More cities hit hard for sewer violations

For years, the city of Clinton dumped excessive amounts of damaging ammonia, copper and other pollutants into a backwater channel of a national treasure - the Mississippi River.

This year, the state got serious about making the city stop.

After issuing 28 sanctions for sewage permit violations and a couple of small fines, the state of Iowa filed a lawsuit in March against the city, alleging excess discharges dating back to at least 1991. As part of a court agreement with Iowa's attorney general, the city paid a $100,000 fine - one of the state's largest involving sewage offenses.

But that's not all: The state also required the city of just under 30,000 to build a new sewage plant at a cost of up to $66 million.

"It's going to have a big economic impact on Clinton," said Mayor Rodger E.J. Holm. "We're looking at a staggering increase in fees over the next few years."

When Iowa sewage plants have been found in violation of their state permits, the state typically has written a letter advising the plants to obey pollution limits in the future. Any fines assessed as penalties have tended to be minimal - a thousand dollars or so.

But steeper fines of $10,000 or more have become more commonplace in recent years, and the state is increasingly playing hardball in some of the worst instances of waterway pollution, said Dennis Ostwinkle of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources' environmental-protection staff.

Clinton's excessive dumping into Beaver Slough never killed fish or directly threatened human life. But it did worsen Iowa's already serious water quality problems and stands out as an egregious example of years-long resistance to the work needed to clean waterways, state and local officials said.

"We racked up quite a few violations for exceeding our permit - particularly in 2002 and 2003," said public works director Gary Schellhorn. "If you did that every day for 20 years at that level, you'd do some damage."

In 2008, the DNR issued 38 orders requiring improvements at plants across the state - many of which carried specific fines if deadlines are not met. The number was almost double the 20 issued in 2005.

The DNR is also preparing to demand tougher pollution-control requirements that will mandate more widespread improvements to Iowa's treatment plants. The move comes as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency pushes harder to get states to comply with the U.S. Clean Water Act, including future limits in streams for certain chemicals like farm fertilizers, Ostwinkle said.

Already, many cities face schedules set by the state to expand plants or build new ones. Some of those are part of court agreements.

The state has been hesitant to levy heavy fines in the past because upgrades and greater compliance already will cost the plants and customers dearly. But it has been stepping up enforcement when offenses continue for years, cities continue to miss deadlines or they fail to warn the public of hazards.

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