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READING TO PAY $80,000 TO SETTLE ALLEGED CLEAN WATER ACT VIOLATIONS INVOLVING CITY’S WASTEWATER PLANT

Release Date: 4/29/1999
Contact Information: Bonnie J. Smith (215) 814-5543

READING, Pa. - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that the City of Reading has agreed to a $80,000 penalty to settle alleged Clean Water Act violations at the city’s wastewater treatment plant.

In its Sept. 30, 1998 administrative complaint, EPA alleged that between October, 1993 and April, 1998, the Berks County facility violated the daily, weekly and monthly discharge limits in its Clean Water Act permit on 90 occasions -- involving an aggregate total of 1,721 days. The plant discharges into the Schuylkill River.

EPA also alleged that Reading failed to take appropriate legal actions against industrial users of treatment plant that violated pretreatment standards and requirements, and did not prohibit those industries from introducing pollutants which pass through the City’s waste treatment plant.

According to EPA’s complaint, the Reading treatment plant discharged excess levels of ammonia, mercury, cyanide, copper, coliform bacteria and other pollutants into the Schuylkill River. In the settlement papers, Reading has certified that it is now in compliance with the applicable requirements of the Clean Water Act.

EPA works with the states to establish standards that safeguard the water quality of rivers, lakes, and streams. States with approved Clean Water Act programs, such as Pennsylvania, then issue permits to pollution sources. The permits contain discharge limits that are protective of the water quality standards.

The Clean Water Act also requires publicly owned wastewater treatment plants to have in place some form of mechanism to conrol the contribution of wastes by industries to the treatment plant. This mechanism often takes the form of permits which are issued to industies. Those permits act to limit the level of pollutants industries may discharge to the publicly owned wastewater treatment plants and are designed to avoid overburdening the capacity, and interfering with the normal operation of public treatment plants.


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