Defying state laws, Carroll school officials built a wastewater treatment plant -- a key part of a $16.3 million renovation and expansion of Francis Scott Key High School -- without required environmental and construction permits.

Now school officials may be forced to dismantle the plant, which has been idle since its completion in July 1998, and face penalties at taxpayers' expense.

"The problem is they got caught," said Ta-Shon Yu, who issues construction permits for the Maryland Department of the Environment. "They got caught, and they are between a rock and a hard place."

Without proper permits, Francis Scott Key cannot operate the treatment plant. So school system officials are spending $140,000 a year to haul about 7,000 gallons of raw sewage each day from the high school to Westminster's treatment plant.

Officials are scrambling to find a place where they can release treated effluent so that the plant can start operating. So far there have been no takers.

Neighbors stopped a plan to discharge the effluent into a tributary of Little Pipe Creek. A proposal to hook up to Union Bridge's sewage system has been met coolly by town officials. Two other proposals to release effluent into Little Pipe Creek both require discharge permits. But it could take years for them to be approved.

Complicating the matter is a lawsuit filed yesterday by a neighbor demanding that the Board of Education dismantle the plant because it was built without the necessary permits. The lawsuit also asks MDE to fine the Board of Education.

School system officials did not return repeated phone calls yesterday. Anthony P. Palaigos, the Board of Education attorney who will be handling the lawsuit, declined to comment.

Francis Scott Key has become another troubled project in Carroll, which has undertaken a $106 million school construction program to meet enrollment increases. Cranberry Station Elementary, under construction in Westminster, is $1.7 million over budget and a year behind schedule.

The high school, built in farm fields 10 miles outside Westminster, has about 1,000 students.

One of the main components of the construction project is replacement of the school's inadequate 40-year-old septic system, which funnels wastewater into a series of underground rock fields.

Under the original construction plan, a pipeline would carry the effluent a quarter-mile across properties on Bark Hill and Hoff Roads to a tributary of Little Pipe Creek.

In July 1997, school construction officials submitted permit applications to the state, one to build a treatment plant and a second to discharge about 17,000 gallons a day of effluent into the stream. Under state law, a construction permit must be obtained before building a sewage treatment plant. The construction permit, however, is issued only after a discharge permit is granted.

Construction begins

In October 1997, school officials started building the treatment plant without obtaining either permit. At the time, state environmental officials were holding public hearings to determine whether to grant the discharge permit.

"They didn't follow the usual procedure. Usually, you obtain the discharge permit first and at that point build the treatment plant. They built the treatment plant before they got the discharge permit," said Stephen Luckman, chief of the municipal permits division for MDE.

In April 1998, the state Department of the Environment gave preliminary approval for the discharge permit, stating that the effluent would have no measurable effect on the life of the stream or people who come in contact with it.

State environmental officials did not learn that the Board of Education had started building the treatment plant without permits until May, when the project was 90 percent complete.

MDE said it met with school system officials in 1996 and told them then that they couldn't build without the permits.

"MDE and its consultants advised the Carroll Board of Education that a discharge permit was required before a construction permit could be issued," said Quentin Banks, an MDE spokesman.

Banks said the department is looking into some kind of enforcement action to take against the Board of Education, including penalties.

Last May, a group of seven neighbors appealed the preliminary approval, arguing that the effluent would damage the stream.

The residents also complained that they had never been notified of the application. They had not seen notices of the application in a local newspaper -- the only notice required by state law.

Julian Stein, one of the Hoff Road property owners who filed the appeal, said he did not learn of the application until he saw piles of pipe and chalk marks on the side of the road.

"They were trying to do an end run around the citizens," Stein said.

Despite the appeal, which stalled the permit approval, school officials continued building the treatment plant. They completed it in July, according to school construction reports.

Four months later, in response to the complaints from neighbors, the Board of Education withdrew its discharge permit application.

Although school officials were not required to notify neighbors directly of the permit application, it might have helped their relationship with them, Luckman said.

"It would have been a good idea. The neighbors thought the county was trying to sneak something by them. I think if the county had notified them we could have conceivably avoided some of the problems," Luckman said.

John and Virginia Lovell, who own a farm adjacent to the school on Barkhill Road, filed a lawsuit yesterday demanding penalties against the Board of Education and the removal of the plant.

Search for a solution

For now, state environmental officials are trying to help the county find a solution to the problem, Banks said.

One option would be to hook the school to Union Bridge's wastewater system. Union Bridge Mayor Perry L. Jones Jr. said the Board of Education has asked to meet with him in the next few weeks to discuss accepting the effluent. But Jones said that at the moment such a solution is unlikely.

"Right now, our counsel has said not to accept it. We'll have to sit down and see what we can do," he said.

In 1996, Union Bridge offered to accept the effluent if 28 homes along North Main and Honeysuckle Lane could hook up to the pipeline, but the offer was rejected, Jones said.

Union Bridge was approached again in 1998, but town officials told the Board of Education that it does not accept sewage from areas outside town boundaries.

Pub Date: 3/13/99