City faces retroactive fines for Clean Water Act violations

STARKVILLE — The city of Starkville faces retroactive fines due to past overflow incidents involving its sanitary sewage system.

The Commercial Dispatch reports public works director Doug Devlin did not have a fine estimate for aldermen, but did say a scheduled March conference call with Environmental Protection Agency regulators could shed light on the penalties associated with the Clean Water Act.

About three weeks ago, Devlin told the board regulators came to the state and audited numerous municipalities that operate water treatment plants, which treat 10 million gallons of water or more per day. During a post-audit meeting between Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, EPA and city officials, Devlin said he learned Starkville would be retroactively penalized for a number of self-reported overflow incidents from the past five years.