CHICKASHA — The City Council voted to buy a new vehicle equipped with a jet flusher for opening clogged sanitary sewer lines and hopefully avoid another environmental consent order.
“The flusher is instrumental in our daily operation of cleaning and unclogging sewer lines that have been stopped up by tree roots, grease, sludge, rags and other foreign objects,” Public Works Director Jim Crosby informed the council.
The city will pay $112,000 for a 2015 Ford F550 flatbed truck on which is mounted a water tank and a jet flusher powered by a diesel engine that shares a 32-gallon fuel tank with the truck. The vehicle has been driven a little over 46,000 miles, its odometer indicates. The truck has a 190-inch wheelbase and dual rear wheels, and its gross vehicle weight is 19,500 pounds.
The truck is “easier to drive and maneuver, and will keep wear-and-tear off our 16-year-old vac truck jetter that is constantly breaking down” because of age and use, Crosby wrote.
“It costs us $3,000 a week to rent a small jet flusher” like the one on the Ford truck, he said. “Due to high demand and the short supply of this type of equipment, it is hard to find anyone to come out in a timely manner” when a sewer line is blocked. Meanwhile, Crosby said, “raw sewage is bypassing and causing a health problem for our residents and wildlife.”
The Chickasha Municipal Authority and the state Department of Environmental Quality agreed to a consent order which closed a Notice of Violation the agency issued because of at least two dozen unpermitted sewage discharges from the city’s wastewater collection and treatment system from February 2017 through September 2020.
Causes of the infractions included tree roots in sewer lines, a corroded pump control, blockages blamed on rags or kitchen grease, power failures, pump station malfunctions, excessive rainwater, and a line break. The Highland Drive sewage lift station and the one at 23rd and Grand were frequent offenders.
Because of unauthorized discharges, the City of Chickasha “cannot verify that Oklahoma’s water quality standards are being met, DEQ Executive Director Scott Thompson noted.
Improperly or partially treated sewage can contain “disease-causing organisms” such as bacteria, viruses and protozoa which can transmit diseases such as E. coli poisoning, salmonellosis, typhoid, bacterial dysentery, amoebic dysentery, cryptosporidiosis, polio, and hepatitis.
Untreated wastewater flowing into the waters of the state also could “result in oxygen depletion and subsequent injury or death of aquatic organisms,” Thompson wrote.
The DEQ imposed a penalty of $6,000 for the sewage violations, but lowered the assessment to $3,750 after the city submitted an approved Corrective Action Plan to the state agency. Consequently, an addendum to the consent order is “in progress,” Erin Hatfield, director of DEQ’s Office of Communications and Education, informed Southwest Ledger on May 22.
The Ledger tried but was unable to find out how many miles of wastewater collection lines have been installed in Chickasha. What is known is that the town has approximately 16,000 residents living in an area that encompasses approximately 22 square miles.