Coastal Zone board upholds Wandendale permit

A state appeal board upheld a Coastal Zone Act permit that allows Tidewater Environmental Services to move forward seeking additional permits to build a regional wastewater treatment and disposal facility outside Lewes, despite finding the permit was flawed. Appellants say they’ll now take their case to court.

Four environmental groups, represented by Kenneth Kristl, director of Widener University School of Law Environmental Law Center, appealed the Coastal Zone Act permit to the Coastal Zone Industrial Control Board.

The appellants charged Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC) Secretary Collin O’Mara violated the law by issuing a permit that did not specify a schedule for mitigating damage to the environment. Their brief said a mitigation plan must have a set schedule, and any permits necessary for the offsets must be submitted to DNREC and completed before a permit can be issued. Neither condition was satisfied, they say.

Coastal Zone Industrial Control Board member Victor Singer agreed the permit application was not complete, and said the facility would increase nutrient levels in the Coastal Zone. He said nothing quantifiably shows how the facility would benefit or harm the Coastal Zone or Sussex County. “The burden is on DNREC to quantify,” he said. But, he voted to uphold the permit.

Tidewater Environmental Services is seeking permits to build a 1.45 million gallon-per-day wastewater treatment facility that will dispose of wastewater through spray irrigation and rapid-infiltration basin systems.

O’Mara wrote in his order the department is frustrated by land-use decisions in Sussex County and that if development is going to continue, plans for a central treatment facility would be safer for the Inland Bays than individual septic systems.

Environmentalists say the application was incomplete and the project would damage the Inland Bays. They have criticized rapid-infiltration basin systems, saying they will contribute nitrogen to groundwater that flows into the Inland Bays. Tidewater counters the facility will treat to such a high level, its effluent will have less nitrogen than groundwater, so it will improve the overall nitrogen concentrations.

Critics of the plan cite a study done for Rehoboth Beach, which found rapid-infiltration basin systems unsuitable for the city’s wastewater disposal because they would contribute nutrients to the Inland Bays.

The appellants also charged that the public hearing process for the Coastal Zone Act permit was seriously flawed because significant changes were made to the plan before the public hearing, but neither Tidewater nor DNREC made the changes public before the hearing.

Tidewater Environmental Services originally sought a 3 million gallon-per-day facility that would have two rapid-infiltration basin systems; one basin was removed from the plan before the hearing, but O’Mara’s permit listed removing the basin system as a condition for approving the permit.

John Austin, a member of the Southern Delaware chapter of Sierra Club, said he was disappointed board members ruled O’Mara’s order did not follow state regulations, but the violations were not so grave as to overturn the permit.

“I believe that this is far from the end of this story.  If government cannot be held accountable to follow its own statutes and regulations, then there is no government.  I hope the groups challenging the permit will now pursue the issues in Superior Court in defense of the Coastal Zone Act,” Austin said.

Austin said he found it incredulous that the first appeal body to hold the state accountable to its own statutes and regulations failed to do so.

Requests for comment from Kristl, Southern Delaware Sierra Club Chairman Steve Callanen and DNREC were not answered by press time.