To the editor,
Mountain View Nursing Home (MVNH) has polluted neighbors with sewage discharge for decades—both inappropriate and dangerous. Now MVNH is applying for a permit to continue that pollution. The daily pollution in torrents of wastewater often containing solids (raw human excrement), pharmaceutical by products, E.coli, chlorine, and other pollutants has created both unsafe conditions and enormous erosion on the neighbors’ properties receiving that pollution. Furthermore, that volume of pollution from MVNH travels through gullies reaching the Great Run and Rapidan Rivers in Madison County. The polluting sewage flow varies from 15,000 per day to an astounding 32,000 gallons, and 42,000 gallons per day.
Recent FOIA records from Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) reveal that massive flows of pollution from MVNH have contaminated neighboring properties with E.coli and coliform bacteria. Unaware children play in that “stream”. Wildlife drink from that flow. Deer drinking from contaminated wastewater can carry various E.coli strains (including the deadly E.coli O157:H7) in their feces and urine, spreading contamination beyond the soils surrounding the flow.
Daily, thousands of gallons of treated and often untreated sewage wastewater are discharged down a slope via a pipe into a ditch and onto neighboring properties. How does this not constitute a willful, ongoing trespass? Because MVNH is located at a higher elevation than its surroundings, the flow heads downhill into a ditch, not a stream. The sewage itself becomes the stream. The Piedmont terrain is rolling, so no intelligent person would mislabel a gully as a “stream.” It appears to me that DEQ has committed an ongoing deception from at least from the time they approved the 2006 installation of the MVNH’s newest system. Now DEQ is considering a pollution permit that would continue that scheme. Allowing this administrative hoax to continue only encourages future developers to pollute their neighbors.
The MVNH system’s capacity is limited to 15,000 gallons per day. Nevertheless, thousands of gallons over that limit (and at least once, hundreds of thousands) enter the flow and result in raw sewage being dumped onto neighbors.
Moreover, the chief licensed operator has admitted to DEQ that he trained his volunteer staff to discard tests when they might not test within limits. In my opinion, this constitutes fraud. Are we asking the fox to count the chickens in the hen house? Because DEQ has conducted only one surprise inspection in 9 years, the sewage operation is routinely unsupervised! Your car is inspected more often.
Know that the legal limit for a contaminant is rarely the lower, safe level. Permitting pollution does not make it safe or moral. Remember—slavery was once allowed by law.
Because MVNH and their church own seven adjacent parcels, their pollution should be confined to their own property, not shoved downhill onto their neighbors.
Please attend a DEQ meeting in Madison County, 7 p.m. March 2, to demand enforcement of Virginia’s codes. Otherwise, a ditch may someday be used by another commercial operation to dump pollution on your property.
Charlotte Chumlea
Charlottesville
