The Department of Environmental Protection announced Friday that Camp Hill Borough, Cumberland County, has signed a $140,000 consent order and agreement with DEP to address unauthorized and unreported sewage discharges that happened from 2011 to 2013.
The consent order and agreement (COA) addresses specific violations for 97 sewage discharges from the borough’s sewage pumping stations and collection system into tributaries that lead to the Conodoguinet and Yellow Breeches creeks. The agreement also recognizes that DEP’s investigation revealed that previous discharges may have occurred from 2008 to 2011, but no penalty is associated with those discharges.
“This penalty reflects the seriousness of the violations committed by Camp Hill Borough,” South-central Regional Director Lynn Langer said. “The continued discharge of sewage into Pennsylvania’s waterways will not be tolerated, and specific corrective measures will be taken by Camp Hill to comply with our environmental protection laws.”
Through an inspection on Jan. 3, 2013, and the resulting investigation, DEP discovered that one of Camp Hill’s pumping stations had been shut down on 53 separate days due to high flows and power outages during dry and wet weather events. This resulted in discharges of untreated sewage into a tributary to the Conodoguinet Creek. The inspection also revealed that raw, untreated sewage was physically pumped from the main pump station into a tributary to the Yellow Breeches Creek on 34 separate days in 2011.
In addition to the discharges, raw sewage was physically pumped out of manholes in the collection system on several occasions in 2011 into a tributary to Yellow Breeches Creek. The borough did not immediately report any of the discharges to DEP.
To address the violations, under the COA, Camp Hill Borough is required to:
• Inspect its pump stations and overflow pipes on a daily basis;
• Install overflow alarms and flow-monitoring devices to record future discharges;
• Implement an interim high-flow management plan to address any new bypasses; and
• Complete a new pump station by November 2013 as part of its plan to transfer its sewage flows from Lemoyne Borough to Hampden Township.
If the corrective actions do not eliminate Camp Hill Borough’s unauthorized sewage discharges, the COA requires them to conduct an Inflow and Infiltration (I&I) study through long-term monitoring to determine how significant the problem is, which will be followed by I&I remediation work on its collection system.
The COA also includes significant stipulated penalties for any future bypasses, particularly if they go unreported to DEP.
Camp Hill Borough will pay the $140,000 penalty in four quarterly payments, with the last payment due April 1, 2014.