Rehoboth wastewater outfall pipe

I surf all winter right next to the now 4 mile long wastewater pipe in San Diego. It is terrible.

I don't think that Deleware would have the same issues with the system that SD does, I.E. whenever it rains, which is rarely, the entire cities sewage systems get flooded. The whole system city wide hasn't been worked in since the 60s or so, so not only do all the pipe overflow, Giant debris gets caught in the turbines in the system, causing the whole system to go into emergency mode. At this point, there are 1 or 2 options. Option 1 = Let the system do its thing and the Point Loma plant would litterally overflow with human feces... Or 2, you just open the "Flood Gate" and instead of letting the partially treated sewage out, they just open the pipe and let MILLIONS of gallons of RAW waste go out into the ocean...

And in the past, the city had to pay heafty, multi million dollar fines when doing this, because it VIOLATES THE CLEAN WATER ACT!...

Now, with the bad economy, the crooked politicians got San Diego passed as a City who no longer has to pay the fines... So, rather than put the fines back into fixing the faulty system, they OWE NOTHING now, and let raw waste run into our ocean...

Pretty cool...

You guys definately dont want this.... And there is NO NEED FOR IT IN DELEWARE!!!

That is just stupid. There is more than enough space to find alternative treatment methods and installing new plants.

Using the Chesapeake Bay, the DW Bay, or the Atlantic should be ABSOLUTELY out of the question....

I mean, PEOPLE ARE FU**ING NUTS!!! I mean, do you really have to be a surfer to get pissed off about this. Even if I never got in the ocean, I would understand why this sounds so AS$ backwards...

Good luck. Everyone should show up and vote. But let me tell you, Money talks, so the fact that you are already voting on it makes it too late. The crooked local politicians are already in bed with whoever is funding this, so its too late. They will let you all voice your opinions, and in the end, they will do what is best for all the local busniess' pockets.

Its jsut CRAZY to me how all the hotels and local businesses in the midatlantic totally disregard the environmental issues surrounding their facilities. WHY DO THEY THINK PEOPLE COME THERE!!!! Not for their sh**y hotel. ITS FOR THE OCEAN!!!! NO OCEAN, NO BUSINESS....

Do we really have to relive the Jersey Shore?statin Island incident in the 80s and watch the local beach economies tank again....

COME ON PEOPLE!!! THOSE SAND PUMPING PIPES ARE UGLY ENOUGH....

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!@

 

ohh boy, I cant wait to surf North OC MD in years to come. When there is a nice South Drift coming down the DE coast, I will duck dive and come up with a mouthful of someone else's dingleberries!!! Awesome. Can't wait.

 

The Center for the Inland Bays is against the land based application of the treated sludge as it will just leach into the inland bays and increase the problems of high bacteria and nutrient overload. I say build the pipe.

 

Yeah, so instead of the inland bays having higher bacteria levels, it will be assawoman bay, the DE bay and the entire continental shelf will be over run with high bacteria levels... If you think that in the summer, when the water is warm, and super flat, the the slow leak of millions of gallons of "partially treated sewage" a few miles off your coast will not increase bacteria levels is just not true.

Look at the coastal water surrounding any of the sweage pipes that are already built in the ocean. They shut down my local beaches at least twice a year because of the RIDICULOUSLY high bacteria levels.

So, damned if you do, damned if you dont. But dont let your local governement take the easy way out. They are paid to be in office. THEIR JOB is to solve the people problems, and when they give you a solution that could potentially harm our coastal waters, you must oppose it.

You know what, it will save tax payers money in the long run if you build the pipe. The MAJORITY of citizens in the state will benefit from it, but at what cost. At what point to you just have to put your foot down and say, money doesnt matter when it comes to the ocean.

Just like we all thought it was a great ideal to drill off shore.

Once they have a malfunction, and the DE coast is shut down for 2 weeks because its filled with human sh**, you wont agree with them.

There is NOTHING beneficial about this for the environment. Nothing at all. It is all negative, so I find it difficult to support it in any way

 

Im not a DE resident, so I really don't have a voice, but I am a MD native and frequent the OC coast all the time. It would be a shame if the entire tri-state area had to suffer because of DE government. Im just speaking as a citizen of a state and of a city that has one of these pipes. And it has been nothing but heart break with the pipe.

Back in 2007, THE ENTIRE LOBSTER AND SHELL FISH POPULATION was damaged and rendered POISIONOUS. THE ENTIRE 80 mile stretch of coast was RUINED. No shellfish of the local SD seafloor was sold or eaten. It destroyed local fisherman. Destroyed them....

Im not a fisherman by trade, or for money. But I LOVE paddling out on the reefs and dropping lobster nets and enjoying seafood. The entire fishing community in SD was rocked by this.

So, this is a topic that probably didnt even make national news over in the mid-atlantic.

