By Paul Alleva, The Chronicle, 4/25/2002
The Washington Department of Ecology helped reveal why a new wastewater treatment system is needed in the Twin Cities area when it released its Upper Chehalis River Basin Dissolved Oxygen Total Maximum Daily Load Study in September of 1994.
That study concluded too little dissolved oxygen existed in the Centralia Reach of the Chehalis River for fish to survive, a consequence of discharging treated wastewater into the river.
A little more than a year later, the DOE issued National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permits to the Twin Cities.
''The permits incorporated discharge limits from the TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) as requirements,'' said Dave Reynolds, project manager for the Bellevue engineering firm CH2M Hill.
Chehalis and Centralia eventually began negotiating with the DOE to modify the requirements so they could meet them. It was during these mediated negotiations, said Centralia Utilities Director Dick Southworth, ''that we began to realize we couldn't meet the requirements with our existing plant.''
Chehalis Public Works Director Jim Nichols said he and other Chehalis officials drew the same conclusion as their Centralian counterparts.
''We determined a simple upgrade would not meet their requirements,'' Nichols said.
What about upgrading the existing Centralia plant to meet the DOE's requirements?
Centralia's plant is in the flood plain, Southworth said, and one-third of it is in the flood way, ''where water does the most damage.'' But even if the plant were not in the flood way, it has at best only 20 useful years left, after which time the city would have to build another plant, he said.
The plant is also in the way of the planned widening of Interstate 5.
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Paul Alleva covers municipal government and public issues for The Chronicle. He may be reached by e-mail at palleva@chronline.com or by calling 807-8239.
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