Coulee Dam to pay over $70,000 to EPA for alleged violations

The city of Coulee Dam has agreed to pay over $70,000 to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for failure to file paperwork on time regarding its new wastewater treatment plant.

A “Consent Agreement” and “Final Order” detail the town’s alleged violations of the Clean Water Act and its operating permit.

They include not submitting a notice to both EPA and the Colville Tribes on time that the new plant was up and running or that the old plant had been taken offline.

EPA said the city was years late in giving written notice that it had developed an Operations and Maintenance Plan, a Quality Assurance Plan, an Industrial User List, and an Emergency Response and Public Notification Plan.

EPA said the city did not file a Data Monitoring Report (DMR) by the 15th of the month 51 times from December 2018 to December 2022, each of those counting as 10 Parameter Reporting violations, one for each item tested per report, or 510 violations. And the city not submitting 60 such reports at all to the Colville Tribes added another 600 violations.

The city didn’t apply for a new permit 180 days before the old one was up, the EPA said, and the given latitude and longitude of its “outfall” point where any effluent would enter the river was off by about 3,500 feet.

The city “neither admits nor denies the specific factual allegations contained in this Consent Agreement,” the document states.

The city will have to pay EPA $70,881 to settle the matter.

City Clerk Stefani Bowden said the city would be approaching the engineer in charge of the construction of the new plant regarding the EPA charges.