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NATIONAL PARK SERVICE MORNING REPORT Wednesday, March 26, 2014 INCIDENTS Mount Rainier NP Former Employee Sentenced For Clean Water Act Violations On March 18th, former Mount Rainier employee J.B. was sentenced to 30 days home confinement, a $15,000 fine and a year's probation after being found guilty of a felony violation of the Clean Water Act for allowing hundreds of thousands of gallons of sewage to run into the Nisqually River in 2011. J.B. worked as an operator at the water treatment plant at Paradise. The plant provides advanced secondary treatment to wastewater from the Paradise Visitor Center and Paradise Inn before it is discharged into a drainage ditch that flows into a waterfall. The waterfall in turn flows into the Nisqually River. In a plea agreement, J.B. admitted that he failed to stop the buildup of solid waste in the treatment plant in the spring and summer of 2011. The filters became clogged and the advanced treatment portion of the plant would not operate properly. Instead of fixing the problem, he used a bypass around the advanced treatment and surge storage tank. As a result, minimally treated sewage was dumped directly into the drainage ditch and flowed into the waterfall and Nisqually River. When J.B. left work for a few days on August 27, 2011, he failed to log the bypass into the log book and did not inform his co-workers of the bypass or the problem. As a result, some 200,000 gallons of minimally treated sewage flowed into the Nisqually River. [Investigative Services Branch] OTHER NEWS The following stories are among those in today's webpage editions of InsideNPS (available to NPS employees only) and the Morning Report (available to all readers): Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers NM - On March 12th, Charles Young Buffalo Soldiers National Monument, the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center, Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., and others commemorated the sesquicentennial of Colonel Charles Young's birthday. Office of Communications - The remaining scaffolding surrounding the Washington Monument will begin to come down this week in preparation for the monument's reopening on May 12th after a 32-month closure due to damage from an earthquake. Law Enforcement, Security and Emergency Services - The NPS has announced the regional recipients of the Harry Yount Award for 2013. They are also the finalists for the national Harry Yount Award, which will be presented in Washington, DC, in June. Office of Risk Management - Eight National Park Service employees, all collateral-duty facilitators for NPS Operational Leadership, have received special recognition for their contributions to the Servicewide program. Canyonlands NP - Old friends and former colleagues will reunite at a gathering in Moab, Utah, from Thursday, September 11th, to Saturday, September 13th. The event is part of Canyonlands' 50th anniversary celebration. To see the full text of these stories, readers should go to one or the other of the following sites: NPS employees - HYPERLINK "http://inside.nps.gov/index.cfm?handler=index" http://inside.nps.gov/index.cfm?handler=index Non-NPS employees - HYPERLINK "http://www.nps.gov/morningreport/" http://www.nps.gov/morningreport/ The Morning Report is produced by the Office of Communications with the support of the Office of the Associate Director for Information Resources. Edited by Bill Halainen ( HYPERLINK "mailto:Bill_Halainen@contractor.nps.gov" Bill_Halainen@contractor.nps.gov). --- ### --- |