Baldwin Sewer System’s request for volume increase at Fort Morgan plant denied

Baldwin Sewer System’s request for volume increase at Fort Morgan plant denied

Gulf Shores City Council denied, with conditions, a Conditional Use Permit (CUP) application to Baldwin County Sewer Service (BCSS) following a well attended public hearing on March 25.
BCSS was asking for City approval to operate its plant at a higher volume (1.8 MG/D vs current 1.2 MG/D) and keep their sludge lagoon, which is currently shut down due to a city cease and desist order.
“The conditions on their ruling were that BCSS finish abandonment of the sludge lagoon,’’ said Dennis Hatfield, president of the Big Lagoon Preservation Society, which adamantly opposed BCSS’s bid.
The city council initially declined to consider the CUP application after BCSS filed an appeal in Baldwin County Circuit Court over a cease-and-desist letter sent to the utility in 2022 over the sludge pond. That appeal remains pending.
Last fall, BCSS filed an appeal in circuit court over the city council’s decision not to place the CUP application on the agenda. That appeal remains pending as well, according to court records.
Besides filling in the sludge pond, LLPS requested that the city require BCSS to re-establish the buffer they clear cut when they built the sludge pond, reduce the amount of Phosphorus in processed effluent injected into the surface water table that flows to Little Lagoon, and install additional water table monitoring wells.
The pond was built without a permit in late 2021 and is less than 100 feet from a Fort Morgan subdivision.
It subjects neighboring residents to bad odors and swarms of insects, according to Hatfield.
“The toxic gases and the associated noxious odors emanating from the sludge lagoon are unbearable.” said Rhonda Caviedes in an earlier Al.com story about the illegal sludge pond. “Residents have reported and continue to report experiencing burning sensations in their nasal passages, respiratory tracts, burning eyes, headaches and nausea, among other negative impacts coming from the gases in the sludge lagoon. It’s not just an inconvenience, it’s a serious health hazard.”
In its request for the permit, BCSS stated that the expansion of the plant is necessary to keep up with demand during peak tourism season. But the majority of the plant’s service area is not in the city of Gulf Shores.
David Conner, an attorney representing BCSS, said that the plant had 5,531 customers north of the Intracoastal Waterway and 3,406 customers south of the waterway, according to Al.com. Most of those customers would lie within three miles of Gulf Shores’ corporate limits, he said.
“It is not our mission to shut this plant down,” Gulf Shores Mayor Robert Craft said. “We can’t shut this plant down. It provides essential services, not always to our homes, but there are homes that are dependent on this.”
Gulf Shores Planning Commission in June unanimously recommended denying the CUP application and requiring the utility to fill in the sludge pond.
In February, the city council decided to hear the CUP application, after Conner argued before the council in January that the case should be heard regardless of the court proceedings.
The company has been before the council and planning commission several times since it was discovered BCSS added and was using a second sludge pond despite not having the proper permitting in place. BCSS is in Gulf Shores, but most of its service areas are in other parts of south Baldwin County.
With around 20,000 accounts and growing, BCSS is the largest privately owned sewer utility in the state. The Fort Morgan treatment plant is the southernmost of five plants it operates.