NEWS

Conservation Hearing Focuses on Potential Danger to river

By Meg Learson Grosso
Staff Writer
Printed in the The Minuteman

Much of the comment focused on the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus that could work its way into both the river and Poplar Plains Brook, which crosses the proposed site, known as Camp Mahackeno.

These two chemicals can cause a body of water to become sick, or "eutrophic." This means that the chemicals, which are fertilizers, can cause too many plants, particularly algae, to grow in the water, speakers at the hearing said.

These, in turn, use up too much of the oxygen content and cause the extinction of other organisms, such as fish and small animals, which need the oxygen to survive. The result is a "dying" body of water, the speakers said.

A number of speakers had already described the Saugatuck as "eutrophic" at the point where it met the shores of Camp Mahackeno, an area of the river known as Lee's Pond, when Nina Sankovitch, a Westport resident, who described herself as an environmental lawyer, spoke.

She said she had worked for years in New York City on water quality issues and had been, most recently, Executive Director and President of Save the Sound in Norwalk.

She said there was danger in allowing excessive nitrogen into the Saugatuck River because there were implications not only for the river but for Westport's beaches and the entire coastline as well. She thought, as did other speakers, that no more than 3 mg per liter of nitrogen should be allowed to be discharged, not 10mg/l as the state Department of Environmental Protection allowed.

Another speaker, Herb Gram from Madison, had already pointed out that 5 mg/l would be "feeding a sick system."

Sankovitch pointed out that F.A.S.T. had already said they could meet below 10mg/l, so, "Why not hold them to it?"

Sankovitch and others spoke about the unreliability of the proposed FAST system, although this was questioned by some members of the commission. Because of that presumed unreliability and the environmental sensitivity of the site, Sankovitch said there was a need for redundancy in the system, such as more than one back-up generator, to ensure there would be no system failure. She also asked for adequate denitrification filters to reach greater than permit requirements and "excess holding tanks for up to the full amount of the system's capacity for when there is sewage treatment failure and for when ... runoff flow is more than usual."

F.A.S.T. refers to Fixed Activated Sludge Treatment, a way to treat septic waste, that is sold by Bio-Microbics of Kansas. F.A.S.T. uses microbes to convert the ammonia in the sludge to nitrogen gas that is released in the atmosphere, where it already comprises 79 percent of the air that we breathe. The sludge from the YMCA's septic tanks will be pumped across Poplar Plains Brook and up a hill to leeching fields, where it will be treated.

Sankovitch also addressed another issue raised by others. That was the idea that the proposed YMCA would be automatically shut down if its sewage discharge didn't meet the environmental requirements. She said that some on the commission seemed to believe that a violation of the permit for the sewage system would automatically result in a closing-down of the system. She said after her years of experience working with 14 of New York City's treatment plants, it was never as simple as "Permit violated; system shut down."

Sankovitch said that "The YMCA will be an operating facility that will fight to remain open, they will not merely agree to cease all operations until the system can be fixed ... Hearings will be required and lawsuits will threaten and the polluting, violating discharges will continue on and on."

Sankovitch also brought up a subject touched upon by others at various of the Conservation hearings: how will the water from the Olympic-sized pool be discharged? "Obviously the high levels of chlorine will have to be treated and chlorine can wreak havoc with microbial sewage treatment [such as the F.A.S.T. system is]," said Sankovitch, asking "Can the system, as proposed, handle both the amount of water and the amount of chlorine that will need to be treated from the pool?"

Sankovitch then asked that strict and frequent sampling of all discharges from the septic system be required and she also spoke to the "significant run-off from the 100,000 square-foot building and from the parking lots and the widening of Sunny Lane.