Walker, West Penn, to meet with DEP over sewage facility plan

Walker and West Penn Township officials plan to meet Wednesday with the Department of Environmental Protection over their previously submitted Act 537 sewage facility plan.

The meeting will take place at 10 a.m. at DEP’s Northeast Regional Office in Wilkes-Barre, as announced at Thursday’s Walker Township board of supervisors meeting.

Both townships previously adopted resolutions for their revised Act 537 sewage facilities plan.

Last month, Brian Book, service area director of Rettew Associates Inc., met with West Penn Township supervisors during a meeting at the West Penn Fire Company to review the status of the Act 537 plan, and to prepare a meeting with DEP, which has offered to meet with representatives of both West Penn and Walker in their Northeast Regional Office.

Book said at that time DEP had issues with the following:

• The resolutions were imprecise in their implementation language.

• The resolutions did not include the signed and embossed originals (three for each township).

• The plan did not incorporate soil testing of the community on-lot disposal system solutions.

• The methods used to assemble the plan were confusing, made more so because the three-ring binders came apart in shipping. This led to questions about the appropriate approvals and comment periods.

One of the requirements of the plan per DEP is that the township has an on-lot septic maintenance ordinance in place.

The preferred plan is an on-lot disposal system because there are no big infrastructure costs.

It was previously stated that DEP wants a solution presented in the plan for every user. If there are any users that cannot do on-lot systems, they have to have access to a community system.