Broad River Wastewater Discharge

Discharge from Richland County's Broad River Wastewater Treatment Plant bubbles up in the Broad River in this July 2018 photo. Photo courtesy Congaree Riverkeeper.

A Richland County-run sewer plant has run afoul of state regulators again, and river watchdog group Congaree Riverkeeper says the plant is a growing concern.

The county’s Broad River Wastewater Plant is near Irmo. Like many sewer plants, it’s allowed to dump a certain amount of treated sewage into the river. But on several occasions this year, the sewage it discharged into the Broad River exceeded state limits for E. coli bacteria, and failed other water quality tests.

As a result, last month the county reached an agreement with the state Department of Health and Environmental Control to pay a $4,340 fine, and spend more than $3 million on immediate repairs and new equipment for the plant.

In order to comply with the state order, the county’s water and sewer fund will have to borrow $3.1 million from its general fund. County Council unanimously approved that transfer Dec. 11.

The plant was already under another consent decree dating to 2015.

“This is a problem that was supposed to be solved in 2015,” says Stangler, director of Congaree Riverkeeper. “What we’ve seen is more problems.”

Broad River Wastewater Treatment Plant Map

This Google Maps image shows the location of Richland County's Broad River Wastewater Treatment Plant.

Riverkeeper performs independent water quality sampling, and in years past has also detected bacteria levels exceeding state standards near the Broad River plant’s discharge site, which it reported to the state.

In fact, Stangler says, the Broad River plant will likely be listed on Congaree Riverkeeper’s Dirty Half Dozen, its periodic list of the area’s worst polluters, for the first time. The updated list is set to be released around the beginning of the calendar year.

Councilman Bill Malinowski, whose district the Broad River plant is in, says the plant isn’t a particular concern to him — that sewer plants just need frequent maintenance.

“We just need to fix it,” he says. “It’s kind of like your automobile — if they say you need new tires, you need to fix it whether you got new tires three years ago or not.”

Councilman Greg Pearce, who is leaving County Council this week after two decades, echoed that.

“Anytime you’re in the water and sewer business it seems you’re going to have problems every now and then, no matter what you build,” Pearce told Free Times.

But Riverkeeper’s Stangler says the plant’s woes are a sign of systematic problems.

“What we see is just a handful of things that say the plant needs to be maintained better and operated better,” Stangler says. “I keep going back to management and leadership at all levels of the county.”

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