Allow me to interject another item into this discussion.

The Ocean Pines sewage treatment facility was initially 500,000 gallons per day capacity. Soon after the County bought the facility, it was upgraded to one million gallons per day capacity, probably around 1990.

A decade or so later, the County added another one million gallons per day capacity at great expense to ratepayers, bringing it to the current capacity of two million gallons per day.

The state-required capacity is based on peak sewage flows in the months of July and August, typically the time of highest flows. Also, generally, the highest days of flow are over the Fourth of July weekend.

So... in 1993 the average daily flows for July and August were 1.1 million gallons per day.

Ten years later, in July of 2003 the peak flow was 1.1 million gallons per day.

Two years or so ago, say 2023 give or take, John Ross, then Deputy Director of Worcester County Public Works called me. He said he has some information that would interest me.

The "news" was that the peak flows over a beautiful Fourth of July weekend were around one million gallons per day!

The plant was running at about half capacity on days with the highest flows of the year!

The then Worcester County Director of Public Works, John Tustin, insisted the capacity expansion was needeed ONLY to handle the needs of the Ocean Pines subdivision.

A fib is there ever was one. Not long after that the first sewer connections from outside the Ocean Pines subdivision were made - for Pennington Commons. At that point the flood gates were opened and now the Oceaan Pines plant handles pretty much everything on Route 589, from the Crab Bag, the Casino and west on 589.

And the max flow was still only around one million gallons per day a couple of yeaars ago.

How is this possible?

Most likely the County has eliminated much of the ground/rain/tide water penetration into the system. This intrusion had resulted in expensive treatment of non-sewage flow.

Net result is the plant can now connect thousands of additional EDUs to fuel substantial new development in and around Ocean Pines.

A concern is that developers will receive an inexpensive entry into the Ocean Pines sewage plant to use excess treatment capability previously bought and paid for by members of the Ocean Pines Association.

Finally, the original State discharge permit obtained by Boise or MMU allowed a maximum discharge of treated sewage of Three Million gallons per day into the St. Martin's River.

Whether the State would currently allow another one million gallon expansion is unknown.

An exaggeration perhaps, but if the current 10,000 connections to the Ocean Plant  produce a peak flow of only around one million gallons per day, a Three moillion gallons capacity plant could potentailly handle another 20,000 connections.

Likely? Who knows.

Anyone from the Baltimore area should picture Route 589 as Ritchie Highway in its densest development areas. 

Sewage connections, so-called EDUs, are more valuable than gold in Worcester County.