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HomeMy WebLinkAboutNC0026913_NOV-2021_LV-0020_20210115TOWN OF SPARTA P.O. BOX 99 SPARTA, NC 28675 Phone: 336-372-4257 Fax: 336-372-2051 Email: spartamgrwilmoth@skybest.com TOWN COUNCIL MEMBERS: Mike Parlier, Mayor Pro Tem Cole Edwards John Brady Terry McGrady Milly Richardson To: Lon T. Snider, Regional Supervisor Water Quality Regional Operations Section Winston-Salem Regional Office Division of Water Resources, NCDEQ Wes Brinegar, Mayor Ryan Wilmoth, Town Manager Robert L. Lane, Chief of Police Peggy Choate, Town Clerk Whitney Ivey, Town Attorney From: Ryan Wilmoth, Manager Date: January 15, 2021 RE: Response to Notice of Violation & Intent to Assess Civil Penalty Letter Mr. Snider, The Town of Sparta is in receipt of the January 6, 2021 letter concerning the Notice of Violation and Intent to Assess Civil Penalty from your office. We fully understand and accept responsibility for the noted violation of our wastewater treatment facility operations. In reviewing this matter internally with our team, we did identify potential for process improvement, but we also identified some items of note that we felt should be shared for your consideration. On November 23, 2020 our WWTP Operator noticed a loss in water pressure at our facility and discovered a potential water leak from the service line that feeds the facility. Our maintenance division immediately began working to locate and repair the water disruption, but unfortunately, the repair was quite intensive and time consuming due to some source tracing challenges, which resulted in the restoration of water supply not being achieved until the late evening hours on November 25, 2020. During this period of outage, the Chlorine and Sulfur Dioxide feeds were not functioning properly due to a dependence on suction created by source water flow within our system design. Additionally, during this same time period the Town of Sparta was in a transitional phase with its analytical providers, switching from RNA to PACE. It was customary for our previous analytical provider to make direct contact with our Operator in the event of an out -of -range result value so that corrective action could be taken, unfortunately, this did not occur with the new provider. To further compound the situation during this transition, the Town was not provided sampling results for the entire month of November until December 2, 2020 and December 6, 2020. The lack of timely results made any corrective action for this situation impossible. Of note, our Operator did amend the original eDMR for the November 28, 2020 period for the Nitrogen level, as it was also found to be out of range, but states he failed to notice the Fecal value being out of range as an oversight. In closing, the Town of Sparta works diligently to ensure our wastewater treatment practices align with current standards and follows all applicable laws and regulations, which hopefully is demonstrated by our history of infrequent violations. We appreciate your professional discretion in reviewing of our matter and respect your ultimate decision. Should you have any additional questions or needs for the Town of Sparta, please do not hesitate to contact me directly. Respectively, Iic, Ryan E. Wilmoth Cc: Jenny Graznak