The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is considering whether it will file a motion in District Court on St. Thomas to force the V.I. government to bring discharges from its wastewater treatment plants there into compliance.
If the EPA does make the move, District Court Judge Thomas Moore would likely order the Department of Public Works to make needed repairs, as he did for the sewage system on St. Croix in February. Many of those repairs are on going, including stopping the approximately two million gallons a day of raw sewage now being discharged into the sea from the Figtree Pump Station.
EPA’s pending action stems from more than $630,000 racked up in fines by Public Works last April, May and June for violating discharge requirements at treatment plants on St. Thomas and St. Croix.
The bulk of the fines for the three months are for some of the nine treatment plants on St. Thomas, particularly the Airport Lagoon plant, according to Donald Frankel, an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Environmental Enforcement Section. Only about $50,000 of the total $630,000 in fines were for St. Croix’s lone wastewater treatment plant because it was inoperable for most of those three months.
Jim Casey, the EPA’s local coordinator, said he inspected the St. Thomas wastewater treatment plants last week with EPA engineer Pedro Modesto and Dr. Rafael Rios, a court-appointed monitor.
"There continues to be major problems," Casey said, adding that Rios and Modesto’s findings "will drive the decision to file a motion."
The discharges are in violation of the consent decree entered into between the local and federal governments more than 15 years ago to repair the territory’s ailing wastewater system. Under the consent decree, Rios was appointed by Moore to monitor the progress, or lack thereof, of Public Works.
