SELINSGROVE — A ban on sewer permits will halt construction of homes and businesses in municipalities using the Eastern Snyder County Regional Authority sewage plant until the facility meets state water quality standards.

The state Department of Environmental Protection, after reviewing the authority’s 2007 report, informed the plant in an April 15 letter of its ban on issuing sewage permits because of an organic overload at the facility, ESCRA Manager John Abromitis said.

“Every year that we operate, we have to send a report to DEP which outlines the quantity of wastewater that we process and the quality of the wastewater that we process,” Abromitis said Wednesday.

Based upon the authority’s 2007 report, Abromitis said, DEP deemed the plant exceeded its capacity to treat the amount of organic materials it receives. It also exceeded its capabilities to treat phosphorous and nitrogen found in the wastewater.

ESCRA has 90 days to submit an action plan to DEP to address the organic overload, Abromitis said. ESCRA will submit two options to the state within the next few weeks.

In the first option, the authority will consider using tanks originally built to treat nitrogen and phosphorous to instead handle an additional amount of organic waste. Abromitis said that would increase the authority’s treatment capacity of organic materials from 3,120 pounds to 4,470 pounds per day.

In the second option, ESCRA may try to determine whether the organic overload is coming from a specific point source. If the authority finds that point source is sending discharge beyond the legal limit to the treatment facility, ESCRA will be able to curtail it through regulations.

In the meantime, the ban on issuing sewer permits will halt any new developments within the Selinsgrove and Shamokin Dam boroughs and Penn and Monroe townships that connect to ESCRA.

“We are currently in a standstill,” Selinsgrove Borough Manager John Bickhart said Wednesday.

Even after the organic overload is addressed, based upon the authority’s action plan, Bickhart said he, as well as other township and borough officials, may be limited to a certain amount of permits they can issue.

The only facilities that are excused from the sewer permit ban include buildings identified as necessities to their communities, such as hospitals, schools and other facilities of public use. The development of Monroe Marketplace also will not be affected by the ban because its permits were purchased before April 15.

It has been more than 25 years since the authority has had to deal with an overload, Bickhart said.

“People,” he said, “have lost the thought of what this means.”

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