State fines Oconee for sewer overflows

South Carolina’s environmental agency fined the Oconee Joint Regional Sewer Authority $7,500 for a series of sanitary sewer overflows, a number of which were brought on by heavy rain events.  Chris Eleazer, JRSA executive director, made the announcement this afternoon as the JRSA convened a meeting of its stakeholders to report on what’s being done to satisfy South Carolina DHEC. System repairs and improvements won’t prevent overflows altogether but will, as an engineering consultant put it, minimize future ones.  The county sewer authority has begun to attack the problem with a cMOM—an audit of the capacity, management, operation and maintenance of the system.  Angie Metten of WK Dickson Engineering cautioned the audience, which included JRSA board members, that the civil penalty won’t be the only cost associated with getting back into the good graces of the state regulators.  Metten said that specific repairs and the dates for them will be added to the existing consent enforcement order with DHEC effective last month.