A Baltimore judge told the city and the owners of Sparrows Point to resolve their differences over the discharge of municipal sewage by mid-November.

Until then, the city can continue to discharge as much as 40 million gallons of treated sewage a day from its Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant through a pipeline owned by Sparrows Point LLC.

“You can still flush your toilets,” George A. Nilson, the city solicitor, told The Brew, referring to the 1.3 million users of the sewage system in Baltimore City and County.

Flowing for 70 Years

Since 1941, a large amount of treated sewage – known formally as “industrial effluent” and colloquially as “the city’s shitwater” – was piped to the Sparrows Point steel plant, where it was used to cool equipment and absorb mill wastes before being discharged into the Patapsco River.

As steel production dwindled in recent years, the city used the Sparrows Point pipeline to stay within compliance of its state and federal pollution permits at Back River.

With the demise of the steel mill – and the purchase of the property by two Midwest salvage companies – the pipeline has become an impediment to their plans to tear down the mill and turn the 2,500 acres to new uses.

Last month, Sparrows Point LLC refused to continue discharging the effluent unless the city cut its outflow by more than half.

The city obtained a temporary restraining order, saying any reduced discharge could cause it to violate the pollution permit – or force conservation measures on its users.

Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Sylvester Cox has ordered Sparrows Point LLC to continue the present arrangement until November 15 to give the parties time to work out a compromise, Nilson said.

$400,000 to Study Alternatives

Meanwhile, the Board of Estimates yesterday approved a $400,848 award to Whitman, Requardt & Associates to evaluate the Sparrows Point pipeline and to review “alternatives for future discharge to the Patapsco River from the treatment plant.”

The most likely scenario, according to Rudolph Chow, chief of the water bureau, is for the city to buy the pipeline from the salvage companies. This would entail a costly reconstruction of the system, he pointed out.

He said he could not estimate the price tag until an engineering evaluation of the assets and improvements was completed.

The pipeline was originally constructed to help Bethlehem Steel Corp. expand the Sparrows Point mill during World War II.

The designer of the project was the legendary Johns Hopkins University engineer Abel Wolman (Baltimore’s municipal building is named after him). Construction of the five-mile underground line was completed by Ezra Whitman, a founder of Whitman, Requardt.