The Snyderville Basin Water Reclamation District says its Silver Creek facility is running normally again after it was hamstrung by a pollutant beginning in October.
“As of Nov. 5, which was last Thursday, we are now in full compliance with all permit requirements,” General Manager Mike Luers said. “Whatever entered the system, we obviously mitigated it with bringing in fresh bacteria and a lot of other operational changes.”
The still-unknown pollutant killed or inhibited many of the bacteria the Silver Creek sewer plant uses to remove nitrogen from the water.
That resulted in higher-than-normal levels of ammonia nitrogen in the clean water discharged into Silver Creek starting in mid-October.
Luers said trucking in thousands more gallons of healthy microbes worked.
“Good news is there was good flow in the creek,” he said. “We did do an inspection of the creek, and we saw no harmful things going on, and things back to normal… At no time was there any harm to the public.”
Too much nitrogen can cause algal blooms and plant overgrowth, which can then harm aquatic species by taking oxygen out of the water. But only in extreme cases does that pose a threat to people.
The water reclamation district still doesn’t know what was in the water that caused the elevated nitrogen levels. It had asked anyone with tips to contact Luers.
“We did receive a few phone calls from a few people pointing a couple things out to us,” Luers said. “None of those items pertain to the situation that we were experiencing at the Silver Creek facility, but we really appreciate the public reaching out to us.”
The district’s other facility in Jeremy Ranch was not affected by the pollutant.
