On July, 12, 2019, the paracetic acid arrived on site and was set up as a drip system in the UV building to provide disinfectant to the treated wastewater being discharged.  The permanent fix to the UV building consists of replacing 45 UV bulbs that are expected to arrive on July 19th with an install on July 20th, 2019.   The situation has now been completely stabilized. 

As of July 10, 2019  START contractors have obtained 3 wastewater and 1 upstream water samples for laboratory analysis on 7/8/19.  Lab analysis includes Biochemical Oxygen Demand, Total Suspended Solids, total bacteria and E-coli coliforms, and N-ammonia.  The final treatment for processed wastewater was designed to be UV light treatment, however the UV plant continues to be partially operable and not able to handle the capacity.  Therefore, EPA has arranged for temporary final water treatment by peracetic acid addition (a common industry accepted method).  The peracetic acid ETA arrival is 7/12 and will be engineered on site by ERRS.

On July 6, 2019, the Crow Agency Wastewater facility is discharging partially untreated wastewater to the Little Bighorn River.  The water quality of the river is unknown.  Notifications to downstream water intakes have been made and sampling of the effluent being discharged will take place on Monday, July 8^th, due to the holiday weekend.  The rate of discharge is unknown, however the facility has capacity to release up to 500,000 gallons per day.  

On July 2, 2019, an EPA on-scene coordinator was deployed to support the Crow Water Authority following a report that there was a broken telescoping valve which caused partially treated effluent from the wastewater lagoon system to flood the UV disinfection building and overflow from the building onto the surrounding ground surface.  The facility reported up to 3 million gallons of partially treated wastewater was released into the Little Bighorn River from June 24, 2019 to July 2, 2019.  A mitigation effort took place that successfully repaired the valve, but additional operation and maintenance is required to return the system to full functionality. This fix isolated the effluent in the lagoons from July 2-5^th,, 2019.  Materials required to restore the entire plant have been ordered and cannot be delivered for 7-10 business days.  In the meantime, EPA is working on locating a temporary disinfectant system to improve the quality of the water being discharged.  Crow Agency is under order to bring the waste water facility into compliance, and the EPA is overseeing this process.