The wastewater treatment plant at the upper end of La Trappe Creek is scheduled to get a major upgrade to reduce nutrients flowing from the facility. In our weekly series with the Bay Journal Delmarva Public Media's Don Rush talks with reporter Jeremy Cox about this effort to clean up the Eastern Shore tributaries.
RUSH: Small communities on the eastern shore often struggle with outdated wastewater treatment plants that can pollute the local waterways. This is Don Rush. La Trappe Creek is just one example. It's now going to get a $15 million upgrade for its facility with a state-of-the-art enhancement for nutrient removal. In our weekly series of Bay Journal, we talked to reporter Jeremy Cox about the small success and the efforts to reduce pollution on the eastern shore.
COX: So the town of Trappe, 1500, 2000 people has been relying on the same wastewater treatment system going back about 20 years or so, a little over 20 years, and it's pretty outdated. Enhanced nutrient removal technology has been out for a number of years now and that really brings the nitrogen levels down super low and that should help clear up some of the issues downstream. Nitrogen in particular, we're looking at a reduction tenfold (decrease) 10 times less than what is currently going on in the headwaters of La Trappe Creek.
RUSH: I also understand that there's some kind of cap then on the amount of gallons per day that can go into the La Trappe Creek. How does that solve environmental problems?
COX: Like a lot of waterways in the Chesapeake Bay watershed La Trappe is on a pollution diet because of excessive nutrients in the water. And so there's mandates for it to decrease the amount of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus from point sources in particular like wastewater treatment plant. And so it's an extra challenge there because that doesn't necessarily account for the non-point water, the runoff, especially from the farms and not a lot of urbanized community. But a good deal of it is within this La Trappe Watershed. So there's some challenges that this creek faces even once this upgrade goes into service.
RUSH: One person described the mouth of the La Trappe Creek as sort of an algae green puddle at the mouth and that creates its own problems, I assume?
COX: Right? Yeah. You get this excess of nutrients and they fuel algae bloom, especially during the summertime. You could see it. I went paddling out there and it's just this kind of film, kind of milky gunk on the surface, not that pretty to look at. And then the real problem comes when that algae dies off, and as it does so it consumes the oxygen at the lower levels of the water column and creates these dead zones. Kind of a small version microcosm of what you see at the Chesapeake Bay in general. And so not very good for fish, not very good for crabs and other things. So you kind of end up with the overall kind of dead waterway there. And it's too bad because it really is pretty and people live on the water there and it should be so much nicer than that.
RUSH: Is this sort of exemplary in terms of the kinds of things that these local towns and subdivisions face?
COX: It means an awful lot to these smaller waterways where the standard is to release your treated sewage directly into the water. And as long as they're not cleaned up to the highest and best standard, you're going to see other La Trappes around waiting for their turn for that investment.
RUSH: Bay Journal Reporter Jeremy Cox on the wastewater treatment plant upgrade for the La Trappe Creek area. Full interview can be heard on this Friday's Delmarva Today at noon on WSDL and WESM. This is Don Rush for Delmarva Public Media.
