THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 22, 1996 TAG: 9603220536
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: RICHMOND LENGTH: Medium: 79 lines
Just when state officials thought they had prodded meatpacking giant Smithfield Foods Inc. into pumping its chemical wastes to a sewage plant instead of into the polluted Pagan River, a dilemma surfaced.
By sending hog wastes to the Suffolk plant operated by the Hampton Roads Sanitation District, the Pagan will be spared heavy amounts of fecal coliform, ammonia and other contaminants. But, as officials learned, the wastes also will cause the sewage plant to emit too much phosphorus pollution into the environment - in this case the lower James River.
On Thursday, the State Water Control Board settled the prickly matter.
On the advice of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, the board voted unanimously to temporarily relax phosphorus standards at the plant, which hopes to begin accepting wastes from Smithfield Foods within 90 days.
Standards will return to normal after the sanitation district completes a $48 million expansion of its Suffolk plant, expected to take 12 to 18 months, state environmental officials said.
Phosphorus is a damaging nutrient that scientists targeted in the 1987 Chesapeake Bay Agreements, signed by Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C., which calls for a 40 percent reduction in phosphorus and nitrogen by 2000.
``We think it's very important to get those contaminants out of the Pagan River as soon as possible,'' said Frank Daniel, regional director for the state Department of Environmental Quality.
The Pagan, in Isle of Wight County, has been closed to shellfish harvesting since 1970 due to pollution.
Also Thursday, the board approved a consent order that should relieve another polluted waterway closed to shellfish harvesting: Nassawadox Creek on the Eastern Shore.
The state has been trying unsuccessfully for years to force Northampton-Accomack Memorial Hospital, a nonprofit community hospital in Nassawadox, to fix its troubled sewage plant. The plant empties into Warehouse Creek, which feeds Nassawadox Creek, which is closed in parts to shellfish harvesting because of high bacteria counts, state environmental officials said.
The state signed an agreement with the hospital in 1992 to tie into a planned sewage plant in Nassawadox, which officials thought would stop hospital wastes high in chlorine, acidity and bacteria from damaging the creek. But plans fell through and pollution continued.
Another agreement was signed in 1993, but that was not fulfilled either, said senior state enforcement specialist David S. Gussman.
Eight more pollution violations were noted in 1995 through Thursday, when the state and the hospital signed a third order that forces Northampton-Accomack Memorial to upgrade its plant by July 1 or face a $1,000-per-month fine.
Hospital spokeswoman Candy Farlow said that work is under way, and that the $300,000 renovation should be finished on time.
``We've had a number of holdups getting plans to everyone's satisfaction,'' Farlow said when asked why it took the hospital so long to comply.
In another enforcement action, the board also approved a $1,000 fine for Commercial Ready Mix Products Inc., whose workers were caught discharging concrete slurry into creeks feeding the Blackwater River in Isle of Wight County and the Great Dismal Swamp, officials said.
Gussman said the company was first caught in 1994 and agreed to build protected washing basins at its Franklin and Suffolk plants. However, the plants were not constructed and inspectors again witnessed crews washing watery concrete wastes into the same feeder streams, Gussman said.
Under the order signed Thursday, Commercial Ready Mix has until June to complete a basin in Franklin and April 1997 for its Suffolk operation. ILLUSTRATION: SMITHFIELD FOODS
The Virginian-Pilot file
By sending wastes to a sewage plant, Smithfield Foods will spare the
Pagan River, but the plant will pollute the James.
KEYWORDS: ENVIRONMENT POLLUTION by CNB