Church camp agrees to pay $4,600 in wastewater case

HOT SPRINGS — A church camp permitted to discharge treated domestic wastewater into lower Lake Ouachita has agreed to pay a $4,600 civil penalty for exceeding effluent permit limits.

The Arkansas Conference Association of Seventh-day Adventists entered into a consent administrative order with the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality in December after the camp’s discharge monitoring reports revealed excessive levels of carbonaceous biochemical oxygen demand, fecal coliform, ammonia nitrogen and total suspended solids.

The association owns Camp Yorktown Bay north of Mountain Pine and leases the camp property at 361 Camp Yorktown Lane from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The camp is on a point protruding into a cove northeast of Blakely Mountain Dam.

The camp has until May 31 to comply with permitted effluent limits but can continue discharging into the cove during the interim, ADEQ said. The payment of the fine is due by February.

The state granted the camp a permit to release up to 6,000 gallons a day of treated domestic wastewater. According to the permit, the camp’s grease traps and the contents of its septic tank system are to be disposed of at the Hot Springs wastewater treatment plant on Davidson Drive.

Samples are collected several times a week via a port downstream from the chlorination system, said Jerry Williams of Engineers Inc., who in September submitted a corrective action plan on behalf of the camp. One sample per month is submitted for analysis to an ADEQ-approved lab, which submits the discharge monitoring report to ADEQ.