Utilities official clarifies ‘gray water’ issue

Your Feb. 24 editorial titled “Wastewater issue colors borough in shades of gray” is so slanted it nearly fell off the page.

Furthermore, it is riddled with numerous factual errors that require correction. Such a poorly researched, badly argued opinion piece does a disservice to both your readership and your publication. Allow me to set the record straight.

In the opening paragraph, which sets the tone for the entire editorial, the assertion that “trucks the size of oil tankers could soon barrel down the street” leads the reader to form two incorrect impressions. First, the trucks proposed in Ordinance 212 are 5,000-gallon trucks the size of domestic oil delivery trucks, not tanker-trailers, and are smaller than the garbage trucks, school buses, chemical delivery trucks or sludge-hauling trucks that have traveled on the same streets without incident for decades. Second, the speed of these vehicles would be restricted not only by the borough speed limit of 25 mph, but by three speed bumps along the proposed route. Indeed, these trucks would be even more apt to slow for speed bumps than are passenger vehicles, due to their contents and suspension systems. The manipulative and incorrect term “barrel down” is again used later for added, and inappropriate, effect.

In paragraph three, the author states that gray water does not contain fecal matter. Definitions of “gray” and “black” water continue to develop nationally, and although by no means ambiguous, can be confusing. Certain new definitions draw the distinction between “gray water,” such as used dishwater and shower waste water, and “black water,” which has been soiled with, or includes, human excrement. The more general use of the term gray water excludes black water as that which has become septic or devoid of oxygen and therefore unable to support bacterial growth, such as the heavier material removed from septic tanks. Ordinance 212 clearly excludes this type of material.

It should be noted that the sewage treatment plant’s fauna thrive on the type of gray water material that would be delivered. The plant currently treats such water so completely and effectively that the water leaving the plant, which discharges into the Assunpink Creek, is pristine to the point of potability.

In paragraph five, the author states that the Roosevelt water/sewer rate is approximately $125 per month. This, too, is incorrect, as the rate was recently increased to $149 per month. Had Roosevelt begun to accept gray water 10 years ago, as was proposed at the time, it might have realized enough capital to keep its rates stable longer and to have repaired elements of its aging system sooner. As it is now, the water/sewer budget needs every reasonable and safe form of added income that can be developed.

The Roosevelt Borough Council has taken residents’ concerns about traffic and safety into serious consideration before initiating this relatively benign, limited, and unintrusive one-year test of the gray water acceptance program.

In paragraph six, the author asserts that the project would create “more traffic, pollution and other potential dangers that would reduce any profit.” Before making such reactionary statements, the author should be aware that presently garbage trucks, recycling trucks, UPS and FedEx trucks, school buses, oil delivery trucks, propane delivery trucks, chemical delivery trucks, sludge-hauling trucks and an assortment of service vehicles, in addition to the traffic of more than 100 households, now travel the streets leading to the sewage treatment plant. The council considered the amount of additional truck traffic very carefully in proposing a limitation of two trucks per day in the ordinance. So small an increase will have a negligible and tolerable effect.

In paragraph 11, the author speaks about problems, such as odor, associated with gray water “stored for long periods of time.” Gray water will not be stored but rather will be received directly into the treatment facility’s mechanisms. There will thus be no opportunity for such problems to arise.

In paragraph 12, referring to the additional flow caused by the gray water deliveries, the author states that the “increase would put an estimated 32.7 million gallons of water into the [Assunpink] creek per year.” This is an overstatement by more than a factor of 10: in fact, the potential addition of 10,000 gallons daily (five days per week, 52 weeks per year) would equal only 2.6 million gallons of discharge water. This is a minor amount (less than 3 percent) by comparison to the over 91 million gallons we are currently licensed to treat and discharge annually. In addition, any additional discharge would be as pristine as our current output.

In paragraphs 12 and 13, the author asserts that the increased costs will outweigh the potential benefits of the proposal. For the purposes of the one-year test in the ordinance, the increases in cost are anticipated to be minuscule; accurate establishment of the new associated costs is in fact one purpose of framing the ordinance as a one-year test.

In a final factual error, the author misidentifies the person who she reports hosted a meeting on Feb. 27 in opposition to the council’s introduced ordinance: there is no “Ellen Tuck” living in Roosevelt.

Editorial form is by definition opinion. Had the author simply taken a subjective stance and offered a well-reasoned opinion, the editorial would not have been so offensive. Instead, by failing to check facts properly and basing opinion on misinformation, the “editorial” was no more than tabloid journalism at its worst.

Jeff Hunt

Councilman

Utilities Chairman

Roosevelt