KEYSTONE, S.D. (AP) - Federal regulators are threatening to shut down a septic system at a hotel near Mount Rushmore National Memorial.
Officials say The Lodge at Mount Rushmore has discharged wastewater onto a neighbor’s land and could be contaminating the hotel’s drinking water, the Rapid City Journal (https://bit.ly/2lHICDc ) reported.
In March, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ordered the hotel’s owner, Mark Arend, to either abandon and plug the hotel’s septic tank or apply for an underground injection control permit to potentially resume operation.
The EPA asked Arend two months later, after he applied for a permit, to submit water-sampling data for the septic system and the hotel’s drinking-water well. The EPA didn’t receive the data and later discovered the septic system was still in use.
Arend said his company has spent $36,000 to fix all the major problems with the septic system.
“We’re in touch with the EPA continually to get it resolved,” Arend said.
The EPA published a statement saying it was tentatively denying the hotel’s permit because of potential contamination of an underlying aquifer and nearby wells.
The federal agency notes that the hotel’s well-supplied drinking water system has been cited by state regulators for numerous violations during the past five years, “for failing to take routine samples to monitor total coliform bacteria, for exceeding allowable contaminant levels for total and fecal coliform bacteria, and for failing to take source samples for E. coli.”
According to documents published by the EPA, local, state and federal authorities have been trying to bring the hotel’s septic system into regulatory compliance since 2015.
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Information from: Rapid City Journal, https://www.rapidcityjournal.com
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