The Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) is penalizing Baltimore with a $5,000 fine for failing to meet the state’s effluent limits at its Patapsco Wastewater Treatment Plant at Wagner’s Point.

The settlement – approved by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and the Board of Estimates this morning – comes after the city was unable to finish Enhanced Nutrient Removal (ENR) upgrades at the plant and will fail to meet lower nitrogen and phosphorous limits on January 1, 2015.

The ENR program is an integral part of Maryland’s Bay Restoration project undertaken to reduce the amount of nutrients flowing into the Chesapeake Bay.

Algae blooms caused by nutrient-rich sewage befouls water quality, depletes the water of oxygen content and leads to fish kills.

Nitrogen and phosphorous released by sewage treatment plants are a major culprit. Patapsco is one of the state’s biggest treatment plants, designed to handle 73 million gallons of sewage water a day from the Gwynns Falls and Patapsco River sewersheds.

The missed deadline was caused by “unanticipated delays” in construction work, the Bureau of Water and Wastewater told the board in a written memo.

Under today’s agreement, the city will be given two more years to complete the ENR upgrades and will be required to come into compliance with the stricter pollution standards on January 1, 2017.

Other Expected Delays

Last year, The Brew wrote that the city was involved in negotiations with the Environmental Protection Agency and MDE over delaying implementation of a 2002 consent decree requiring the city to end years of chronic discharges of sewage into the harbor and Bay by undertaking major upgrades of its antiquated wastewater system.

The city is seeking to push back the deadlines for the expensive sewer-line reconstruction efforts from 2016 to 2019. The outcome of those talks has not yet been publicly disclosed.

Today’s agreement covers a different but related process.

In October 2012, the city was granted a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit to discharge sewage water from the Patapsco plant so long as the ENR system was installed by June 20, 2014 and the system was operational by this January.

In failing to meet that deadline, the Board of Estimates agreed to pay the $5,000 fine within 30 days. Today’s agreement says the city will pay another $10,000 if it fails to complete the ENR upgrades in two years.

The city is also potentially liable for daily, weekly and monthly fines, ranging from $100 to $500, if it violates the NPDES permit after January 2017.