La Plata officials brief public on wastewater-plant compliance; seek USDA loans to replenish upgrade funds

La Plata, Maryland — At its July 29 meeting, the Town Council received a technical update from Town Manager Chuck Stevens on the La Plata wastewater treatment plant and voted to move forward with legislation to pursue two USDA-backed loans to replenish funds used for recent plant upgrades.

Stevens told the council the plant’s current permitted capacity is 1,500,000 gallons per day and that the facility averaged roughly 1,220,000 gallons per day — about 80% of permitted capacity. He also said the town is “meeting our permit requirements for all parameters as of this report date.” The report noted that Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) documented violations between 2020 and 2025, including discharge exceedances (copper, ammonia nitrogen, total suspended solids), sanitary sewer overflows in the collection system, and coliform exceedances tied to disinfection performance.

Why it matters: The plant’s past compliance problems, the town manager said, stemmed from three technical factors identified in a CDM Smith assessment: excessive inflow during heavy rainfall (peak flows reached about 2,980,000 gallons during significant rain events), capacity reduced when a module was taken offline for conversion and…