MOULTRIE — The Georgia Environmental Protection Division could fine the City of Moultrie as much as $10,000 for dumping unpermitted, treated waste into waterways.

“It’s like every 20 years, you may have a septic tank problem. We had one. It’s really no different, but just on a much, much larger scale,” Utilities Director Roger King said.

City workers started noticing problems in November and December 2000, he said.

“The quality of our water treatment was going down, and we thought that it was in the digesters and, in fact, it was,” City Manager Tony Rojas said.

The city consulted EPD before they took any action with the digesters, but EPD fined the city anyway. Rojas said he thinks the fine may be substantially lowered since the city was acting proactively and communicated openly with them.

Also, the EPD declined to send down staff to monitor the streams, King said, as it would usually have done in the event of a spill.

The problem turned out to be a broken pipe in one of the digesters, and all three had to be shut down to make repairs and improvements, he said. The city was aware it would be outside the bounds of its dumping permit to do this, but staff considered it the only way to make the necessary improvements, Rojas said.

“We didn’t run into trouble until we started (addressing) the digesters. We were still well within permit, but we saw the problem coming. We knew we had to do something, and going into those digesters was the only answer. So the first thing you have to do is pump out the septic tanks,” King said.

With such a large amount, the only viable means to dispose of the waste was by way of the waste stream, he said. The alternatives (all considered unfeasible) were to haul the material to another treatment facility, address one digester at a time or build a storage tank.

When the city deposits waste into waterways, the waste absorbs too much oxygen from the water, depriving fish and other oxygen-dependent organisms.

“Given hindsight, economically, we may have been better off with the fine than we would have been with any other choice we would have made,” King said. “We’ve got concerns for the environment. … It was unfortunate. We wish it didn’t happen, but we didn’t kill any fish or anything.

“We treated it to the best of our ability, but it was so overpowering — the material that comes out of those septic tanks — that it got us over the limits we had for BOD (biological oxygen demand). So we were putting more BOD material in the river which had the potential to impact wildlife. But we didn’t have any fish kills. If we had any symptoms at all that were noticeable by anybody, it may have been a little bit higher odor. We did have a report of that.”

The digesters, essentially very large septic tanks, literally haven’t been checked in 20 years, King said. He considers the whole affair is a learning experience. The award-winning waste water treatment plant is 18 years old, he said, and should have been cleaned out 10 years ago.

As of last month, the EPD has tightened up its permitted limits, and if the digesters weren’t cleaned out, the city would have not been able to remain within the newer, stricter limits, King said. As it stands, it will be difficult to remain within the new limits despite the improvements, he said.

— By Lori Glenn