By Meredith Gardner
meredith.gardner@theindependent.com

Council members discussed the city's wastewater treatment issues during a study session immediately following their regular council meeting.

From March 27-31, the city exceeded its discharge permit, a violation that is blamed for the death of more than 10,000 fish along 24 miles of the city's wastewater outfall ditch, the Wood River and the Platte River. The violation was caused when Swift overloaded the treatment plant, causing the city's discharges to be overloaded.

Swift accounts for 57 percent of the treatment plant's total flow, said Steve Riehle, Grand Island public works director.

And while on average Swift sends 32,400 pounds of biochemical oxygen demand and 12,600 pounds of suspended solids to the wastewater treatment plant per day, their year-to-date daily maximum has reached as high as 217,000 pounds of biochemical oxygen demand and 179,600 pounds of suspended solids.

"It looks like Swift is out of control," said councilman Larry Carney.

Swift is currently working on building a new pre-treatment lagoon, which will increase its current 9 million gallon capacity by 25 million gallons. The larger lagoon should alleviate the overloading problem, Riehle said, as the current lagoon is extremely undersized. Waste from Swift isn't always able to break down long enough in the smaller lagoon before going to the treatment plant. However, target completion date for the addition isn't until August.

In the meantime, the city has come up with a "disaster plan," which can be used in case another plant overload occurs. Along with other representatives from the wastewater treatment plant, Riehle met with members of the Nebraska Department of Environmental Quality, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Swift to talk about what the treatment plant could do differently to manage Swift's spikes in loads.

In the event of another overload, the treatment plant could send 500,000 gallons of sludge into empty holding basins and also turn on dewatering wells, which would pump fresh water and oxygen into the wastewater discharge.

The city has plans to meet with officials from Swift's corporate and local offices this morning, during which they hope to nail down more ways such an overload can be prevented. The disaster plan alone is not acceptable, Riehle said.

"I hate to see this," said councilman Kirk Ramsey. "They bring a lot of revenue to our city, but it's gotten out of hand and we need to take a firm action."