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Sam Penrod reportingThere's an angry farmer and now a state investigation into wastewater being dumped onto private land by an oil company that insists it's done nothing wrong.
The problem is occurring near Willard Bay in Northern Utah. When the farmer couldn't get any answers from those causing the problem, he called Eyewitness News, and the problem may finally be getting fixed.
We've been looking into this story for two days now and found that the water flowing into the farmer's field isn't much better than raw sewage. The problem now has the attention of state water quality officials concerned about the wastewater being released onto the farmer's field.
A pasture just west of I-15 in Willard is where Dell Braegger keeps his horses. But he is worried because untreated wastewater from a sewage pond keeps running onto his property.
"I could take a backhoe and dam it off in a minute, but when I do, then it affects the people above me with property, and it will back it up to them, and so I don't want to do that. All I want to do is get the problem remedied so we can get it taken care of," Braegger said.
He blames a Flying J truck stop for the problem. There is no municipal sewage system available, so the truck stop built its own wastewater treatment facility. But the Flying J sewage lagoon appears to be leaking and traveling down a ditch used in the summer by farmers for irrigation.
Braegger said, "It hits that open irrigation ditch and comes down and hits a culvert under the interstate. And it dumps right there on the west side of the interstate of where that dumps out, dumps out right into my pasture."
Braegger says he has been complaining for weeks to Flying J to fix the problem but with no response. He finally took water samples to an independent lab, which revealed high levels of E. coli and coliform in the water, so he called Eyewitness News.
Our calls to state environmental officials resulted in an inspection today at the pond, and now something is being done to fix a serious and nasty mess.
Braegger said, "I'd like to get Flying J's attention somehow or another, so they would take care of the problem. I don't think they should be dumping their sewage on us."
Flying J issued this statement tonight: "Please be advised that Flying J has a record of being fully compliant with all regulatory requirements regarding evaporation ponds at Willard Bay, and there has never been an overflow from those settling ponds."
However, according to state water quality officials, Flying J started making repairs today to a broken pipe causing the problem and reports that the company could face fines for releasing the untreated wastewater onto private property.
E-mail: spenrod@ksl.com
