in order to have any extension of the ACERP
approved, Modern Foundry must file
for
a variance under the Environ-
mental Protection Act.
This was never done,
Two other aspects of the City’s planned program were not made
entirely clear at the hearing and need to be dealt with.
There
must be improvement from the present method of handling sludge
to eliminate the undesirable seepage from the drying beds.
Addi-
tionally,
the City must move with all dispatch to provide chlorina-
tion facilities
to treat the plant effluent.
We will not relax this
requirement.
The City of Olney must proceed to provide for chlorina-
tion in accord with the deadline date
in
SWB—14,
July
1,
1972.
The picture which emerges here is of
a municipality which
is doing something
to resolve the problem at its overloaded treat-
ment plant.
With pretreatment from industrial dischargers the
influent flow will be at the plant’s design capacity and improvements
including tertiary treatment,
chlorination,
sludge handling and
storm retention can be effected ~forapproximately
$725,000
(R.42).
Handling the volume and strength without pretreatment will
require improvements estimated to cost $1,725,000
(R.42).
The ques-
tion posed to the Board is whether compliance with the present
schedule of completion of improvements by July,
1972 will consti-
tute an arbitrary or unreasonable hardship inasmuch as the City
maintains that it needs an additional
six months to evaluate
the
efficacy of the operation of its industrial waste ordinance.
An-
cillary to that question, is whether the City
is moving aggressive-
ly enough to encourage, cajole and force
its industrial users
to
pretreat their wastes to eliminate any undue burden on the muni-
cipal plant.
It is clear that Olney’s move has been in the right
direction with
the enactment of the industrial waste ordinance
and it
is equally clear that the City’s use of the ordinance has
been effective although different judgments may be made as
to the
aggressiveness which
the City has applied to instituting criminal
enforcement actions under
the ordinance.
We grant the request for
more time
in this case as it would be unreasonable to force
the
City to spend $1,725,000 to improve their plant when they can do
so
for less than half that amount if their waste control ordinance
is
fully efficacious.
We grant the requested variance in accordance with the dates
proposed by
the City,
as
a six month extension of existing deadlines,
subject to several conditions.
The Environmental Protection Act
states that any variance granted under the Act is limited to one year
and then may be extended only if satisfactory progress has been
shown,
If the petitioner will need
a further exemption from pro-
secution beyond that time it should take the precaution of filing
a further petition some 60 days before
the present variance expires.
The first condition of this grant is that the City proceed immediately
to provide for chlorination of its plant effluent.
Secondly, we
shall require the City to submit monthly progress
reports.
Periodic
progress reports are necessary as
a means of checking compliance
with program schedules.
We do not wish
to be
in the position,
a year
from now, of discovering for the first time that there have been
further delays.
The reports should detail progress
to date and
fully document and explain significant deviations from the program
as originally planned.
The first report shall cover
the period
from the present through November
30,
1971.
Counsel for
the City of Olney requested that the Board
authorize the City to issue bonds for treatment plant improvements
without referendum in accordance with Section
46 of the Environmental
Protection Act.
After an order of the Board to abate the pollution
problem the municipality can proceed to raise
a Sanitary Fund
for the purpose of carrying out the order of the Board,
Section 46
states
that
“No
election
or
referendum
shall be necessary for the
issuance of bonds..,
“
We
shall specifically order the City to
proceed
with
its
improvement
plans
and
thereby
actuate
the
mechanism
by which the
City
can
raise
the
needed
funds.
This Opinion constitutes
the Board’s findings of fact and
conclusions
of
law.
ORDER
The Board, having considered the transcript and exhibits
in
this proceeding, hereby orders as follows:
1.
Variance from
adherence
to the deadline dates specified in
SWB-
14
for submission of plans and specifications and for commence-
ment of construction of improvements
(except for chlorination
facilities)
is hereby granted for one calendar year
from date
with the following dates made applicable
in lieu of those
originally specified:
Submit Plans and Specifications
January
1,
1972
Begin Construction
April
1,
1972
2.
The City of Olney shall proceed with all possible
speed to provide for chlorination of
the treatment
plant’s final effluent by July,
1972
in accordance with
the timetable
in SWB-l4.
3.
The City of Olney shall abate
its discharge of inadequately
treated sewage in violation of
the Environmental Protec-
tion Act and regulations thereunder
in accordancg with
the revised timetable outlined in paragraph one of
this
Order.
4.
The City of Olney shall submit to the Environmental Protec-
tion Agency and the Board, monthly reports on the pro-
gress of its program including its plan for effluent
chlorination and sludge handling.
The first report
“1
—
7’~fl
shall cover the period from the present through
November
30,
1971.
The reports shall be submitted
in
a reasonable time not
to exceed two weeks after
the
last date reported on.
5.
Failure to adhere to any of the conditions of this
variance shall
be grounds for revocation of
the variance.
I, Regina,
E.
Ryan, Clerk of the Illinois Pollution Control
Board, hereby certify that the Board adopted the above Opinion and
Order on the
28
day of
~
1971.
Illinois Pollution Control Board
2
—
731