NC0025321_NOVNOI2020MV0152_RESP_20201204

16 South Main Street · P.O. Box 100 · Waynesville, NC 28786 Phone [phone] Fax [phone]
Web Address: www.waynesvillenc.gov
Gavin Brown, Mayor Robert W. Hites, Jr. Town Manager
Gary Caldwell, Mayor Pro Tem William Cannon, Town Attorney
Jon Feichter, Alderman
Julia Freeman, Alderman
LeRoy Roberson, Alderman

12/4/2020

Mr. Daniel Boss, Assistant Regional Supervisor
Water Quality Regional Operations Section
Asheville Regional Office
Division of Water Resources, NCDEQ
2090 US Highway 70
Swannanoa, NC 28778

Re: Response to Notice of Violation & Intent to issue Civil Penalty
NOV-2020-MV-0152

Dear Mr. Boss:

Thank you for providing the Town with an opportunity to respond to the Division’s NOV
regarding the “Monitoring Violations that occurred on September 22, 2020 and continuing
through September 30, 2020. I will outline the event, our immediate response and our plan to
mitigate future events.

FAILURE OF ELECTRIC SYSTEM THAT POWERS THE INFLUENT FLOW METER.

On 9/22,2020 the staff discovered that the flow meter was not operating. They checked the
breaker panel and discover that the circuit breaker that protects the meter’s circuit had tripped
and knocked the meter out of service. They opened the circuit and the flow meter began to
operate as normal. The next day the staff noted that the breaker had tripped again knocking the
power out to the flow meter. Over the next seven days they continued to try and keep the
breaker open but were unsuccessful. They called an electrician who changed out the breaker
itself and the new breaker seems to be holding. The staff could not place any flow data on the
reports, so they kept them blank. They noted in their report to the Asheville office that a
mechanical failure had knocked the meter out of service and they were not able to report flow
data for nine days.

REMEDIATION OF BREAKER ISSUE

The electric system in the plant is quite old and in poor condition. The staff will check both the
flow meter and the breaker panel to ensure that the new breaker remained open. The Town
has a second metering device located in its intermediate pump station. The staff has
downloaded the flow information for the dates that the main flow meter was out of service and
sent it to Mikal Willmer. While this can’t be considered the “official” flow metering device for the
plant, it records the same flow as the primary flow meter.

16 South Main Street · P.O. Box 100 · Waynesville, NC 28786 Phone [phone] Fax [phone]
Web Address: www.waynesvillenc.gov

Page 2.
NOV 2020-MV-0152 Response

LONG TERM SOLUTION

The electric system in the plant is old and in poor condition. One of the main components of the
$19 million dollar renovation of the plant is to replace most of the electric system. The Town’s
engineers are following our proposed SOC and expect to have the renovation plans submitted
to you in April of 2021. Once we have received approval from DENR we will proceed to the
bidding phase. Once the plant is renovated it will operate as a new plant would perform.
CONCLUSION

The staff should have been more pro-active in replacing the electrical breaker in the panel but
responded correctly in not placing any flow numbers in the report that were not recorded by the
flow meter. Thankfully the Town has a second metering device at the plant that we are using to
ensure that the flow meter is recording flows in excess of 6 mgd. We have sent the flow data
from this second meter to you for analysis. Please feel free to contact us as you study the raw
data from our second flow meter.

We hope that this explanation has provided you with an explanation of why we did not report
flow data from September 22 thru September 30th. Please let us know if we can provide you
with further information.

We recognize that the failure to report flow data for nine days constitutes a violation however we
ask that you consider our response to the electric failure and our report of the plant flow from
our secondary flow meter as an attempt to provide you with the information that is missing from
our report.

Please do not hesitate to contact me at my cell number 828-550-5238 should you have any
questions:

Sincerely,
Robert W. Hites Jr.
Town Manager