Springville, Lehi pay fines for polluting water
The cities of Lehi and Springville will pay fines to the Utah Department of Water Quality for water pollution issues that occurred in 2014 and 2015.
A power spike in Springville on Nov. 2, 2014 shut down the city’s electronic monitoring system. As a result, an estimated 24,633 gallons of untreated waste water were discharged from a pumping station before the city could fix the problem.
The sewage flowed via storm drain to Spring Creek, eventually ending up in Utah Lake, according to the penalty calculation documents.
Springville reported the incident to the Division of Water Quality the same day. The settlement requires the city to pay a $100 fine, as well as fund a $5,567 mitigation project.
The mitigation project will have nothing to do with the equipment that caused the leak in the first place.
“It (the project) cannot deal with what happened. That would just be a reimbursement of the problem,” said Walt Baker, director of the Utah Division of Water Quality.
Instead, the mitigation project must be a Supplemental Environmental Project, which Springville cannot use to “generate any positive publicity” or “attempt to obtain a tax benefit from the foregoing funding of the mitigation projects,” according to the agreement.
However, Springville is working on a design for a larger “wet tank” to hold the sewage. That way, in a similar situation, there would be more time to fix the problem before overflow occurred into a waterway, said Bradley Stapley, public works director for Springville.
“We’re designing it right now, and will put it into the upcoming budget,” Stapley said.
Lehi’s water pollution incident occurred last July. The city's settlement included only a $2,200 fine that is paid to the State of Utah’s general fund, Baker said.
The fine was for discharging solids into Dry Creek as a result of well-drilling operations.
“You’re going to purge a bunch of sediment. That comes with the package when you develop a new well,” Baker said.
A complaint was filed about the discharge in the stream. When the Division of Water Quality came to investigate, it found city workers were not using means of filtering solids out of the water before the discharge entered the stream.
A discharge of that sort can negatively impact the fish in the stream, Baker said.
Lehi was able to implement use of a sediment pond to help filter the water and resume operations digging the well, the agreement said.
The Lehi Public Works Department is closed on Fridays and employees could not be reached for comment.
Commentary: Todd Munger is the Head of Public Works for the City of Lehi. Isn't he the same person who signed off on the Family Search Plat without even attending a single recorded meeting discussing its creation before he signed off on it.
