The Nelson County Board of Supervisors met with the Nelson County Service Authority this morning to review and potentially sign a consent order from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality regarding multiple violations at one of the NCSA facilities. (meeting info)
A 24-page draft consent order required the NCSA to pay a civil fine for allowing millions of gallons of sewage to overflow from facilities at the Wintergreen Mountain Wastewater Treatment plant.
The NCSA is authorized by a DEQ permit to operate the Wintergreen Mountain Wastewater Treatment plant. This permit also allows discharge of a certain amount of treated sewage and other municipal waste into Pond Hollow Creek.
The Wintergreen facility is the result of a previous order from DEQ issued in 2019 that required its construction. State inspectors monitored construction and noticed a discrepancy in May 2023 related to the drilling of three holes in the side of the plant’s equalization basin. In the spring of 2024, it was anticipated the treatment plant would be completed by the end of May 2025.
On December 29, 2024, NCSA self-reported an overflow of a holding tank during a surge related to the holidays and heavy rainfall. This resulted “in an unknown discharge volume reaching State waters” which continued for some time resulting in a notice of violation on February 13, 2025 for an “estimated volume of discharge reported as 1.5 million to 2 million gallons and ongoing.”
The consent order describes several attempts to fix the problems through corrective actions including a consensus that a concept for a bypass be engineered to assist if there were further events which strained capacity of the system. This bypass would be discarded in October for various reasons described in paragraph 26.
By March 28, 2025, a report from the project’s engineering manager estimated the total overflow at 11.2 million gallons over a 70-day period. This would be later revised downward.
On December 22, 2025, the NCSA again self-reported another discharge.
“NCSA staff stated that the overflow resulted from the inability of the WWTP membranes to process the designed volume of wastewater,” reads paragraph 27. “NCSA staff provided that in order to address this limitation, an intensive membrane cleaning program was initiated to improve membrane treatment capacity.”
This resulted in more notice of violations, as did another overflow from September 2025. The NCSA made a public notice and worked to address the issue including hauling out sewage in 6,000 gallon tanker trucks.
“On May 1, 2026, NCSA further revised their calculations, ultimately estimating 5.20 million gallons for the 2024-2025 overflow event, 2.28 million gallons for the 2025-2026 overflow event, and .023 million gallons for an overflow event that occurred on April 5, 2026,” reads the consent order.
The NCSA is considered in violation and the consent order sets out the terms in which compliance can be met once again. There’s also a civil fine of $215,231.26 but the NCSA only has to pay $35,741.26.
“NCSA shall satisfy $179,490.00 of the civil charge by satisfactorily completing the Supplemental Environmental Projects (SEPs) described in Appendix B and Appendix C of this Consent Order,” reads page 15 of the order.
Those SEPs are to purchase equipment for the Wintergreen Volunteer Fire Department to handle hazardous materials.
Before you go: The goal of Town Crier Productions is to increase awareness about what is happening at the local, regional, state, and federal government levels. Please share the work with others if you want people to know things. Paid subscribers cover the cost of conducting research for this article which was originally published in the June 30, 2026 edition of Charlottesville Community Engagement. You can either subscribe through Substack or make a charitable contribution.
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