Baltimore City is set to pay nearly $4.75 million as part of a settlement with the state environmental department over wastewater pollution discharge from the Back River and Patapsco wastewater treatment facilities.
The settlement was announced Thursday and is one of the heftiest fines the state has ever enacted for water pollution. With that settlement, the city will also enter into a consent decree that includes a timeline for repairs and upgrades. Nearly half of the fine, $1.9 million, will go towards environmental grants meant to improve local waterways and habitats.
“We're really excited that.. rather than just going to a state fund it’s actually going to go back to projects in the Patapsco and Back River,” said Angela Haren, an attorney with Chesapeake Legal Alliance who brought the original case on behalf of Bluewater Baltimore in 2021. “That was very important to our clients… we wanted to make sure that the investments were made to counteract a lot of the damages that were done.”
The city has two years to finish most equipment updates at the plants under the deal, along with increasing and maintaining staffing. Independent third-party engineers will oversee the progress as part of the required third party oversight.
In Spring of 2021, water advocacy group Bluewater Baltimore took samples containing high levels of bacteria near the Patapsco facility. At the group’s request, inspectors from the Maryland Department of the Environment went to the facilities and found numerous violations of the federal Clean Water Act and infractions of state water pollution laws. According to Bluewater Baltimore, “The two WWTPs discharged twice as much dead zone-causing nitrogen pollution in 2021 as they did in 2019. That excess alone — more than 2 million pounds — was equal to nearly every other WWTP in Maryland combined.”
The state wrote in a searing report that a tangled web of systemic issues like inadequate staffing, failure to quickly conduct repairs, and general failures in plant management were largely to blame.
The city has been working with the Maryland Environmental Service since 2022 to address those issues and get the plants back into compliance.
In a Thursday statement put out with the city’s Department of Public Works, who oversees the operations at both plants, Mayor Brandon Scott said the city has worked to address the systemic issues at both facilities that caused the environmental destruction.
“When these issues escalated at the height of the pandemic, I directed DPW to chart a path forward. With the support of our state regulators and advocates, my Administration has worked to shift the trajectory of our wastewater treatment facilities to move us closer to ensuring both of our WWTPs remain in compliance. Notably, in the summer of 2023, we posted the Patapsco Wastewater treatment facility’s best effluent numbers ever recorded and have consistently remained well below permitted effluent numbers,” he said.
Also, as part of the settlement there will also be increased transparency measures like quarterly reports available online showing progress and corrections that still need to be taken. Additionally, there will be signage to alert the public of the plants’ submerged sewage outfall pipes.
“There's going to be a light on top that will turn red, if there's an instance where the wastewater treatment plant has bypassed some of its treatment,” explained Haren.
“As we work to tackle the longer-term action items, we will continue to coordinate with our regulators and advocates to ensure a more secure future for these plants,” said acting DPW director Richard Luna in a statement.
