Friday, November 30, 2007

Cedar Hill agrees to steps to improve sewers

By Steve Snyder of TODAY Newspapers

With a Nov. 15 agreement with the state of Texas, the city of Cedar Hill hopes to address some recognized sewer system problems.

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In a Cedar Hill City Council meeting on that date, the council approved a mitigation agreement with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on sanitary sewer system overflows. It is similar to agreements TCEQ has entered with other cities around the state. The mitigation proposal requires the city to outline plans it will undertake to substantially reduce overflows within the next decade.

In exchange for the city entering into the agreement, TCEQ agrees not to undertake any enforcement actions during the period of the mitigation.

In the agreement, the city said it had 19 unauthorized sewer system discharges between September 2003 and April 2006. The majority of these discharges were due to either grease blockages or lift station failures.

Some residents are more stoked about the improvements than others.

To address blockages, the city has purchased a vacuuming/jetting truck and added a two-person crew for it to its maintenance schedule. For the lift station issues, the city has adopted a preventative maintenance plan and purchased a 600-kilowatt portable generator, powerful enough to operate the largest lift station in case of a power failure.

Future mitigation efforts including running fiber-optic video into sewer lines to determine rehabilitation needs, modifying lift stations over a three-year period to be able to run on portable generators during power failures, adding another two-person crew to the maintenance schedule by the end of 2010, and submitting an annual progress report to TCEQ.

Former Cedar Hill Mayor Mark Bielamowicz questioned if the improvements are enough, noting they cover just the sewer system and not the water supply system.

He pointed to a public notice in the Nov. 22 issue of Cedar Hill Today, a mandatory public notice for city water samples containing coliform bacteria.

The city is required to take at least 40 samples a month of its water supply. Of these, five October samples were found to contain coliform bacteria, as did two repeat samples. Per state regulation, more than 5 percent of samples testing positive is the benchmark for public notification.

Adam Campbell, operations manager of the city's public works department, provided details.

“It's a minor thing,” he said. “We were 1.5 percent above (allowable).”

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