The St. Mary’s County Commissioners on Friday, November 2 approved a more than $30 million loan to the St. Mary’s County Metropolitan Commission (MetCom) from the Maryland Department of the Environment. Of the total, $25 million will be used for an Enhanced Nitrogen Removal (ENR) upgrade project at MetCom’s Marley-Taylor Wastewater Treatment Plant near Pax River’s south gate. The approval was on a 4-1 vote, with Commissioner Daniel Morris (R: 2nd) opposing it.
During the presentation of the loan request, MetCom Executive Director Jacquelyn Meiser said that the ENR project was being mandated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as part of the Bat cleanup and that if her agency didn’t comply they would be subjected to hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines every month.
Morris, however, noted the recent spill of raw sewage in Howard County during Hurricane Sandy. Even though that spill was caused by a failure of the emergency generating system caused by inadequate fuel supply for the generator, Morris said that raw sewage flowing into the Chesapeake Bay was its greatest pollution problem.
Morris asked Meiser how old the sewage collection pipes are in the Lexington Park area. She responded that noted most were built when the base was built in the early 1940’s. Morris said that spending money on fixing that system and preventing leaks of raw sewage should have precedence over the ENR upgrade. Meiser said that MetCom had a program to replace the aging infrastructure over the next five years and a small phase of that project was scheduled for this fiscal year with monies from the loan. She insisted that her agency had not set the Bay cleanup agenda, that it had come from the state and ultimately the federal government.
Morris has been critical of the nitrogen removal program, saying it had no basis in science. He told the Bay Net after the meeting that he had talked to a scientist from the Chesapeake Biological Lab who agreed with him. When asked what science was behind his assertion that relatively small discharges of raw sewage from failed older sewage pipes would have more harm than the nutrients entering the Bay from a lesser level of sewage treatment, he said his opinion was not based on science. “It’s just plain common sense,” he said.
In supporting the loan Commissioner Lawrence Jarboe (R: 3rd) noted the potential of fines if the county doesn’t comply. “The economics of voting against this would be far worse,” he said.
For more information on the effects of nutrients entering the Chesapeake Bay check out what the Chesapeake Bay Program has to say about the issue: http://ww
