For several months now, the Board of Supervisors has been attempting to address the concept of centralized wastewater treatment in the County. The central issue has been the expansion of the Onancock Treatment Plant from an overboard discharge permit of 250,000 gpd to 750,000 gpd. The Board approved an advisory committee to research alternatives (the so-called “Blue Ribbon” Committee). Their superficial product which was endorsed by the Board, recommended formation of a PSA to address the issues, thus sloughing off responsibility for actually figuring out what was required to yet another entity. They avoided addressing the cost of such a facility which SONs has stated would likely exceed $20MM.

At the July 16th Board meeting, the entire proposition was predictably shot down by the Board because of a lack of quantifiable determinations, something one might have expected the “Blue Ribbon” Committee to have done. The cat was out of the bag weeks before with all kinds of incorrect information being disseminated. Bad information and no cost estimates doomed the proposition to failure before it was ever presented.

Several vocal Board and Staff proponents of the PSA argued the case for having a PSA definitively study the problem but many people concluded that, once created, it would never go away, even if the need for having it did. Additionally, proponents argued that a Stormwater Runoff authority also be rolled up into the PSA, thus placing excessive power in the hands of a very few people who would control where development occurred and what mitigation for stormwater would be required. This latter issue slipped under most radars.

The County solicited names for people willing to participate on this new PSA. Nineteen applications were received and the applicants were interviewed by the Board. Some people were decidedly qualified to participate, others were not. Several never showed up for the interviews and yet remained on the list.

For a myriad of reasons, the PSA formation was rejected, we assume by a straw vote, in closed session. Instead, the Board decided to form the Utility Advisory Committee. Their mission is to put numbers and rationality to what the “B;ue Ribbon” Committee did. George McMath, Kelly Conklin, Pete Lalor, Wesley Edwards, and David Lumgair were appointed. The Committee has met twice already.

In the meantime, the Onancock Town Council voted 4-1 to approve letting a contract for $14.4MM for reconstruction and expansion of their dilapidated facility. It is unclear to us what financial rationale could have supported such a decision since the ability of Onancock to expand its service commensurate with an expansion of a subscriber base is obscure given the required number of new subscribers and the limitations imposed by the Town’s boundaries.

The financial projections used to validate the decision are questionable since the method for creating them seems to be taking the required new revenue and dividing by the average Onancock monthly bill yielding the required number of new subscribers. Who these people are and where they live is a mystery. Onancock Residents should be justifiably concerned as to where this new money is really going to come from.

Various theories have been discussed that Onancock intends annexation of the area between Onancock and Onley, thereby giving them not only a potential new subscriber area, but also allowing connection to financially strapped Onley. Various pro-PSA Board and Staff members at the County level may well see this as the only recourse in getting increased capacity at Onancock and a PSA.

Coincidentally, or maybe not so coincidentally, this is the same area where the Shore’s development nemesis, in the form of Maryland front-man Chris Carbaugh and Shore native Billy Prettyman have been proposing a Planned Unit Development. Carbaugh was indulged by the Planning Commission a year or so ago and permitted to produce a dog and pony show about why PUDs are so good (they are not) and why he wants to put one behind the Food Lion in Onley (another bad idea).

Somewhere along the line the County Planning Office, long on a first name basis with Carbaugh, bought into the idea-this, despite the fact that rural villages are our model for expansion, not whole self-contained subdivisions airlifted into the middle of some new area. The result was that these insidious PUDs found their way into the Comp Plan.

The Blue Ribbon Committee wanted a PSA formed, wanted the PSA to acquire the Onancock facility and to expand it to meet service requirements throughout central county areas to something like a 1,400,000 gpd capacity, nearly twice the size of what the DEQ permit authorizes. How that was to happen was not determined, and should have been, by the Blue Ribbon Committee.

SONs has long felt that where goes the sewer, goes the development. That much seems obvious, but having just completed a lengthy analysis of County planning needs, in the form of the new Comp Plan, the County must address the location of new development in the context of the Plan, the financial parameters of sewer/waste disposal facilities, and the over-arching requirements of costs associated with all of this to all County residents.

As recently as Tuesday 29 July, the State Water Quality Control Board mandated additional water quality protection for clams and oysters on both sides of the peninsula, intended to reduce the condemnations that will impair waters suitable for aquaculture. SONs has argued previously that the single, easiest economic enhancement opportunity on the Shore, available right here, right now, is in the area of aquaculture. Various numbers have been produced but we believe the economic enhancement might total $50MM within three years and $75MM in five-but ONLY if we have clean water.

We don’t know what the proper solution is to this problem. We have our ideas and we will articulate them here next month. We recognize that something must be done to improve Onancock’s worn out system and must address the problem that Onancock frequently tops 500,000 gpd of discharge on their existing 250,000 gpd permit. This must stop.

We must permit the Utility Advisory Committee, composed of highly competent and credible people with business, financial and wastewater experience, to come to their considered conclusion. We also believe that the County should follow their recommendations for two reasons: 1) this problem has been studied sufficiently as to need and the need is very demonstrably present and 2) for the first time in the history of uncountable studies, we have a group of qualified people who are not only professionally competent but are all taxpayers. We believe they will arrive at the correct solution, whatever that may be.

We urge everyone to listen to the issues and judge the facts, not the rumors. This will be a decision that shapes the future of the Shore for the next generation.

The Executive Committee