Richmond fined $37,000 after sewage leak from its wastewater plant

Without power, a special, supplemental set of underwater pumps went offline, causing incoming sewage at Richmond’s wastewater treatment plant to overflow.

In short order, raw city sewer water, the color of mustard, ran like an avalanche down Brander Street, the road that runs parallel to the James River as it curves south toward the Tri-Cities.

Records indicate between 500,000 and 1 million gallons in total leaked from the facility — enough, most likely, to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool, which takes 660,000 gallons.

On Feb. 3, the city signed off on a deal with state regulators, agreeing to pay a $37,000 fine. On top of that, the city has promised to fix controls, rewrite its operating procedures and retrain the entirety of staff at the otherwise top-of-the-line wastewater facility.

Rhonda Adams, a spokesperson for the Department of Public Utilities, said with confidence that the release had “no impact on public health,” nor does the department believe the sewage went directly into the James.

The discharge occurred on Jan. 25, 2020. It marked an unfortunate start for the facility, which had just undergone a multimillion-dollar upgrade.

That newness was part of the reason why things “hit the fan,” said Eric Whitehurst, an environmental compliance officer with the city of Richmond.

“It was in that same time frame, while the plant was in the process of doing tie-ins to increase our capacity,” Whitehurst said.

Regulators said the terms of the city’s permit make it illegal to discharge “noxious or deleterious substances,” according to a public consent order agreed upon between the city of Richmond and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality.

Regulators also dinged the city for a number of smaller violations in the wake of the 2020 release. The DEQ found that the facility was miscalculating levels of ammonia and E. coli, for example. Wastewater representatives said they were “overcalculating” those chemicals and that, again, no harm was caused to the James River.

Finally, the DEQ knocked Richmond for releasing millions of gallons of chlorinated drinking water across several incidents in which water mains leaked throughout the city. Those who have ever tried to take home a goldfish from a pet store have learned this lesson the hard way: chlorinated drinking water is lethal for aquatic life, and needs to be dechlorinated before leaving the water supply.

Whitehurst said those leaks occurred as a result of new staff members learning the ropes of the job with the Department of Public Works. He also said millions of gallons is not actually that much in the world of wastewater.

“A million gallons of chlorinated water can leak from a main in an hour,” Whitehurst said.

Overall, Richmond regularly processes millions of gallons of wastewater every day at its wastewater treatment plant, which sits on the south side of the James River bank, directly across from Rocketts Landing.

The facility’s goal is to take waste away from the city, but also to protect the health of the river from chemicals like nitrogen and from harmful bacteria.

Nitrogen, quantities of which are high in untreated wastewater, acts as a fertilizer in freshwater. When it spills into the James, noxious algal blooms typically follow. Those blooms make it hard for other life in the river to survive.

Capping nitrogen releases is one of the DEQ’s primary roles. The department and environmental advocates say it is critical to protecting the Chesapeake Bay.

According to the DEQ, the James River’s condition is currently “impaired,” a result of excess chlorophyll, high E. coli levels and polychlorinated biphenyls.

Under the consent order, the city has to pay the civil charge and make two changes to come into compliance with the state, including retraining all of its workers within 180 days of the order and rewriting the wastewater facility’s operating procedures.

Whitehurst said the city has already made those changes and retrained staff.

Richmond’s wastewater plant has undergone millions of dollars in renovations in recent years. According to the city, the new plant captures up to 91% of sewage overflow, although state legislators have discussed doing more.

In 2017, the facility received a $120 million upgrade, followed by a subsequent upgrade in 2020. That most recent upgrade boosted its capacity to as much as 140 million gallons daily.

As a result, the facility is one of the most efficient in central Virginia. It is capable of pulling as much as 80% of the nitrogen content out of incoming sewage.

Because of that efficiency, the city actually makes a small profit off its permit by trading back nitrogen to state regulators, said Grace LeRose, program manager for regulatory compliance with the city of Richmond.

“Of our peers in central Virginia, we discharge the least amount of nitrogen,” LeRose said.