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By DAPHNE HUTCHINSON
Rappahannock News Staff Writer
Rappahannock’s Water and Sewer Authority is trying again to solicit bids for hauling septage and sludge generated by Sperryville’s new treatment plant.
Construction of the sewage treatment plant has solved one problem — pollution of the Thornton River from malfunctioning septic fields in the village’s flood plain soils. But it has created a second, no less serious problem — what to do with (1) the sludge left over after the waste water is treated and (2) the septage pumped from the individual septic tanks that are part of the sewage collection and treatment system.
Bill Strider, executive director of the Rappahannock-Rapidan Planning District Commission which administers the federal and state grants awarded for the sewage system’s construction, advertised once ■ previously for septage and sludge haulers with just a single response. But, he told the WSA members two months ago, contractors apparently wanted more information, particularly the designation of a disposal site, before bidding on the work.
If no local site is available, and contractors have to provide their own, bids will be higher, depending on the distance that the sludge and septage must be hauled, Mr. Strider explained. Longer hauling distance “has a tendency to drive the price up,” he said.
Last Thursday, Mr. Strider reported that he has sent new specifications to all licensed sludge and septage haulers in the five-county Planning District 9 and Page County. The revised invitations to bid “specifically said that septage -may have to be hauled outside Rappahannock’s boundaries.” Size of septic tanks was given and the type of sewer system explained. “Hopefully, we will obtain bids,” Mr. Strider said. If none is received, “the county’s Board of Supervisors is going to have to make a decision on this issue,” he added.
Currently, the supervisors are holding to a moratorium on land application of sludge and septage in Rappahannock. They have indicated willingness to land-apply sludge from Sperryville’s plant but not sludge from outside the county, particularly not sludge from Washington, D.C.’s Blue Plains plant. However, Commonwealth’s Attor
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