Rehoboth: Focus on wastewater, stormwater

It's not been a good summer for Rehoboth Beach in terms of problematic discharges of polluted water into ocean and canal.

First, the weekend before the July 4th holiday, the state had to issue a swimming advisory in the city due to high levels of bacteria. The bacteria likely made its way into the ocean via stormwater outfall pipes after heavy rains washed the streets and flowed into the storm drains.

A few successive tidal cycles diluted the problem areas, enabling the state to quickly lift the advisory before the holiday weekend, but it still created a public relations blemish and jeopardized the city's beach quality rankings.

More recently and even more troubling, the city and private citizens reported the discharge of a visually striking slurry of brown liquid and what was termed ‘filamentous bulk solids’ from the Rehoboth Beach wastewater treatment plant's outfall pipe, which discharges into the Lewes-Rehoboth Canal. We've heard a lot of euphemisms, but that's one of the best we've heard yet for a description usually taken care of with four letters.

Mayor Sam Cooper said the frustratingly lengthy process involved with lining up funding and approvals for an ocean outfall to totally remove treated wastewater from canal discharge has slowed millions of dollars' worth of necessary upgrades for the wastewater treatment plant. The aging system manifested itself when filters designed to help remove solids from wastewater failed, leading to the discharge of the aforementioned filamentous bulk solids.

Cooper said work necessary to advertise for bids for filter repairs should be complete within a year. Knowing how long the ocean outfall process has taken, and the associated controversy, it's reasonable to conclude that several more years will pass before the first treated wastewater is shipped offshore and removed from the canal.

Clearly, Rehoboth's wastewater treatment plant needs emergency attention, and with a greater sense of urgency than has so far been displayed. Let's get these problems fixed, and tell the public how it's going to happen, so Rehoboth can get back on top as an environmentally sensitive community with clean, top-ranking beaches.