A construction accident at the Salisbury, MD wastewater treatment Plant on Feb. 7 resulted in a reported 5,000 gallons of partially treated sewage being discharged into the Wicomico River through an on-site storm drain that feeds directly into the river.

On March 26 another construction accident while installing plant upgrades dumped an estimated 28,000 gallons or more of sewage into the river through the same storm drain.

Salisbury Public Works Director Jim Caldwell was recently quoted as saying "To prevent future spills tied to the wastewater upgrade, project engineers will now incorporate discussing how to prevent future spills in the weekly status meetings."

May I suggest the project engineers and Public Works officials could save themselves a lot of time by skipping the weekly status meetings and just go out on the job site and install some standard stormwater management controls around that storm drain? I would refer Public Works to MDE's Stormwater Manual for guidance. Standard stormwater BMP's would solve this problem.

MDE has indeed fined the City of Salisbury for these sewage overflows, but the fines are so insubstantial as to not make an impression on the City to do better.

It is ridiculous to say ‘this is bad, but it's happening because an effort is being made to make things better'. At a time when nutrient pollution to our Chesapeake and Coastal Bays watersheds is under tight scrutiny, allowing a level of pollution contamination to close one of our waterways to fishing and recreation in an ongoing manner is ludicrous.

The Assateague COASTKEEPER is an active member of the WATERKEEPERS Chesapeake and is involved with their efforts to support wastewater policy changes at the state and federal level. WATERKEEPERS are watching out for you, to make certain our waterways are safe for fishing, swimming, and to make certain our groundwaters remain safe and free from pollution.