NC0026913_NOV-2021_LV-0020_20210115

TOWN OF SPARTA
P.O. BOX 99
SPARTA, NC 28675
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
Email: [e-mail]
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