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Park sewage systems on the verge of failure, internal report states By MICHAEL MILSTEIN Gazette Wyoming Bureau YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK - A new internal assessment of Yellowstone National Park's failing sewer systems cites past sewage spills and leaks at nearly every developed area in the park and identifies at least 30 places where there remains a high risk of sewage overflowing into lakes, streams, meadows and groundwater.
 The 10-page report obtained by The Gazette last week suggests that four sewage spills at Old Faithful and Lake Village last year could be only a preview of future failures in the park's aging and undersized sewage lines, pumps and treatment plants. "It could happen in any number of places," said Yellowstone Chief of Maintenance Tim Hudson, who drafted the report, which also assesses the condition of park water systems. "We just hadn't quantified it all before." The assessment describes vault toilets at Lewis Lake "where sewage is mixed with surface water during spring flooding," a disposal field at Norris Junction "on the very edge of total failure," and a septic tank and leach field at Tower Fall "that is on the verge of failing due to overloading." As recently as January, a mass of diapers and sticks clogged the sewer line from park headquarters at Mammoth Hot Springs to a sewage treatment plant in Gardiner, north of the park, spilling sewage onto the ground. Much of the line runs next to the Gardner River so such clogs present "a high risk of overflow reaching the river," the report says. "This line needs to be cleaned and inspected more often." At Bridge Bay on Yellowstone Lake, a sewer main "collects water during the winter and is under pressure during the summer so that raw sewage is (leaking) into the ground," says the report. "The line crosses a major spawning stream." The sewage treatment plant that serves the park campground and employee housing at Madison Junction "is totally worn out and could go to catastrophic failure at any time," according to the report. Because the plant also has no backup power, a power outage or plant failure "will send the sewage to a meadow to the west of the plant. "This has happened numerous times, but no sewage has reached any watercourse," the report says. "The meadow drains through a culvert to the Madison River, so a catastrophic plant failure could reach the river." Park managers have repeatedly requested the $3 million it would take to replace the Madison treatment plant, but the requests have always fallen too low in the National Park Service's nationwide funding priorities to win the necessary cash. Yellowstone also lacks enough personnel to dedicate staff to maintaining and upgrading park sewer systems, Hudson said. "We clearly need to put some more money into reducing the chance of spills," he said. The report estimates the cost of repairing the 142 identified problem facilities as more than $30 million. Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., helped win money to replace the Old Faithful sewage treatment plant, which is contaminating groundwater and remains the park's top maintenance priority, but that is barely a start. "Day to day operations are occurring, but preventative and cyclic maintenance is minimal to non-existent," the assessment says. "Some systems have fairly new treatment facilities but may be served by old, failing collection systems. Other systems are totally outdated or overloaded to the point where failure has occurred or is imminent." The report is "startling and sobering," said Michael Scott of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, who praised park officials for compiling the comprehensive look at park sewer and water systems. "The Park Service has done its job - it has produced this risk assessment to tell the public what it will take from spilling sewage into some of the cleanest waters we have in this country," Scott said. "Now it's up to Congress to provide the money to accomplish that." Wyoming environmental officials last year issued the National Park Service a formal Notice of Violation for four sewage spills in Yellowstone. Twice in June, power failures at a pump, or "lift station," near Lake Lodge sent 177,000 gallons of sewage into a septic tank and then into Yellowstone Lake. Twice in the fall, grease clogs in sewer lines at Old Faithful sent nearly 50,000 gallons of sewage overflowing into the Firehole River and one of its tributaries. Each spill violated state water quality laws and carries a maximum penalty of $10,000 for each day the violation continued, according to the notice from the state. Yellowstone Superintendent Mike Finley said after receiving the Notice of Violation that he and his staff would not risk more illegal sewage spills even if it means closing some park facilities. Park officials have not reached that point yet, Hudson said, "but if we get to the point that something's spilling and we can't fix it, we can't mitigate it, then it's going to get closed." The Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality also is not about to order the closure of any facilities, said Gary Beach, head of the DEQ's Water Quality Division. But the DEQ wants a formal settlement under which the National Park Service would schedule upgrades of its deteriorating sewage systems. "We've got to get them tied down to something," Beach said. Yellowstone crews this spring plan to replace an aging and unreliable lift station at Old Faithful and install larger grease traps funded by the park concessionaire to prevent the kind of clogs that caused last year's spills. Federal funding is also expected in October to install a backup generator at the Lake Lodge lift station that failed last year, Hudson said. Besides those projects and replacement of the Old Faithful sewage treatment plant, the new report lists the park's other top priorities as replacing grease traps park-wide, replacing water and wastewater systems at Norris, replacing the Madison sewage plant, installing alarms and standby generators at lift stations that lack them, replacing the Old Faithful water treatment plant and replacing water and leaking sewage systems at the Northeast Entrance near Cooke City. Hudson said he was disappointed to find that many lift stations have no alarms to alert park staff to a power failure or breakdown that could lead to sewage spills. The main lift station at Bridge Bay, for instance, has no alarm or standby power: "If the overflow storage is overcome the flow goes out into Yellowstone Lake," says the report. Most of the park's sewage problems owe themselves to aging components, outdated designs or lack of regular maintenance, Hudson said. Some buildings constructed early in the century never included traps to collect kitchen grease that can otherwise harden in sewer lines, blocking them and backing up sewage until it overflows. At Lake Hotel, the report says, "seven hundred feet of line was blocked with grease in 1998." At Grant Village on Yellowstone Lake, a building converted from a bait and tackle shop to a restaurant has no grease trap and other restaurants have inadequate and poorly designed traps. "The grease problem in the area has caused manholes to overflow, but things have been shut down before sewage went into the lake," the report says. "A major spill is very possible here due to the grease." The report also assessed the condition of park water systems, which remain in better shape than sewage facilities. Still, water sources in many smaller developed areas are inadequate for firefighting and treatment of sediment-filled water at Old Faithful requires so many chemicals that "the corrosive water is starting to eat up more pipes each year."
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