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Warrior Run borough has obtained state approval to get out of a stormwater mandate, and Lehman Township also is seeking a similar exemption known as a waiver, officials in the two municipalities said.
Both municipalities are among the 32 that had signed up to participate in a regional compliance plan managed by the Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority, which has imposed a stormwater fee to cover pollution reduction expenses.
The mandate applies to municipalities requiring MS4 (municipal separate storm sewer system) permits because they have both urbanized areas determined by U.S. Census data and separate storm sewer systems that discharge directly into waterways without first being treated.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), which issues and enforces the MS4 permits in compliance with federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations, has said fines are possible if municipalities don’t meet requirements.
At a public information session last month, DEP representative Paul Grella said his agency would probably consider waiver requests if municipalities provide new information or show that something has changed since the original permit paperwork was submitted.
Larry Carbohn, Warrior Run council president, said Monday his borough spent around $2,940 for an engineering study to document justification for the waiver, which was approved by DEP at the end of 2018.
The waiver is for five years and means the borough’s approximately 257 property owners will not be charged a fee or be required to meet MS4 pollution reduction measures during that period, he said.
In Lehman Township, elected supervisors decided to revisit the possibility of a waiver because they still believe township residents are “being treated unfairly” by the authority’s fee structure, even after fee alterations to lessen the burden, according to township Supervisor Chairman Dave Sutton and an online posting he issued on behalf of supervisors at www.lehmanpa.com.
Through new research, the township discovered mapping changes showing the portion of East Fork Harveys Creek that runs through the township is not impaired, Sutton said. Township engineering studies also concluded the type of pollutants in the creek stem from discharge from a sewage treatment plant at the State Correctional Institution at Dallas — not stormwater, he said.
The township also meets a waiver requirement for the population of an urbanized area to be less than 1,000 people, Sutton said. The 2010 Census tallied 877 people, and recent township analysis concluded the count is just over 900, he said.
Lehman applied for its MS4 permit waiver on Feb. 1. Township supervisors are confident the request has merit, Sutton said.
If the waiver is granted, the township will immediately request termination of its agreement with the authority to participate in the regional plan, he said.
At last month’s stormwater fee public information session, authority Chairman Sam Guesto said the authority would consider releasing participating municipalities if they “find something better.”
“We’re not looking at holding you hostage,” Guesto told a Lehman Township woman who asked questions about the waiver possibility.
Grella cautioned municipalities close to the 1,000 Census count may be forced to comply in the next five-year MS4 permit cycle if they add residents by then, when it would be too late to participate in the regional plan.
Guesto told the group the authority will “keep marching on” because it has not received an extension to have all pollution reduction plans in place in 2023. Municipalities with MS4 permits must reduce sediment, nitrogen and phosphorus washed into the Susquehanna River, and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay, over the next five years.
Lehman Township officials had considered a waiver in fall 2017 but did not believe they would be successful falling within five miles of an impaired waterway, Sutton said. They signed up for the authority’s regional plan to avoid a “huge tax increase” because it was estimated the township would have had to pay more than $3 million over five years to comply with the pollution reduction mandates, he said.
However, township officials had believed the monthly stormwater fee would range from $3 to $4.50 per residential unit, Sutton’s posting said. When many residents received higher bills, they expressed concerns to the authority and requested reconsideration of rate calculations.
In response to the township and others, the authority made changes, including reducing the fee for properties with 7,000 square feet or more of nonabsorbent impervious area (IA) and providing automatic discounts to property owners outside urbanized areas or with “low impact parcels” containing IAs that are 10 percent or less of the total parcel acreage and not directly connected to a storm sewer or other surface water outlets.
Sutton said these changes are still not enough.
In the Mountain Top area, which is not part of the authority’s regional plan, Rice Township had obtained a waiver after submitting extensive paperwork showing its stormwater was controlled and not “just dumped” into Big Wapwallopen Creek, township Secretary/Treasurer Jeffrey D. Beck has said.
Much of Rice Township’s development is newer and compliant with more recent stormwater runoff protocols, he has said. The township also has a wetland barrier that helps remove pollutants before water drains into the creek.