NC0081736_NOV-2019-LV-0418 Response_20190711

PENDER COUNTY UTILITIES Kenneth Keel, PE, Director
,•�%�T 605 E. Fremont Street
P C U P.O. Box 995
P do County Utilities
m ,hd,oQa;;,y Burgaw, NC 28425
Phone - 910.259.1570
Fax - 910.259.1579
July 11, 2019
RE: US 421 WWTF
Permit # NCO081736
NOV-2019-LV-0418
Response
Ms. Morella Sanchez -King, Regional Supervisor
NCDEQ-Division of Water Resources
127 Cardinal Drive Extension
Wilmington, NC 28405
Ms. Sanchez -King,
This letter is in response to the notice of violation for April 2019 (NOV-2019-LV-0418)
dated June 18, 2019 (received on June 27th) for the Pender County wastewater treatment
facility at US 421 (Pender Commerce Park). We continued to recover in April from a
previous plant upset, and one of our filters was disabled due to an electrical controls issue.
We completed our addition of media to our MBBR in early May. This addition has helped
our treatment process tremendously, and as of early May our plant has returned to
compliance with our discharge permit. The recovery from our plant upset earlier in the year
took significantly longer than we expected, but now we have the plant balanced and
operating well.
On April 3rd one of our tertiary disc filters stopped working due to a control panel failure.
While this alone would not cause non-compliance, the fact that we were still recovering from
a plant upset made this outage have a bigger impact. The replacement panel had to be
ordered, and took about 6 weeks for delivery and installation. Both filters are now
operational.
We are still considering a request for a Special Order by Consent for the WWTP. It appears
that the media addition may address our immediate needs, and keep us from needing to
request an SOC. We will continue to monitor our situation.
Thank you for your consideration of these factors contributing to our non-compliance.
Please let me know if you have any questions or require additional information.

NOV response to Ms. Sanchez -King
July 11, 2019
Page 2
Sincerely,
A f - IV" ` f
Kenneth P. Keel, PE
Director
Cc: Dean Hunkele, Senior Environmental Specialist
Randell Woodruff, County Manager
Chad McEwen, Asst. County Manager
Anthony Colon, Asst. Utilities Director
Kurt Lonander, PCP_WWTF Superintendent
File