DEQ initiates investigation.
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Silt and sediment aren’t
unusual to see in spring streams when snow
is melting in the mountains and rainstorms
drench the landscape.
But the New Fork River turned the color
and opacity of mud for several days last week,
downstream of Pinedale’s excavation for new
ball fields on 35 acres by the school district’s
bus barn. It was noticeably heavy enough on
Friday, June 26, that a concerned fisherman
contacted Pinedale Mayor Matt Murdock with
questions about water quality and fish habitat.
Murdock told the Roundup this week that
extra sediment went into the New Fork after
extremely heavy rainfall July 16 and July 17,
with a broken culvert from Bloomfield Lane
diverting storm water onto the site. The site
also has a high ground-water table and hard
rains raised that to impede construction.
The result – much more storm water
collecting on the construction site than usual,
where the construction crew only had a stateissued
large-construction permit to remove
storm water. Extra water and sediment
“overwhelmed” the site, knocking down a
silt fence and running a “minor” amount of
sediment into the New Fork, the mayor said.
The project is operating under a Wyoming
Department of Environmental Quality
permit authorizing discharge of storm water
associated with large construction activities.
Jorgensen Engineering did the site work and
Teletractors, Inc., won the construction bid.
“(The rainfall and broken culvert’s
drainage) inundated the project site with
standing water,” Murdock said Wednesday. “In
an effort to allow for construction operations
to resume, the contractor (Teletractors) began
minor site dewatering of the storm water
for those activities permitted by the letter of
authorization and noted in (the permit).”
He called the excess sediment “minor.”
“It was not actively being put into the New
Fork,” he said, adding that the excess silt was
not pumped or mechanically put in the river.
“We’re not dumping dirty water into the New
Fork.
Sediment controls
Before construction, a “silt fence, straw
wattles/ bales and the use of vegetated buffer
strips” were installed to prevent sediment
from causing erosion and flowing into the
river, he said.
The town’s ball-field project – called the
Dudley Key Sports Complex – will replace
current fields by the Pinedale Clinic, where an
expansion is planned to build a critical access
hospital. Timing is crucial for the town’s new
fields to be grass-seeded and playable next
spring.
On June 25, Teletractors applied for a
second temporary discharge permit to be
allowed to remove both ground and storm
water from the site, Murdock said.
“On June 26, it was discovered that the
silt fence installed in accordance with the
discharge location ... had overtopped for the
minor dewatering occurring … and a minor
amount of turbidity was observed entering the
New Fork River,” he said in an email.
Teletractors “immediately ceased” the
water removal and designed additional “best
management practices” to install “additional
staked straw wattles and multiple rock-filled
silt fence check dams to control the residual
water … and all off-site discharge was halted
and contained with these BMPs in place.”
DEQ responses
“The Town of Pinedale takes the quality of
our water and natural resources very seriously
and we immediately contacted Barb Sahl
at the Wyoming DEQ who told us she was
satisfied with our immediate response and
plans to improve the BMPs,” Murdock said.
Barb Sahl, DEQ Storm Water Program
coordinator, said that she actually had little
contact with the town personally except
mainly emails among town officials and DEQ
Lander water-quality specialist Tavis Eddy
“about a sediment complaint.”
Eddy did not respond by phone or email
before press time.
Sahl issues permits but is not involved in
inspections, she added. In the DEQ’s storm
water program, discharged runoff water must
have pollutants, including sediment, removed
to not lower the quality of the “receiving
surface water,” in this case the New Fork.
She confirmed that Teletractors applied for
the temporary permit and that no DEQ staff
had visited the site.
The large-construction permit does not
allow for “very much of an increase” of
sediment, Sahl said.
If a violation occurred, she added, it
would have to be documented or verified. A
noticeable change in the river’s appearance
could indicate a “mud plume,” which could be
a violation. Many times problems are resolved
with phone calls, as this one was, she said.
“Tavis said the town called and said it was
pumping discharge of storm water and ground
water” and was applying for the second
permit, Sahl said.
Violation?
“If storm water left the construction site
and was not controlled sufficiently, a plume
could occur. It may have been a violation,”
Sahl said of the New Fork’s receiving excess
sediment. “It might have been, but no one was
onsite to verify it.”
In these cases, DEQ wants the problem to
be “fixed right away. We want it to stop.”
Sahl told DEQ’s supervising inspector Jim
Eisenhauer about a possible violation – “I
hope he can get someone out there.”
Eisenhauer told the Roundup Thursday
morning he had just learned of the New Fork
sediment complaints and will set up a meeting
at the ball-field site next week.
In the meantime, Murdock described the
“revised treatment train” plan for the ball-field
site – “settlement basins, a series of check
dams … of multiple rows of silt fence filled
with granular fine washed rock, straw wattles,
an in-line system of polyacrylamide flocculent
logs to settle out turbidity, use of vegetative
buffer strips and floating turbidity barriers” to
be assessed and adjusted as needed.