Former Bronson Public Works Director Erik Wise said he wasn’t the licensed sewer plant operator and wasn’t responsible for discharge reports.

            Former Bronson Public Works Director Erik Wise said comments made by Councilman Berlon Weeks at a recent council meeting concerning Wise’s alleged failure to submit sewer plant Discharge Monitoring Reports (DMRs) to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection weren’t entirely accurate.

            Wise said it was true that DEP notified the town’s engineering consultant, Mittauer and Associates, that DMR forms were missing and that the problem would have to be corrected or fines could be imposed, but Wise said the missing forms didn’t go back a full year as Weeks claimed. Wise also said he wasn’t the licensed operator for the sewer plant and the DMRs weren’t his responsibility.

            Mittauer was preparing an application for a Bronson sewer plant operating permit when the missing DMRs were brought to the company’s attention by DEP, but Wise said the problem has been rectified and DEP has issued a multi-year sewer plant operating permit to the town, which makes the entire controversy a non-issue as far as he is concerned.

            Wise Had a Role

            DMR forms are submitted electronically to DEP. Randy Wilkerson, Chiefland’s sewer plant superintendent, who is currently under contract to operate the Bronson plant until the town finds a licensed plant operator of its own, said it is true the problem with missing DMRs for the Bronson plant has been rectified and it is also true that the licensed operator of the plant wasn’t Wise. But Wilkerson said Wise did have a role to play with the DMRs. He said it was Wise who submitted the forms electronically to DEP every month.

            At the time the DMR problem surfaced, Wilkerson said the Bronson sewer plant operation had been turned over to licensed operator Gunter Courtney, and as far as he knows Courtney was filling out the DMR forms and sending them to Wise to be electronically submitted to DEP through the DEP portal.

            “It was Gunter’s responsibility, but he (Erik Wise) had the password,” Wilkerson said.

            The problem of the licensed operator not having the password for the DEP portal was corrected after Wise resigned on Oct. 22 and left the city on Nov. 8, according to Wilkerson. Wilkerson said he first he heard about the DMR problem was when he read a Spotlight story online.

            Taken Out at Knees

            “Nobody said anything to me. It took me out at the knees,” Wilkerson said.

            Wilkerson said Wise did a good job with the plant as a helper.

            “We would operate it. He would buy parts and help with maintenance. It was kind of a shared project,” Wilkerson said.  “Erik was good to the plant. If I needed anything he would get it.”

            Wise had promised the Bronson Town Council he would earn his state sewer plant operating license in his spare time working with the city, but he said the test for licensing proved to have extremely difficult math and he didn’t have time to study properly. He never passed the test.

            Weeks said he was first notified of the DMR problem shortly before Wise left the city. He said Wilkerson called him from Chiefland and said he didn’t realize Wise “wasn’t doing the records the way they were supposed to go.”

            Running the Plant

            “Randy and Gunter would come out and check the plant and Erik was responsible for putting in the daily maintenance records in the system,” Weeks said. “He wasn’t putting in the daily maintenance records into the system, so Shirley came to me, probably a week or so ago and was talking about DEP possibly fining us because they had no daily maintenance records for the sewer plant, and that was why I brought it up at the council meeting,” Weeks said.

            Weeks said the fact of the matter was that Wise was the town’s Public Works director and responsible for both the sewer and water plants. Weeks added that even though Wise wasn’t licensed to operate the sewer plant, and a contractor had been hired by the town to perform those duties, Wise should have been doing what he was told to do by the contractor. He should have submitted those maintenance records to DEP through the portal.

            “That’s how all this got messed up. He didn’t do what he told Randy he was going to do. That’s really why I brought it up, just to put an emphasis.  We’ve got to have somebody that manages the town’s directors so we have a town manager that makes sure everything flows,” Weeks said. “This stuff wouldn’t be allowed to happen if you had someone above them who said hey, have you finished your DMRs or are you getting the system loaded up.”

            “What he did was not do his job. It’s that simple,” Weeks added.

            Wise, a U.S. Navy veteran, was also asked by Spotlight why he didn’t raise the American Flag over the Veterans Memorial at James H. Cobb Park for Veterans Day. Wise, who was also responsible for maintenance at the park, said as a veteran he knows the importance of the American flag, but at the same time, he said the town can’t continue borrowing equipment from the county or from neighboring cities to perform work. Bronson’s “bucket-truck”, which is used to raise town workers high in the air for jobs like raising the flag or erecting Christmas light, had been broken down for at least a year.

            “Bronson’s got to grow up. We didn’t have a bucket truck, but Bronson’s got to understand we can’t keep borrowing from other communities,” Wise said.

            After Miller returned from a visit to her family in Michigan after Veterans Day, she contacted the Levy County Road Department a couple miles down the road to ask if they would raise the flag. The road department raised the flag for the town last week.

            No Businesses, No Jobs

            Weeks was asked to respond to Wise’s comment that the town needs to use its own equipment rather than borrowing equipment from neighboring cities.

            “Okay, but Bronson also needs businesses that create jobs and pay taxes,” Weeks said. “Until that comes in, Bronson can’t afford new equipment. So if have have to borrow from somebody, at least we have neighbors who will loan it to us. It’s kind of the problem within the whole place. We can’t get out of our own way because we can’t bring anybody in to pay taxes. It’s frustrating.”

            Weeks also made note of the fact that the Veterans Memorial wasn’t the only place in Bronson where the American flag wasn’t flying on Veterans Day. He said American flags traditionally fly over U.S. 27A in Bronson from Memorial Day to Veterans Day, but those flags weren’t raised this year. When the flags are taken down, the town hangs Christmas lights on power poles to replace the flags.

            “It doesn’t take anything to go to the county two miles from Town Hall and say, hey, do you have a bucket truck we can borrow for two or three hours,” Weeks said.

            The town’s bucket truck was returned to service last week.  The Christmas tree lights hadn’t been hung as of Tuesday, Nov. 26.

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Enterprise Reporting Regarding Bronson Sewer Plant Issues Posted November 26, 2019