More than 7.5 million gallons of wastewater leaked into Rockfish River, DEQ report says

NELSON COUNTY, Va. (WSET) — More than 7.5 million gallons of wastewater leaked from the Wintergreen Wastewater Treatment Facility into the nearby Rockfish River, according to a recent report from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ).

The report says the wastewater releases occurred over several months during the winter of 2024 and continued through April of this year.

Below is the 24-page report from the DEQ:

The sewage spills have left families living nearby upset and concerned about the ongoing problems at the facility.

During Tuesday afternoon’s Nelson County Board of Supervisors meeting, one neighbor who says they have dealt with the issue for the past two years asked Nelson County supervisors to get involved.

“The service authority had two several month winter periods to diagnose the root cause of the plants failure,” the man said. “They failed to do so. We need you to remove the existing directors and temporarily fulfill the duties of the board.”

Following public comment, the Nelson County Service Authority (NCSA) Chairman Justin Shimp addressed the board.

Shimp explained that there were several things done inccorectly when the plant was installed. He said the major issue was three holes that were put into the equalization base of the plant that helped cause the plant to overflow.

“That is the beginning of all the troubles and that began on May 6, 2024, when the consulting engineers told the contractor to go ahead with those,” Shimp said. “The NCSA did not know about that at first. George Miller (Executive Director of the Nelson County Service Authority) contacted the engineer and said, I was informed the original overflow pipe — so there was no flow pipe that took the excess flows into the old plant. That was removed. And that new overflows have been installed and any overflows in the future will go directly onto the ground. Have I been misinformed? That’s his question. The consulting engineer responded, No, you’re not misinformed. This was done to protect NCSA infrastructure in case of an emergency that would cause the plant not to function. The overflow would happen at these three holes.”

Shimp said in 2024, the facility was installed right before the ski season, however, that’s when the first issue started.

“In that first season, there was a debate between operator error or engineering failure,” Shimp said. A valve was opened and allowed the sleds and digesters to be dumped into the membranes, which is the treatment process itself. That killed the whole system, basically. These membranes and always water plants rely on a biology at a certain level so that effluent can be treated efficiently. And if you blow that up, it’s like putting diesel in your gas powered car. Boom. So nothing could be done, really, to get the plant to flow the time. And there was no time, because it happened right in ski season. So there was literally no time to address the issue. The overflows occurred because of that issue, the plant could not function.”

Following that season, Shimp said the received the violation notice from the DEQ. Then, more overflow happened in winter of 2025 and the received another notice.

Now, Shimp told the board they have a plan to fix the issue now that they figured out what happened.

“Early this year, after the second, early frustration, we had a different consulting firm to review the whole situation and look at what has transpired,” Shimp said. “It learned a few things. And the simple version is that the $18 million dollar wastewater plant that was selected, constructed, used a really what you consider cutting edge technology in wastewater. The ceramic membrane last longer, theoretically works better than the historic systems, which are polymeric. They’re basically like, they look sort of like the filters you use in your air conditioning, Sliding, you have hundreds of them. That’s what filters and processes the wastewater effluent. The ceramic ones look a little more like a car radiator. In terms of technology, it works great for water treatment, other processes. It’s new to this. So what we learned is that the product that was selected had been just brought into market when we selected it. There’s frankly a lot of delicate discussion about this issue because we, the NCSA, want to protect taxpayers and ratepayers by recovering any funds available if there was something in fact designed correctly, formed incorrectly, et cetera. But the short version of it is that we have, because of the evidence provided to us by other consultants who have a lot of experience in the systems, have determined we’re going to remove the membranes and replace them.”

Shimp and the County Supervisors shared the updates to the facility so these overflows will stop is expected to cost $725,000. Shimp said the NCSA will pay for it, and believes this will fix all of the issues, however, if they need anything else, they will have to come back to the supervisors to ask for more money.

Supervisor Cameron Lenahan has been frustrated this has been going on for two years, and even said during the meeting that the board should ask the NCSA members to all resign and they appoint new leaders.

However, Supervisor Ernie Reed disagreed and said that if Cameron had any issues with what’s going on, he needed to speak to the executive director.

Lenahan spoke to ABC13’s Hayden Robertson during a recess of the board meeting.

“When you think about just these last two years, what kind of goes through your mind when you think about those millions of gallons of waste that hit the river,” Robertson asked.

“It just blows my mind,” Lenahan replied. “It’s like just nonchalant about it until I started addressing this board in February that, hey, we have a problem that has been going on for over a year at the time, and now, we’re at two year mark.”

“7.5 million gallons of waste, a lot of concerns from people who live up there; with those concerns and what they’ve told you today, do you believe that this will be taken care of and those people shouldn’t have to worry when this is done,” Robertson asked.

“Absolutely,” Lenehan said. “I think there’s enough eyes on this situation; enough heat on the Nelson County Service Authority, where this will be done properly, efficiently and quickly.”

Shimp said they hope to have the updates done by October before peak ski season starts.