Coudersport Borough Council is urging the region’s sewage treatment authority to reject a controversial proposal to build a shale gas wastewater treatment facility on the headwaters of the Allegheny River.
Citing opposition to the project in the Potter County community, borough council voted 5-1 Wednesday to oppose the commercial wastewater facility proposed by Lawrenceville-based startup Epiphany Water Solutions.
“We have been getting quite a lot of feedback from our constituents, overwhelming objections, so we decided to go on record with our position,” Councilman Brian Ruane, who is opposed to the Epiphany proposal.
The company, which has applied for state environmental permits, wants to accept drilling and fracking wastewater at the first-of-its kind treatment facility. It would treat the liquid in a distillation process, run it through the Coudersport Area Municipal Authority’s sewage treatment plant and discharge up to 42,000 gallons a day into the Allegheny River, which is just creek-sized at that location.
The municipal authority, known as CAMA, includes Coudersport, plus Sweden and Eulalia townships, and is an independent authority. That means that although the borough and townships appoint its board, the appointees are not bound by votes of the municipal councils. CAMA board members have a non-binding lease with Epiphany to provide land adjacent to the regional sewage treatment plant, within the river’s 100-year flood plain.
“CAMA is independent, so council’s vote isn’t a demand,” said Mr. Ruane, who noted that several authority board members attended the borough council meeting Wednesday. “It’s just a statement that the borough strongly recommends CAMA adopt a position in opposition to the proposal.”
Mr. Ruane also said the council took note of concerns about the river expressed by numerous state and federal agencies, including the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service.
Tom Joseph, Epiphany's founder and chief executive officer, said neither the council vote nor any subsequent action by CAMA will change the company’s plans.
"We're not the least bit concerned by it, It's small town politics," Mr. Joseph said. "CAMA doesn't report to the borough, so it has no legal bearing. So we are proceeding either way and will make clean water from dirty water."
If CAMA turns down Epiphany's proposal, Mr. Joseph said, the company will pursue its own discharge permit and the authority will lose the $80,000 to $90,000 a year it would get to process the Epiphany discharges.
Also on Wednesday, the Seneca Nation, which also opposes the wastewater treatment plant, hosted a meeting of local, state and federal agencies in Salamanca, N.Y., to review concerns about the proposal.
Seneca nation president Todd Gates applauded Coudersport council’s stand.
“The risk of contamination along the river, and the potential environmental and health risks it could impose, simply should not be tolerated,” he said in a press release.
“The headwaters of the Allegheny River are some of the purest I have tested. They need to be protected,” said John Stolz, director of Duquesne University’s Center for Environmental Research and Education, who attended the Salamanca meeting. “We have learned from other brine treatment facilities operating in the Allegheny basin that their discharges have degraded water quality.”
Don Hopey: dhopey@post-gazette.com, 412-263-1983, or on Twitter @donhopey
First Published: March 23, 2018, 1:41 a.m.
