June 19 – After several citations from the federal government that did not include financial penalties, the city of Santa Fe was found by the state to be in violation of discharge permits for its wastewater treatment plant and was fined $2.3 million.
“We’re looking at more than a year of water quality standards being exceeded,” said Susan Lucas Kamat, point source regulation program manager at the New Mexico Environment Department.
Lucas Kamat said the department sent the city a notice of non-compliance in February and followed it up with the administrative order on May 16. The fine was calculated based on the amount of time the factory violated discharge standards and the health risks associated with it. users of the Santa Fe River, which is used for irrigation, ranching, recreation and other purposes, due to high levels of E. coli.
“There’s a pretty high potential for harm,” she said.
The order requires the city to submit a comprehensive written plan on how it plans to eliminate the violations and a schedule of actions to correct each deficiency.
“The plan may include interim corrective actions to address the water quality standards violations identified herein as quickly as possible, followed by subsequent permanent actions,” the order said.
It also requires the city to announce preventative measures it will take to prevent similar violations from occurring again and to submit semi-annual status updates to NMED, among other requirements.
NMED was expected to respond to the city’s administrative decision on Monday. Lucas Kamat said the city submitted a response within the deadline and requested a hearing, which would take place before the Water Quality Control Commission.
She could not comment Tuesday on the contents of the response, which she said was under review by the department’s Office of General Counsel.
John Dupuis, director of the Santa Fe Public Works and Utilities Department, said the city was already making further repairs to the plant at the time the order was received.
“We know we’re not in compliance; that’s not something we didn’t expect,” he said in an interview late last week.
A series of maintenance problems that began in earnest last spring have led to the plant sending wastewater contaminated with E. coli bacteria into the Santa Fe River well above limits set by state and federal agencies.
Downstream residents of the Santa Fe River have said they have had problems with the plant for decades and are also concerned that it could contribute to the contamination of groundwater in La Cienega and La Cieneguilla with PFAS, or so-called “forever chemicals’. “
The city has begun a series of expensive repairs to the plant, but is struggling to meet discharge limits and is in the process of launching a study into long-term options for repairing or replacing the plant. A new facility would likely cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Santa Fe Watershed Association has been posting data about the plant’s wastewater discharges on its website since last year. According to the most recent data, the city significantly exceeded state and federal limits in May and early June, with E. coli levels listed as “too numerous to count” on three separate days last month.
Dupuis said the city hopes to reach an agreement with the state where the cost of the fine can be spent on repairs to the wastewater treatment plant.
Lucas Kamat said she couldn’t say if that was a possibility.
“At this point I can only say that I expect this to be on the agenda of the future Commission on Water Quality Control, and I cannot speak to possible future settlement agreements or [commission] decisions,” she said.
The 13-member board hears appeals related to the Department of the Environment’s water permitting and enforcement actions and administers state and federal water quality regulations.
Since March, representatives from the Public Utilities Department and contractors working on the plant have been meeting weekly with NMED to discuss what the city is doing to bring the plant back into compliance.
The city is pursuing about $8 million in contracts for repair work at the plant, and Dupuis said an additional few million dollars will likely be sought soon for more work.
Dupuis, who joined the city in early 2023, said it would have been ideal if work on the 61-year-old facility had begun a decade ago. As it stands now, he said, “we are paying emergency rates for these solutions.”
Lucas Kamat said the department has no position on whether the city needs a new wastewater treatment plant, as believed by many downstream residents and environmentalists, who say the city is the expert on what it needs.
“I think professionally, a new factory can be more efficient than trying to patch over the existing factory,” she said.
If there is a silver lining to the order, Dupuis says, it is that it shows that an outside agency has invested in repairing the plant, which could prompt city officials to take quicker action in a time frame than typically supported by the mechanisms of city government.
“To me, it’s a blessing as long as we can ultimately fix the plant … and not have to make taxpayers pay for something they shouldn’t have to do,” he said.
His biggest concern with the fine is that if the Department of the Environment does not agree to let the city use the cost of the fine for work on the plant, it would place an unnecessary burden on taxpayers and reduce the amount of money the city has to spend would reduce. a permanent solution.
“Every dollar makes a difference,” he said. If the city ultimately has to pay the state fines, “that means we are significantly limited in what we can do in the long run.”
