Everglades City in hot water with Department of Environment Protection over failing sewage treatment plant

State regulators have found a litany of violations at Everglades City’s failing wastewater plant as the cash-strapped town continues to struggle with an aging facility that has spurred legal action and has officials worried about potential hazards.

Over the course of two inspections earlier this year, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection discovered that the sewage plant has holes in a tank, is missing “critical” spare parts, has a rusted-out trough that is about to collapse and had hundreds of gallons of raw wastewater discharged.

The DEP, in late September, issued Everglades City a notice requiring city officials to correct a list of violations within 45 days. Deficiencies related to an equalization tank, however, must be “corrected immediately” because they are “an imminent hazard,” Jon Iglehart, DEP district director for the South District, wrote.

Equalization tanks serve as holding tanks for wastewater, “allowing the rest of the facility to maintain a steady state flow throughout the treatment process,” DEP spokeswoman Alexandra Kuchta said in an email.

The September notice found the city failed to comply with a July 2018 consent final judgment with the DEP that outlines a number of actions the city has to take over the coming years to address problems with the current facility and build a new one. The judgment settled a 2015 lawsuit over problems at the sewage plant.

“While efforts by Everglades City has resulted in a substantially reduced number (of) unauthorized discharges to state waters, in the following years, DEP’s compliance inspections have noted additional areas of concern, many of which can be attributed to the facility’s aging infrastructure,” Kuchta wrote.

Mayor Howie Grimm Jr. said the city is working on correcting the violations and has been communicating regularly with DEP officials. He said the city has been able to correct “quite a few” issues and is working on “fixing all of them.”

“We’re in violation, but we’re trying to correct everything,” Grimm said.

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Collier commissioners last week forgave more than $326,000 Everglades City owes the county as the tiny city continues to struggle financially in the aftermath of Hurricane Irma and attempts to fix ongoing problems with the sewage plant. The city also recently raised water and sewer rates for the first time in decades.

Among the discoveries noted by DEP officials during inspections in April and August:

• The facility is not collecting samples as required by its permit and not maintaining lab records on site.
• It only has one working pump — with no backup pump for emergencies — to handle sewage coming to the plant and the settling tank has a metal brace being held up by a fabric strap.
• A box with pipes that handle incoming sewage has a leak on the bottom and the braces have disconnected due to corrosion. 
• The chlorine contact chamber is “highly corroded.”
• Filters are rusted and troughs need support to stay in place.
• The operational mixers and pumps were not operational.
• The facility only has one operational pump sending effluent from the holding tank to a filtration pond.
• The equalization tank was full and water was going through the overflow pipe.
• The tank has a hole and is leaking at the base.
• One of the aeration basins has a leak at the bottom of the tank where the pipes connect to the tank.

State inspectors also noted that the Everglades City facility failed to keep routine documentation and reporting records of spills, and/or operation and maintenance activities on the collection transmission system.

“The collection system personal (sic) state they have no way to track spills,” an inspector wrote in the Aug. 22 report.

Since the previous inspection on April 17, the wastewater treatment plant had five spills, the inspector wrote, which involved 3,970 gallons of treated and 700 gallons of raw wastewater being discharged. The wastewater either spilled on the ground or into a containment unit and did not reach surface waters, according to the report.

“It appears the cause was due to power and equipment issues and a break in the line,” the inspector wrote.

Months earlier, in an April 17 report, the inspector noted that the facility had three spills in the previous 12 months, which involved 24,150 gallons of treated wastewater being discharged.

“The permittee asserts that no waterbodies were affected,” the inspector wrote in the April report, noting that the apparent causes were “due to power outage, rain event and equipment failure.”

Some parts of the treatment plant appear to be hanging on by a thread.

The trough on the filter is rusted out and “about to collapse,” the inspector wrote in August, adding that the operator has “rigged something to help support the trough, but he is unsure how long it will last.”

And in the case of a leak at one of the aeration basins, the report notes that the operator cannot fix the leak “because he is worried if he removes the rust it will cause a bigger problem.”

