Osceola council, staff, react to administrative consent order

An administrative consent order from the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) to the City of Osceola regarding effluent limitation exceedance was received Feb. 10, and stirred up more than a few feelings on the matter.

An administrative consent order is an agreement between the IDNR and an entity, where the entity agrees to take corrective actions to address noted violations. In this case, Osceola City Administrator Ty Wheeler said the violations were for various materials found in effluent from the wastewater treatment plant. Where the frustration from the city comes in, however is that they have been working on correction these violations, and say that the IDNR was aware of these efforts.

“I think that it’s out of order, and I don’t understand why the DNR would have felt it appropriate to issue something like this based on where we’re at,” Wheeler said. “I view these as something to coerce action, not kick somebody in the head after action [has] been taken.

Consent orders are not new to Osceola. Wheeler said that in the 15 years he’s worked for the city, there has always been some sort of order from the IDNR. When he started, it was for bypass issues that required the city to rebuild sewer lines, a pump station, a main at the sewer plant and go through hundreds of lateral lines to look for illegal connections.

In the early 2010′s, the city was notified that White Breast Creek had a change in its status from a general use stream to a recreation stream, thereby changing permit limits of what could be discharged into it. The city was in the process of looking into a new wastewater treatment plant at the time, but were waiting on a new permit so they knew how to design the new plant.

In 2016, a permit was issued that allowed the city to start designing a new wastewater treatment plant. There was permit compliance to meet certain constituent limits that was valid until 2021. When bids for the project in 2019 came in too high and re-design work was necessary, the city kept the IDNR up-to-date on the project’s progress. When a new permit was issued in 2021 that caused the city to question it, they were told by the permitting office that they had not been privy to conversations between the city and IDNR, and there was nothing they could do.

“So much of this is related to the fact that we went - which we told them upfront - we’re going to go a couple years in perpetual violation. This isn’t going to work. So we got a consent order,” Wheeler said. The city was told that the IDNR wanted them to begin treatment by January of 2024, and knew that goal was being worked towards.

As construction continued throughout the spring of 2024, Wheeler said the city continued to stay in touch with the IDNR on their progess. When the new plant came online, reports looked good, showing the city had accomplished most all of the permit compliance. However, the new order from IDNR show that two constituents will be an issue - chlorides and copper.

Chlorides have been a topic of disucssion for the council for some time, as industrial users in Osceola, speficially Osceola Foods, have a high chloride load that comes to the wastewater treatment plant. The disucssion into an effluent re-use concept began in mid-2023, and continued throughout most of 2024 with engineers Veenstra & Kimm (V&K) conducting feasibility studies and beginning preliminary testing. The goal of the reuse project was to take wastewater, or effluent, and polish it to a high quality to be discharged back into the West Lake watershed. The biggest issue with the project became high concentrations of chloride waste. While that waste could be cleaned again, there would still be a need to get rid of it other than just discharging it into White Breast Creek.** A solution to this was to drill an injection well which would deposit the chloride byproducts deep into the Earth, most likely the Mount Simon aquifer. While the IDNR seemed to initially be interested in the idea, as of last fall the project has been put on hold due to SOMETHING.

“Finally we just flat-out asked - what are we supposed to do with [chloride byproduct]… ‘it’s too bad you don’t live next to a big river,’ is what I was told,” Wheeler said.

On the topic of copper, Osceola Mayor Thomas Kedley questioned how Waste Water Superintendent Donnie McCuddin is supposed to deal with copper, when copper sulfate is what is used to treat the water to a safe standard as set by the EPA. McCuddin said the issue becomes that the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) sets limits to how much copper can be in land-applied sludge. He added that there are talks about the EPA cutting down on biosalts being applied to land, and adding more restrictions.

“[We] take it out of the water, it’s gotta go back into water, goes back into land or in the air. There’s no way around getting rid of some of this stuff,” McCuddin said.

Councilman Tom Bahls suggested that the city reach out to the engineers and project managers of the wastewater treatment plant to see how they propose to respond to some of the higher-than allowed effluent discharges.

“Was it just based on design parameters from six years ago when it was designed, or is the EPA changing those design parameters?” Bahls asked.

Wheeler reiterated that they’d been given a constituent of what was required, but no prescribed method for disposal. With the propsed injection well project having been the first of its kind in Iowa, the city thought it would be a selling point to IDNR.

“We’ve come up with solutions and every time they tell us no,” said Kedley.

Bahls restated that he felt these were questions that should have been answered during the design phase of the wastewater treatment plant, unless the IDNR or EPA have come back with more stringent effluent discharge calculations and figures. He said it was needed to inquire of V&K what their original plan had been to deal with chloride and copper waste.

Councilman Dr. George Fotiadis questioned if the IDNR is looking into other cities and towns around the state as closely as they seem to do to Osceola.

“Are we the only town that’s been under [consent orders] continuously for the last 10 or 15 years?” he asked. “From what I understand, they’re holding us to a measure of copper that’s one-tenth of what’s allowable in drinking water...how do they expect the copper is going to magically go away when you have to put it in the drinking water to make it within limits.”

Fotiadis agreed with Bahls that it would be interesting to find out what had happened in the design phase, and if the city had missed something.

“We’ve tried executive methods, we’ve tried legislative methods…I’m tired of playing nice in the sandbox,” Kedley said, as conversations about the order came to a close.

After discussion, council approved 4-0 a concurrence for Wheeler’s request of 60 days to review the order.