The clock is ticking for Pickerington to reduce discharges from a city water plant, which the Ohio EPA says are turning Sycamore Creek into a salt-water stream.

For the past year, the Ohio EPA has instructed the city to reduce the amount of "total dissolved solids" (TDS) originating from its water plant on Diley Road and flowing into Sycamore Creek.

According to the EPA, the small particles, which mostly are made of calcium, phosphates, nitrates, sodium, potassium and chloride, have increased to the point where they're toxic to various invertebrate aquatic insects living in Sycamore Creek.

"It's basically that the TDS discharge is turning Sycamore Creek into salt water," said Mike Gallaway, manager of the Division of Surface Water in the Ohio EPA's central district office.

In August, a letter from the EPA said the city's continued noncompliance with state and federal clean water laws is "not acceptable." However, the agency hasn't taken formal action against the city and no penalties have been recommended by Gallaway's office to Ohio EPA director Chris Korleski.

"That's something we're still talking about and still considering," Gallaway said.

Sycamore Creek is part of the Walnut Creek watershed. Water from the creek and the watershed flow into the Scioto River.

EPA officials maintain watershed clean-up efforts in recent years have led to a resurgence of aquatic life.

"There's some species there that haven't been seen in 50 years," Gallaway said. "It's a real success story."

According to Brenda VanCleave, Pickerington's staff engineer, the city's Diley Road water plant uses conventional sodium water softeners to achieve a desirable hardness level in the city's drinking water. The softeners generate a backwash that is discharged into the city's sanitary sewer system, she said, and then are sent to the city's wastewater treatment plant on Hill Road.

"The TDS particles are too small to be treated by the city's conventional wastewater treatment plant and therefore pass through the system and directly into Sycamore Creek via our effluent (treated water) discharge," VanCleave said.

The city hired an engineering firm to examine its water plant and offer solutions. VanCleave said. However, inexpensive solutions such as adjusting the softener operation to reduce the amount of salt used, cleaning the softener media and reducing the amount of softening didn't cut TDS concentrations enough to get within permit requirements, she said.

"The last method, reducing the amount of softening, might get us to within limits," she said. "However, this will make the water we provide our residents harder and may not be politically viable."

The city determined it could convert its water softening operations to a reverse osmosis system, but the process would cost approximately $1.8-million.

Rather than borrow money to purchase a reverse osmosis system, the city is eyeing a similar issue at the Fairfield County Utilities plant on Tussing Road. The county has gone to court with Ohio EPA to contest its TDS and phosphorus limits.

A ruling is expected sometime in early 2010.

"Our attorney used these results to justify that the permit limit Ohio EPA gave the county is unjust," VanCleave said. "Because of this, our attorney advised us to do the same."

The city also is awaiting the results of a $22,000 study it commissioned EnviroScience of Stow, Ohio, to perform to determine if Pickerington's effluent is having an impact on the species in Sycamore Creek and what the city's true TDS permit limit should be. The city expects to see results from that study sometime this month.

EPA officials say they support further study of the issue, but maintain Sycamore Creek is "impaired."

"Our office always is interested in looking for solutions to problems," Gallaway said. "We hope to resolve this issue with Pickerington.

"The study is a good thing and we'll certainly look at it, but it doesn't change anything," he said. "Our efforts here have to do with meeting Clean Water Act goals. Clean waters are fishable, swimmable streams, and the insects are part of the food chain for the fish."