Riverkeeper rips DHEC over new sewage discharge plan for Saluda River

An environmental group is blasting the S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control over what it says is an agency plan to ease some sewage discharge rules for a utility along the lower Saluda River west of Columbia.

The Congaree Riverkeeper organization, which also keeps track of water quality in the Saluda, says DHEC has written a new permit for Carolina Water Service that could help the company continue discharging into the Saluda – instead of forcing the utility to connect with a regional wastewater system as is now currently required.

The regional system has been available for 16 years, but despite requirements that Carolina Water hook up, DHEC has never succeeded in forcing the company to do so.

Now, DHEC has written a new discharge permit for Carolina Water that gives the company more freedom not to connect with the regional system, Congaree Riverkeeper Bill Stangler said.

The permit, which is up for public review, says Carolina Water can avoid hooking into the system by late 2016 if it gives a good reason. It also eases limits on the release of substances that suck oxygen from the water.

“This is exactly what Carolina Water wanted,” Stangler said. “It’s a way to get them off the hook.’’

Stangler said DHEC’s decision undercuts a federal lawsuit by his organization that attempts to force Carolina Water to remove the discharges from its I-20 treatment plant and join the regional sewage system. The lawsuit said the Carolina Water plant has violated discharge limits about two dozen times since 2009.

Hooking up, Stangler’s group says, would protect the Saluda River from wastewater discharges that sometimes exceed legal pollution limits.

Carolina Water attorney Randy Lowell was not available Monday. DHEC spokeswoman Cassandra Harris said in a recent email the public can comment on the draft permit until Sept. 1, after which her agency will make a final decision.

A public hearing is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. on Aug. 25 in DHEC’s auditorium at 2600 Bull Street.

Harris said the permit proposed for Carolina Water is no different than those for some other plants. In addition to DHEC, the regional hook up would also need approval from the state Public Service Commission, she said. Harris noted the permit also includes tougher requirements for dissolved oxygen and limits expansion of the plant beyond 800,000 gallons per day.

But Stangler said a recent legal filing by Carolina Water Service shows how much the company likes DHEC’s new permit proposal.

In a motion dated Aug. 5, Carolina Water asks a federal judge to halt the riverkeeper lawsuit until the new DHEC permit is finalized. The filing says changes from the old permit to the one now proposed by DHEC make claims in the riverkeeper lawsuit no longer relevant.

“The issuance of the renewal permit will moot most, if not all, of the claims’’ of the riverkeeper, the Aug. 5 motion said.

The regional system goes through the town of Lexington and Cayce, which then discharges treated wastewater to the Congaree River. Cayce has a state-of-the-art sewage plant.

Carolina Water has said it is trying to comply with the hook up requirement, but has had difficulty gaining approval from both the town of Lexington and the PSC in the past. The PSC, unlike DHEC, looks at the rates that would need to be charged to comply with the hookup requirement. The PSC’s role is to look after the cost to consumers. DHEC looks at pollution issues.

The lower Saluda has been the target of efforts for more than a quarter century to get sewer discharges out of the river. Unlike other rivers in the area, the lower Saluda contains some of the coldest water in central South Carolina, a small trout population and whitewater rapids that attract thousands of people each year. Many say it should be handled with special care when it comes to pollution discharges.

Carolina Water and affiliated companies were sanctioned more times by DHEC for repeat environmental violations than any other company or government since the early 1990s, according to a series of 2013 stories in The State newspaper.

This story was originally published August 18, 2015 at 7:44 AM.