My question is on enforcing the SUO using the ERP on non industrial users. Our ERP is written to be geared towards industrial users vs any general sewer user in sections relating to types of violations. All types of violations listed relate to unpermitted discharge or permit violations. How do I best and legally go about enforcing the SUO with POTW actions when the violations do not match up with any category on the ERP? The situation: I have a neighborhood community pool who is repeatedly flooding our collections system with their pool draining activity. They have said it is our problem not theirs and they refuse to adhere to our requests to give us 24 hours notice of pool draining and restricting their pool water discharge flow into the sewer system. I would like to be able to back up my continued denied requests with viable legally provable options for refusal and SUO violations. Thank you.
Member Q&A
We have in our SUO that we don't accept pool water unless approved by the Water Reclamation Manager or Director. Can you check pH of their discharge or do you have any chloride limits in your SUO that with sampling would help you enforce it? You could also look at issuing them a permit since they could cause harm to your plant, even if it's an NSIU permit, and it wouldn't have to go to the State for approval, could be written and enforced immediately and then they'd have no backing as to why nothing applies to them?
Although your ERP may be geared toward Industrial users with IUP's, it can be applied to any user of the collection system. Your SUO applies to all users. You should be able to use escalating enforcement against any user who is knowingly and willingly violating the SUO. There should be language similar to this:
"This ordinance provides for the regulation of direct and indirect contributors to the municipal wastewater system, through the issuance of permits to certain non-domestic users and through enforcement of general requirements for the other users, authorizes monitoring and enforcement activities, requires user reporting and provides for the setting of fees for the equitable distribution of costs resulting from the program established herein.
This ordinance shall apply to all users of the municipal wastewater system as authorized by N.C.G.S. 160A-312 and/or 153A-275. Except as otherwise provided herein, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) shall administer, implement, and enforce the provisions of this ordinance."
If you warned them nicely and they didn't listen to you, issue a NOV and access a civil penalty.
Our ERP has the following in the introduction:
"The purpose of the ERP is to provide for fair and equitable treatment of all Users for anticipated enforcement situations. In general, enforcement actions will be taken in accordance with this Enforcement Response Plan. However, the enforcement actions available are not exclusive. Therefore, any combination of the enforcement actions can be taken against a non-compliant user."
Our SUO also lists swimming pool discharge under Specific prohibitions. So if you have written proof that you told them that it was a prohibited discharge and your ERP is written as ours is, then give them an NOV and require them to get a permit ( this would be a general permit and not an SIU permit). The permit would spell out the required notice to give you before they dump and set how much/how fast of flow they could dump at a time . If they do not fill out a permit then my escalated action would be to issue NOV with a civil penalty and again require a permit and if they still do not comply then suspend their water/sewer service until the permit is issued.
Ok. Thanks. Both replies were very helpful. We have all mentioned statements in our SUO and ERP.
Curious if anyone has a swimming pool drainage policy, or if anyone has revised their ERP to include a more general violation choice? Have any other pretreatment programs had to address swimming pool drainage flooding their systems? Also, I have in my SUO the option to ask any user, at their expense, to install a holding tank to regulate flow or the option to write a permit solely on flow... that may be an option.
A second add on question, when the statements above say the the SUO says, which mine does, that "no swimming pool water will be accepted without the approval of the Town", is that ongoing approval or was approval already granted when we allowed it to be built? as a Town we interpreted that as approval had been granted already.
As per the last comment from Kreece, we do not have that option listed as a choice in our ERP, but that would be a great thing to add. A revision may be necessary, but the question would be how long it would take for the state to approve the new ERP?