But surfers couldnt surf in OB/MD/PB/IB for weeks. I had to drive up to San Onofre to surf for weeks.

Its just bad for business... trust me when I tell you.

So, the city had to pay 2 million dollars, but they leaked like 480 MILLION gallons of raw waste, the accumulated on our Reefs, on our piers, on our jetties and KILLED OUR ANIMALS... KILLED them.

You would be duck diving and dead lobster carcuses are hitting you in the face under water. You get out of the water, 2 months after the sewage spill, and you are still stepping on old discarded lobster shells.... DEATH DEATH DEATH.... from your lovely pipe.

Look past your own local propoganda and media to find the truth... Cause they are selling you guys right up the river....

 

Don't Ocean City and South Bethany already have ocean outfall pipes for treated wastewater? http://capegazette.com/storiescurrent/200912/reho-wastewater15.html

 

The problems Zach speaks of are from discharge during overloads, because many cities have sewer and stormwater combined. During a big rain event, they system cannot treat the combined flows, and bypass the treatment process and directly discharge. This results in raw untreated sewage making it into the ocean. The Rehoboth outfall is completely independant of stormwater, and handles just sewage flow. All of the water will be treated to levels deemed safe by the EPA to discharge into small inland waterways (i.e. rivers, bays), let alone an ocean. I guarantee you the "treated" water coming out of the end of that pipe will be cleaner than what is coming out of our tax ditches and rivers into the inland bays after agriculture run-off.

I surf right where they propose the pipe to discharge offshore and have absolutely no issue with it. As for the untreated stormwater that discharges from the pond behind the henlopen into the ocean at Grenoble street though....I do have a problem with that.

Instead of screaming wolf, do a little due diligence. Whereever this water is discharged, it will eventually end up in the ocean. And we are talking about treated effluent...not raw sewage.

And the groundwater recharge arguement was taken based on application in arid regions like California. Do you actually live in Delaware? Have you seen what happens after an inch of rain. Groundwater is one resource we have more than enough of....Our soils are so oversaturated, none of the application will infiltrate, it's going to simply runoff into the smaller inland streams and ditches, where what remaining concentrations in the effluent will have a greater effect because of the smaller water source.

 

Ocean, if you want to have an intelligent debate please stop with the doomsday scenarios and propaganda. This guy from Wilmington does have a vested interest in the ocean. Every weekday I can get off work and every weekend I'm either surfing, spearfishing the outer wall or fishing off my kayak. I'll have more time to debate when I get off of work.

One more thing, do we all have to do whatever surfrider tells us to do just because we surf? They're the ones that support MLPA's in California that shut down huge swaths of coastline to watermen and spearos. But you already know that because you probably support MLPA's on the east coast too. I can't wait until my membership expires.

 

EJ, you better watch your words about the surfrider. You do realize if Rastavich gets word of this thread he's going to paddle a kayak across the Atlantic, up the Delaware river, into the Christina, and then show up on your doorstep and beat with with a mallet made of whalebone, wrapped in Dolphin foreskin.

 

I hear you brah, just pointng out that Zach is clueless to act as if Rehoboth is the first place in the region that will use an ocean outfall pipe when in fact OC has had one for 30 years.

 

why did you leave?

not busting your balls, but why did you leave MD. you speak with alot of passion about it and you probally could be a major activist back home since trouble lurks on our horizon and SD has gone to Sh!t...literally! or are you just throwing in 10 cents cause your board. I don't know much about the situation, but I will do my best to help it. i live on the water and i am in the water all the time. i always thought cali had to many issues to leave the east and i love it hear. just curious...

 

Well said.

 

Both have pros and cons

Both have pros and cons.

Land Application does have a limits lifetime and is mostly determined by the amount of heavy metals and pollution parameters already existing in the soils and taking that into consideration it is calculated the lifetime of the spray area for what is in the wastewater and how many years it takes to reach the limits. Land application will not have the amount of treatment that the ocean outfall will have. So dirtyier water will be discharged on the ground and will seep into the groundwater and the inland bays. If the water is treated to high levels then there are no nutrients in the water for the crops and stuff to use so then it is almost pointless to spray.

Ocean Outfall will be treated to a high level of treatment. I am not sure what levels they are proposing but will be a max of BOD 10, TSS 10, TN 10 but hopefully will be BOD 5, TSS 5 TN 10 Fecal <200. Drinking water standards are 10, 10, 10. The technology is here that will do this treatment consistantly but I am not sure in this instance what they are proposing. The bad thing with municipal systems on an outfall is that if there is a burp in the treatment process it goes into the water. A big mess and I would prefer not to take the chances. Sewer and stormwater in Rehoboth are separate systems but in big rains the sewer system does get overloaded fast so unless they resolve this issue it will remain an issue and will discharge crappy water into the ocean.

