Alternatives with Lower Costs and Fewer Impacts Have Not Been Sufficiently Explored
(originally published as an editorial in the Mechanicsville Local on February 27, 2002, in response to an editorial written by County Administrator Richard Johnson)
On February 13, County Administrator Richard Johnson presented a defense of Hanover's wastewater treatment plant project. That the County feels compelled to make such a defense says more than the editorial itself, which notably omits and distorts the facts.
First, Mr. Johnson assumes that because the County held certain public hearings required by law and appointed certain committees of citizens, its proposal has been validated by public participation. But that ignores what actually happened at those hearings and in those committees. At every public hearing, opponents of the proposal outnumbered its advocates by overwhelming majorities. County officials simply "stonewalled" all criticism. By way of example, more than 1,300 people opposed the proposal during the recent public comment period provided by the Corps of Engineers, with fewer than thirty supporting it.
The original Citizens Advisory Committee on Wastewater Alternatives issued a report in 1990 concluding that regional cooperation was preferable to a new plant. The same Committee also advised the County that if building a new plant became absolutely necessary, discharging into the Chickahominy was preferable to discharging into the Pamunkey.
The Agricultural and Forestal District Committee also reviewed the project (primarily the discharge) . That group of citizens, including one member of the Board of Supervisors, unanimously agreed that the current discharge site is inappropriate. Ignoring all this public participation, the Board bulled forward and used eminent domain to confiscate the land it needed.
Yes, Mr. Johnson, the County has provided some of the legally required opportunities for members of the public to make their positions known. Unfortunately, County officials habitually have ignored what the public says. What has been lacking completely is not an opportunity to speak, but your willingness to listen.
Furthermore, County officials have used tricks to advance their project while minimizing the nuisance of public participation and regulatory scrutiny. The most egregious example is how the County persuaded the Corps of Engineers to issue "nationwide" permits, thereby avoiding detailed environmental review and public comment. The reviewing Federal court said County officials knew, or should have known, that the course they urged upon the Corps likely was illegal. But not even that knowledge--or determined ignorance--deterred County officials. Now that the permits have been invalidated, Mr. Johnson refuses even to acknowledge the County's role in the matter. Instead, he speaks of "a procedural flaw in the permitting process followed by the Corps." It takes a lot for a federal judge to halt a municipal project. But the County's shenanigans exceeded even that high threshold.
Mr. Johnson, along with Jack Ward and other members of the Board say they know the County's best interests and have a duty to pursue them over the protests of the ignorant citizens, who don't understand the need to promote economic development. But growth in Hanover has slowed from 3.7 percent in the mid-1990s (when the current proposal was devised) to 2.5 percent. In a recent Style Magazine article, Mr. Ward concedes that no businesses have indicated concerns about wastewater treatment capacity. Development that had been expected has not materialized for reasons apart from wastewater capacity. Concern that the absence of a County treatment plant will harm economic development is completely unsupported.
Hanover County's peak usage (4.5 million gallons per day of a 5.4 million gallon per day capacity) of the Henrico treatment plant occurred in 1998. Hanover's use of that capacity in 1999, however, decreased to just 3.6 million gallons per day. Why? Quite simply, 1998 was a wet year. Groundwater made its way into a leaky pipe system and accounted for much of the capacity used that year. No effort to fix this problem is being made by our officials.
Nor is the proposed wastewater plant the only--or best--option for expanding treatment capacity in the region. If Hanover County can pipe fresh water from Richmond, why can it not pipe wastewater back to Richmond for treatment? If the County's budget for the proposed facility was spent instead to expand the City of Richmond's wastewater plant, the result would be more capacity with less environmental costs. Why? Because expanding an existing plant is cheaper than building a new one. And if the capacity that will not be used by Hanover during the early years of the facility were available to Richmond, the City could use it to help solve its combined sewer overflow problem--a condition that results in raw sewage being discharged into the James River.
Hanover should improve and make more efficient use of what has been built already before devoting $38 million to a completely new facility that makes a bad environmental situation worse. Working with other localities would create economies of scale, minimize costs, and lessen impacts to the natural resources of the region.
Those impacts would be considerable under the current proposal. In 1999 the EPA designated the Pamunkey as an impaired waterway for consistently violating water quality standards for dissolved oxygen. In early 2001 the U.S. Geological Survey reported that the Pamunkey River leads all tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay in the increase of pollutants from wastewater discharges during recent years. That does not include the current proposal, which would ultimately exceed all existing discharges combined.
These water quality problems mean trouble for aquatic life. Dr. Roger Rulifson, a fisheries biologist at East Carolina University; Dr. Paul Jacobson of Langhei Ecology; Dr. James Uphoff, a fisheries scientist with the Commonwealth of Maryland; and Dr. Richard Neves, a mollusks and freshwater mussels expert at Virginia Tech, all have expressed serious concerns about the impacts of this project. Does Mr. Johnson know more about water quality in the Pamunkey River than these gentlemen, or others who use it and canoe it regularly? The Chief of the Pamunkey Indian Tribe, which operates a shad hatchery downstream of the proposed discharge and has been the steward of the river that bears its name for longer than any of us, also has expressed strong opposition to Hanover's proposal. Talk to those who paddle the River regularly for fun or profit, and they will tell you about the noticeable effects from existing, comparatively miniscule wastewater discharges. Then you will understand why EPA designated the River "impaired," and why both federal and state law attempt to prohibit additional pollutant discharges until the situation is fixed. Meanwhile, Hanover County officials are still trying to evade the application of those requirements.
Finally, Mr. Johnson says he needs wastewater capacity to promote economic development so he can control sprawl. Of all the County's twisted arguments, this is perhaps the most pathetic. It comes from a County that has had adequate wastewater treatment capacity for decades, but has used it to turn the Mechanicsville Turnpike corridor into a poster child for sprawl.
Mr. Johnson's recent propaganda has little to do with truth and lots to do with saving politicians' posteriors. Apparently that is what we pay him to do. Still, democracy punishes an unresponsive government, and November 2003 isn't that far away.
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Henry Broaddus and Frances Broaddus-Crutchfield are the owners of Newcastle Farm. They maintain a website at www.SaveOurRiver.org.
"The arc of the universe is long, but it bends toward justice." --MLK, Jr.
