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Summer vacations and the exodus of snowbirds will probably keep the flow of sewage to Sahuarita's wastewater-treatment plant just below capacity, a town official says.

But beginning in September, the town will probably have to resort to taking tanker-truckloads of sewage to the county's wastewater plant in Green Valley, said Larry Dobrosky, the assistant town manager.

"It's a good possibility," Dobrosky said recently.

That's because once all those people return to Sahuarita, the flow of sewage to the wastewater-treatment plant probably will at times exceed the plant's daily capacity of 490,000 gallons.

Town officials initially suggested that trucking the sewage would be done only as a backup plan that may not be necessary.

The town was scrambling to quickly expand the plant even before officials with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality on June 12 ordered the county to stop approving any town-issued permits to hook up to the town's wastewater-treatment system until the plant is expanded.

The order affects Rancho Sahuarita and Rancho Resort, the only two parts of town now hooked up to the system.

And because it affects only those areas, the expansion plans will not violate an ordinance passed by Sahuarita voters in March that prohibits wastewater-plant expansion without voter approval.

Mark Shaffer, an ADEQ spokesman, said the agency has had to order these sorts of moratoriums before for other rapidly growing communities around the state.

"This isn't unique, but we haven't had one that's as extreme as this … nothing in scope like Sahuarita's situation," Shaffer said.

It's a serious response to a serious problem — halting hookups to a municipally operated wastewater system that has reached capacity, he said.

Dobrosky said ADEQ officials told him in "a very positive meeting" last week that "they want us to communicate more often with them."

"We're going to meet again next week, try to work out any of the outstanding issues as we go forward," he said.

An initial expansion of the wastewater plant now under way would enable it to process up to 690,000 gallons a day.

Town officials first considered expanding the plant to 800,000 gallons, but decided instead on a two-step plan. An initial project will boost capacity by 200,000 and an accelerated second project will boost capacity to 1.5 million when completed in early 2009.

The initial expansion project won't be completed until the end of October — not in time to handle the anticipated increase in sewage that will come with the seasonal population increase in the fall, Dobrosky said.

And the system will have to be tested before it's brought online, so the additional capacity won't be available until sometime in November, he said.

That's why the county Board of Supervisors agreed in May to a request by Sahuarita officials to allow the town to transport up to 20,000 gallons of sewage a day by tanker truck to the Green Valley facility if Sahuarita's plant exceeds 490,000 gallons per day.

The Green Valley plant's daily capacity is 4 million gallons, but it typically processes only about 2 million.

Dobrosky said the town has not set aside money in the general budget to pay for trucking the sewage. It will have to be withdrawn from contingency and reserve funds, he said.

Supervisor Ray Carroll, whose district includes the eastern part of Sahuarita, wondered aloud during the May 15 Board of Supervisors meeting why the town doesn't just stop issuing building permits.

Dan Hochuli, the town's attorney, said that even if the town halted building permits, the amount of sewage would increase anyway because so many building permits have already been issued.

Dobrosky said more than 1,000 homes could still be built in Rancho Sahuarita and Rancho Resort, because that's the number of wastewater-hookup permits the town has approved in recent months.

"We don't see any economic impact at this point," he said.

Bob Sharpe, the developer of Rancho Sahuarita, said in an e-mail reply that town officials "assured us that they will manage the wastewater-treatment facilities so as to timely serve all anticipated users within Rancho Sahuarita."

"We are optimistic that all parties will agree to a solution that will continue to allow construction of homes and businesses to proceed as planned," he said.