 

First off Ocean I have nothing against you personally. When I first heard about the proposed pipe I, just like most surfers, thought it was a bad idea until I researched it more and thought about the alternatives. If you love the ocean and the inland bays than I think the lesser of the two evils is to build the outfall pipe. Also, I own no land or property in Rehoboth, I'm not employed by the city of Rehoboth. I work for an environmental consulting company that is not involved with this issue at all. Basically I have no money to gain from this proposal.


1. Technology is proven and a best bet for the particulars of Rehoboth Beach. Ocean City Maryland and the South Coastal Waste Water Treatment Plant (with its outfall near South Bethany) both discharge treated wastewater to the ocean with zero problems for 20+ years. In fact South Coastal has even received an EPA award for its excellence in operation.

2. Ocean outfall works because the highly treated wastewater is diluted rapidly by the mass of the ocean. Think about the tiny volume of the effluent versus the gigantic mass of the ocean with all its currents.

3. Add that to the fact that the Delaware estuary discharges right there and is one of the most nutrient enriched bodies of water in the world. We don't notice this because its naturally turbid.

4. The only documented environmental affects of outfalls on the ocean communities is a localized increased in plankton biomass, maybe some more fish. There's no evidence that marine animals will become stressed or diseased from the outflow pipe.

5. The treatment plant maintains storage area so that if there is a problem at the plant they can store water and will not be pumping untreated effluent.

6. The alternative is to pump to water miles inland and dispose of it into our drinking water aquifers that also feed the inland bays. Rehoboth bay gets much of its freshwater inputs from groundwater. While the treated wastewater might meet drinking water standards for nitrogen when its pumped into the ground, it can ruin the bays. Phosphorus is another issue because it can accumulate in the soil until the soil can't hold any more and it leaches out. Wastewater disposal on land is not yet a perfect technology.

7. Landbased disposal costs hundreds of dollars more per person per year than ocean outfall. Why? Because land at the beach is at a premium and so they have to pipe it way the hell out. Those dollars can be spent as they wish be people who earn them. Maybe they would want to put them towards restoring the inland bays.

8. The Bays are still moderately to highly polluted by excess nitrogen and phosphorus. Rehoboth Bay used to have clear water and be nearly half covered by sea grass meadows. Now the seagrasses are all gone so are the oysters and the oxygen is unhealthy for the young fish that want to use it for a nursery so they can grow in to big fish we catch. During summer mornings oxygen levels in the tributaries regularly drop to lethal levels for fish. Wastewater disposed of on land goes to the inland bays where dilution is much much less than the ocean.

9. But what about the freshwater? isn't global warming going to deplete our aquifers and aren't we throwing away all this resource? The Columbia aquifer has insane capacity and it refills itself every winter with rainwater. Climate change is not predicted to increase or decrease total annual rainfall in the Mid-Atlantic. We do not live in the Northeast where increases are predicted, we do not live in the Southeast where dercreases have been predicted.

10. Finally this is not California or New Jersey.

11. The only possible outstanding issue that I've heard of is the modeling of the currents at the discharge. From what I understand the screening level analysis was fine but they might need to do more work to ensure that unacceptable amounts of the treated effluent will not be carried near the shore. If this info is correct I'm assuming this is part of the process, if the impact study finds the levels to be unacceptable then it obviously can't be done. Nobody wants to dive head first into a floating brown snake.

Also, you said we know more about the moon than the Delaware Bay. Do you really believe that? Seriously? There have been a ton of studies done in the Bay.


Ed

 

We dont need any MORE! That is the point. Did I say Rehobeth was giong to be the first pipe? If you are going to call me, please don't misquote me. I said nothing of the sort. The idea was bad 30 years ago in OC.

How about the people of deleware learn from the mistakes that MD already made. I mean sh**, whats your point? A bad pipe is a bad pipe.

 

I left for the surf. just like everyone else. Everyone is aware that the state of CA is broke and all those things, but day to day, we as citizens dont see that. We have jobs. We have drinking water. Our toilets flush. Its whatever. But as a surfer, I am able to surf everyday here, all year. Which is why ive been here 8 years. Do I plan on moving back? Yes. I haev had my eyes on getting back to OC MD or VB for years, but guess what, the housing there is over prices too. There are no jobs there either. Everything, everywhere has problems right now, and if the economy were better and housing wasnt still bloated along the coast, I would be living back in OC MD. Not because of the surf, but because of family and other things in life that are important....

But thats my point, although I technically live out here, I visit home many times each year and i love nothing more than scoring a nice swell in OC. And in the future, I will most likely have rugrats running up and down the boardwalk, and I will be out in the lineup right next to you. So, I still have a vested interest, but at the same time, yeah, i was bored and gave you my 10 cents....