PAYSON -- A state inspection has revealed that the city's aging sewage treatment plant has reached capacity and needs to be updated.
City officials could have faced stiff fines on at least one occasion within the last year because the plant failed to meet state standards, Paul Krauth of the Utah Division of Water Quality told the City Council on Wednesday. And if the federal Environmental Protection Agency found the plant out of compliance with federal regulations, its fines would start at $100,000, he said.The plant was built in 1968 and updated in 1985. Its life was originally estimated at 20 years.
The plant's weakest links are the digesters, which cook down the solid waste.
"The digesters define the capacity of the plant," Krauth said.
Other elements are running at or below capacity, and several of those functions also need updating, he said. Payson's rapid growth is the main cause of the treatment plant problems.
"It's really coming up on this hard," Krauth said.
When the plant was updated in 1985, officials were told it would handle a population of up to 25,000 people, Councilman Bernell Evans said. But that was if the cooked solids were trucked to a landfill. State regulations no longer allow that. Payson now has a population of about 14,000.
The state study of Payson's treatment plant saved the city about $20,000. The state usually studies treatment plants only for towns smaller than Payson, said Scott Rogers from a private engineering firm.
Krauth could offer no suggestions on how much it would cost to update the treatment plant, but Rogers said he could.
While waste from Payson's large fruit industry is no longer pumped through the treatment plant, the industrial base will continue to grow as the town grows, Rogers said. And that means more industrial waste along with residential waste.
"It's hard to plan for industrial loads," he said.
The plant also needs larger sludge drying beds, he said.