OKLAHOMA CITY – Lawton’s 2020 Capital Improvement Plan would include funds to upgrade the sanitary sewer system, which has been under a state mandate for more than two decades, to cease unauthorized releases of wastewater.
The most recent violation occurred April 26, when the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality (ODEQ) received a citizen complaint that a sewer overflow occurred from a wastewater collection line “and that sewage was surfacing at all corners of the intersection at SW 38th Street and Lee Boulevard ...” That same day, Jeff Lawler of the ODEQ’s Environmental Complaints and Local Services section investigated the complaint “and confirmed three bypass sites” near 38th and Lee, including a manhole on the southwest corner by Wolf Creek.
A month later, on May 30, two more ODEQ representatives conducted a follow-up inspection at the site. They found that the manhole at the southwest corner of 38th and Lee was “steadily overflowing and discharging untreated wastewater to Wolf Creek.” They also noticed that a manhole on the southeast corner of 38th and Lee was “steadily overflowing, and the untreated wastewater was pooling around the manhole.” Although the city was establishing temporary wastewater collection lines to alleviate the bypass into Wolf Creek, “at the time of the inspection there was no ‘pump-around station’ to alleviate” the sewage overflow from the manhole. Those incidents resulted in a Notice of Violation letter that Shellie Chard, director of the ODEQ’s Water Quality Division, sent in a letter dated July 9 to Rusty Whisenhunt, Lawton’s public utilities director.
DEQ CONSENT ORDER DATES BACK TO ’97
The ODEQ issued a “consent order” to the City of Lawton in 1997 for “unpermitted discharges” of wastewater, a violation of state law and the Oklahoma Administrative Code. The city was directed to conduct a sanitary sewer evaluation survey and afterward to submit a schedule for rehabilitation of the malfunctioning sewage collection system. The city performed the evaluation and developed a schedule for renovation of the wastewater collection system. Because of the amount of work involved in the project, the ODEQ and the federal Environmental Protection Agency agreed to split the renovation project into three multi-year phases. Phase I construction and rehabilitation on the sewage collection system was completed in about 2005, documents indicate.
Meanwhile, the city and the DEQ agreed in 2002 that by New Year’s Day 2003 the city would submit a proposed compliance schedule for Phase II improvements to the wastewater collection system. However, in mid-November 2002 the city and the state agency entered into another consent order “to resolve these matters expeditiously and without the need for formal proceedings.” Construction on Phase II was scheduled to be completed by Jan. 1, 2014.
DOZENS OF SEWAGE DISCHARGES
In March 2013, the City of Lawton and the Department of Environmental Quality signed an addendum to the previous consent order “to address ongoing unpermitted discharges of wastewater.” For nearly two years, from Jan. 17, 2010, through Dec. 11, 2012, the city reported 78 incidents of overflows of treated and/or untreated wastewater from the city’s sewage collection and treatment system. Those discharges occurred at myriad locations in town, and several sites had multiple sewage overflows, records show.
The volumes of wastewater ranged from a mere five gallons to 759,000 gallons one time and a million gallons on two occasions, ledgers indicate. The overflows were blamed on debris, torrential rain, grease, pump failures, vandalism, tree roots, blockages, structural failures, collapsed lines and cave-ins. Consequently, the city pledged that construction on Phase III would start by Jan. 1, 2014, and be completed by July 1, 2022. Phase III entails rehabilitation of East Cache Creek sub-basins, construction of the South Wolf Creek trunk main parts 3-6, and construction of the North Wolf Creek main parts 1 and 2, city officials related. Construction on the lines is 68% complete, the city reported Thursday.
Flow monitoring is scheduled to start on New Year’s Day 2022. However, City Hall has asked for a two-year extension “due to the addition of line construction that was caused by disaster flooding in 2015, 2016 and 2017,” said Tiffany Vrska, the city’s community relations director. ODEQ “has indicated the extension will be granted,” she wrote. If the city fails to complete any of the tasks listed in the consent order and the 2013 addendum, it could be penalized $100 to $200 per day, the agreement stipulates.