CullmanTimes.com, Cullman, Alabama

Local News

November 14, 2009

Possible inaccurate info sent from Hanceville to ADEM

HANCEVILLE — The Hanceville Water and Sewer Board is trying to determine if inaccurate information was recently sent from the wastewater treatment plant to state regulators.

At the end of their regular meeting Tuesday, the water board went into executive session to discuss the good name and character of an individual. When they returned a few minutes later, water board attorney Dan Willingham announced that some inaccurate information may have recently been sent from the treatment plant to the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM).

“This has just now come to the board’s attention,” Willingham said. “We don’t know if it was intentional or not.”

On Willingham’s recommendation, the board passed a resolution instructing General Utilities Manager Chris Freeman to learn everything he could on the matter and immediately report those findings to ADEM and the board.

Details on who was discussed during the executive session and on the nature of the possible inaccurate information were not revealed.

“We cannot elaborate on the information until we find out ourselves,” said Board Chairman Junior Brooks.

Freeman also declined to comment, other than that he was the one who discovered the possible discrepancy.

“I was doing a flow study ... on the sewer flow,” Freeman said.

Also during the meeting, a representative of ClearWater Solutions, the company that manages the sewer treatment plant, announced the facility had 29 violations during October due to massive rainwater infiltration into the city sewage system.

Total water flow through the plant during October was 28.596 million gallons, for an average of 922,000 gallons a day.

The facility’s design capacity is 570,000 gallons a day.

Total rainfall recorded for October was 9 inches. For the year of 2009 so far, the average daily flow has been  745,000 gallons a day, which is an average of 175,000 gallons a day over plant capacity.



Patrick McCreless can be reached by e-mail at patrickm@cullmantimes.com or by telephone at 734-2131 ext. 270.

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