Sewer Plan
On December 17, 2014, the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC) held a public meeting announcing a set of potential options for providing sewer service to the limited amount of development allowed in the Ten Mile Creek watershed. WSSC also announced the formation of a Citizens Advisory Committee to provide input on the sewer plan.
All five of the options WSSC presented at the meeting involved putting sewer infrastructure alongside or in the creek’s mainstem, its tributaries, wetlands, and other sensitive areas of the watershed -- in other words, sewer infrastructure in the very areas that Montgomery County committed to protect a few months earlier! [See history.] Upon hearing of this disastrous plan, the Friends of Ten Mile Creek jumped into action.
FoTMC sent letters to and held meetings with Montgomery County Council members, the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection, state legislators and WSSC leadership to express our deep concerns about the sewer proposals and rallied Ten Mile Creek supporters to speak out against this new threat to the creek. Once again, Ten Mile Creek supporters stepped up and deluged Council members with notes expressing concern and outrage.
Three members of our Board were selected to serve on WSSC’s Citizens Advisory Committee on the Ten Mile Creek sewer study. Friends of Ten Mile Creek researched the short and long-term impacts of WSSC’s sewer plans and worked to identify potential alternative technologies and routing. Working together with WSSC, County staff, other Committee members, and outside sewer experts over many months, five additional sewer alternatives were developed. The final two alternatives represent significant progress in terms of protecting the creek and move all sewer infrastructure out of Ten Mile Creek’s buffer areas. In October 2015, WSSC prepared a draft report on the Committee’s work and new alternatives. The Friends of Ten Mile Creek submitted final comments on this draft report in December. We are currently awaiting the final report from WSSC, which will be submitted to the Montgomery County Planning Board, County Council and County Executive. We anticipate that there will be hearings about the plan at the Planning Board and Council in the near future.
UPDATE: In the summer of 2016, after more than a year and a half of public meetings and determined advocacy by the Friends of Ten Mile Creek and its partners, WSSC ultimately recommended – and the County Council adopted – a sewer plan for the Ten Mile Creek watershed that keeps sewer infrastructure away from the stream and its buffers. The chosen plan (Alternative 12) also makes use of environmentally sensitive pressure sewers in the most fragile parts of the watershed. As Board Member Cathy Wiss stated in her testimony to the County Council in June 2016, FoTMC supported Alternative 12 because it “has no gravity sewers or force mains in the creek and its buffers, has fewer pumping stations located outside of the buffers; calls for stream crossings only in the rights of way of existing roads; and would cost less to construct.” Read her full testimony here. This was a huge victory in upholding the County's commitment to protect Ten Mile Creek and it could not have been accomplished without the continuing and steadfast commitment of Ten Mile Creek members and our partner organizations. Find out more on WSSC’s webpage on the Ten Mile Creek Sewer Study.