Additionally, the state inspector discovered that a settling tank appeared to be “short circuiting.” The facility also failed to replace malfunctioning equipment, the inspector wrote, “which resulted in a high potential for water quality or health impacts.”

The city, DEP officials noted, missed deadlines to submit and adopt an asset management plan as required by the 2018 consent final judgment. And it missed deadlines to provide written quarterly progress reports regarding funding, improvements and wastewater treatment facility replacement — also required by last year’s judgment.

Representatives for the city, meanwhile, say they’re working to correct all the deficiencies.

“The City continues to work to come into compliance regarding each item identified as a failure in the Notice of Failure,” Zachary Lombardo, an attorney for the city, wrote DEP officials on Oct. 8.

“As part of this process, the City is working with its wastewater operations contractor, U.S. Water, as well as Collier County and Florida Rural Water Association.”

In early October, the city emailed the DEP the newly adopted asset management plans and the explanation for the delayed submittal from FRWA, according to Lombardo’s Oct. 8 letter. He also outlined deficiencies the city had corrected so far, including reinstalling the effluent pump and labeling and locking all groundwater monitoring wells.

“The City will continue to work to come into compliance on all remaining items within the 45-day window and will update FDEP as more items come into compliance,” Lombardo wrote. The city also outlined timetables to receive proposals for various repairs at the plant.

Some of the violations appear to have caught the city off guard.

In an Oct. 1 letter to U.S. Water, the contractor who operates the plant for the city, Lombardo wrote that the city was unaware of certain non-compliance items, including that the facility is not collecting samples as required by its permit nor maintaining lab records on site. 

He wrote that if the company didn't bring the items into compliance by Oct. 3 or did not submit a plan by then for how the company will bring the items into compliance, the city would file suit for breach of contract. It is unknown whether a lawsuit has been filed.

“The City takes wastewater and water regulatory compliance seriously,” Lombardo wrote.

The latest DEP findings add to the troubled treatment plant’s years-long history of problems. 

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State inspectors in 2016 found that the city’s sewage plant had pumped hundreds of thousands of gallons of inadequately treated liquid sewage into nearby mangroves. The DEP obtained a temporary injunction prohibiting the city from discharging their wastewater to state waters.

In March 2016, the DEP asked Collier County to consider taking over the plant or help run it.

But commissioners, following the advice of the county manager and attorney, decided against getting involved. The county had estimated it would cost $30 million to $55 million to bring the wastewater system up to standard.

Everglades City later hired a vendor to operate its plant after years of faulty maintenance, lapsed permits and missed deadlines caused the DEP to file suit, seeking potentially crippling fines.

In November 2017, the city and Veolia Water North America - South, LLC entered into an agreement for the company to operate, maintain, repair and perform other improvements to Everglades City’s water and waterway system.

But a year later Veolia Water brought a federal lawsuit against Everglades City, claiming that the city breached its contract with the company and that it owes Veolia Water more than $445,000 for billed invoices and reimbursable expenses.

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In an answer to Veolia Water’s complaint, the city denies that it breached the agreement and argues that the company breached it first by not providing a sufficient number of “certified and qualified” personnel and by invoicing the city for expenses outside the scope of agreement. 

Among other things, the city also claimed that the company “improperly charged ongoing training and education for appropriate personnel,” did not prepare an asset management plan for the sewer, and did not give the city a full accounting of all expenditures. 

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In its counterclaim, the city argued that the company agreed to not charge for various expenditures during the period it provided services to the city, but then later added those charges back into the invoices.

Both parties agree that Veolia Water is owed money under the agreement, but dispute the amount owed and who should calculate the damages, a judge wrote earlier this week in an order to grant Veolia Water’s motion to dismiss the city’s first amended counterclaim.

In its amended counterclaim the city alleges that because the invoices under the agreement were “complicated and extensive” it is not clear what amount the company is owed, the judge wrote.

The case is scheduled for mediation Nov. 5. 

Connect with the reporter at patrick.riley@naplesnews.com or on Twitter @PatJRiley.