[Water_news] 4. DWR'S CALIFORNIA WATER NEWS: WATER QUALITY - 3/20/07

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

March 20, 2007

 

4. Water Quality

 

MEXICAN SEWAGE PLANT PROPOSED:

Sewage proposal endorsed in Mexico; U.S. would pay for Tijuana plant - San Diego Union-Tribune

 

RUNOFF ISSUES:

Orange glop fouls sewage plant; Unknown material causes Woodland facility to violate state water law - Sacramento Bee

 

WATER RUNOFF REGULATIONS:

Guest column: Water rules soak home buyers - North County Times

 

 

MEXICAN SEWAGE PLANT PROPOSED:

Sewage proposal endorsed in Mexico; U.S. would pay for Tijuana plant

San Diego Union-Tribune – 3/20/07

By Sandra Dibble, staff writer

 

TIJUANA – It would be the biggest sewage treatment plant the city has seen, and it wouldn't cost Mexico a penny.

 

Won over by the possibility of free sewage treatment and the prospect of a vast supply of recycled water, high-level Mexican officials are openly endorsing a binational plant promoted by a San Marcos company.

 

Though set in Tijuana, the $170 million facility would be funded by U.S. taxpayers. Mexican officials have said they lack the infrastructure and other resources to handle sewage that flows from Tijuana to the South Bay via the Tijuana River.

 

In the 1990s, the U.S. government built the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant in San Ysidro to treat such sewage. That facility has never met federal standards for water quality. So to meet a court order, U.S. officials have picked Bajagua to build a second plant 12 miles from San Ysidro – near the confluence of the Alamar and Tijuana rivers.

 

Mexican agencies are stepping up their support of Bajagua despite sharp debate north of the border over the project. U.S. opponents criticize how politically connected Bajagua officials lined up backers in Congress, and they question whether the plan will decrease pollution on South Bay beaches.

 

Bajagua's supporters on both sides of the border say the project offers a unique approach that will result in cleaner beaches in Tijuana as well as San Diego.

 

“The benefit is for both countries,” said Arturo Herrera, commissioner of CILA, the Mexican arm of the binational agency that is overseeing the process.

 

Even once-skeptical Baja California officials now say they have been won over by the chance to address Tijuana's growing needs for sewage treatment and new water resources.

 

Baja California Gov. Eugenio Elorduy recently said he backs the project, as did Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank Rhon, now on leave to run for governor.

 

Mexican federal water officials are quietly backing the plan, saying they are prepared to make federally controlled lands behind the city's main bus station available for the plant.

 

Herrera and other government officials familiar with the project are loath to discuss details, saying it is premature until a contractor, design and site have been selected. Three contractors are finalists for the project.

 

While Bajagua gains support in Mexico, there is no guarantee the facility will be built.

 

The U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission, which is CILA's sister agency, said last month that upgrading its existing plant at San Ysidro would be a better deal than Bajagua. The U.S. option is expected to cost roughly $100 million.

 

In addition, Bajagua appears to be struggling to meet a critical May 2 deadline to issue a construction contract. On March 7, the U.S. boundary commission warned California water regulators that Bajagua may need five more months to meet the deadline.

 

It's unclear how much more time the U.S. commission, state officials and the courts will grant.

 

The commission is legally obligated to clean 25 million gallons a day of sewage treated at its San Ysidro plant before discharging it into the ocean. That plant has never met the treatment standard required by the U.S. Clean Water Act, and now a court order is requiring compliance by September 2008.

 

Bajagua officials not only pledge to improve the treatment level to meet U.S. regulations, but also to treat an additional 34 million gallons a day of wastewater in Tijuana.

 

Then, the company would further treat the water and resell it. The company's proponents in Mexico cite that prospect as a huge plus for Tijuana. The region is almost completely dependent on an aqueduct from the Colorado River.

 

The water could be used for industry, irrigation and aquifer recharge, said Arturo Espinoza Jaramillo, Baja California's secretary of infrastructure and urban development.

 

“The idea is that everybody wins,” Espinoza said.

 

Bajagua plans to use private financing to build and operate the plant. In 2004, the Congressional Budget Office estimated the total cost to be about $600 million over two decades. The U.S. government would repay the company in installments over 20 years, after which the plant would be turned over to Baja California.

 

Tijuana's sewage contamination problems require a variety of measures, said José Luis Castro, a researcher at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte. Bajagua could be part of the solution, Castro said, but the city still needs to build more drainage systems to capture runoff.

 

Having “a supply of water treated to a secondary level is very important for Tijuana, . . . but the city needs the resources so that users can access that water,” Castro said.

 

U.S. detractors have criticized the International Boundary and Water Commission's no-bid contracting process, the lack of a finalized site and Bajagua's lack of experience in building sewage treatment plants. They say the project doesn't address a major cause of cross-border effluent that pollutes San Diego beaches: the unconnected sewage that runs down across the border from impoverished Tijuana neighborhoods.

 

Oscar Romo, coastal training program director for the Tijuana Estuary in Imperial Beach, said Bajagua's proposal to sell treated water leaves too many unanswered questions: “Who's going to use it, store it, deliver it, and control quality?” he asked.

 

“This project will have no impact on reducing beach closures at all,” said Serge Dedina, executive director of Wildcoast, an Imperial Beach-based environmental group that staunchly opposes the project.

 

Romo and Dedina believe the correct approach is to build several small treatment plants in sub-basins of the Tijuana River watershed, using the treated water within each basin. They are promoting a pilot project for 50 houses in Los Laureles Canyon, directly uphill – and upstream – from the Tijuana estuary.

 

For all the discussion north of the border, debates in Mexico about the Bajagua plant until now have been taking place behind closed doors. Even leaders of the maquiladora sector, expected to be a major client of the plant's recycled water, say they know little about the project.

 

José Carmelo Zavala, a biochemical engineer who runs a nonprofit group in promoting environmentally friendly manufacturing practices, said Tijuana, like most cash-strapped Mexican cities, badly needs to expand its treatment capacity. If the Bajagua project is built, “we'd more than cover our necessities,” he said. “I see it as very positive, but there are shadows that are worth discussing. . . . There are things about Bajagua they're not telling us.”

 

Tijuana's estimated population of 1.5 million is expected to double in the next 20 years, and treated water – along with desalination – is increasingly being touted as a way to cover the growing need.

 

By 2010, Tijuana's demand for water is expected to overtake the current supply, most of it carried in by aqueduct from the Colorado River. An aqueduct expansion would carry Tijuana through 2018.

 

Bajagua has been quietly lobbying Mexican officials for years, and its consultants include Ernesto Ruffo, a former governor of Baja California.

 

“They've hired many engineers, some of the most capable men in Tijuana to explain the project,” said Miguel Avila, a former state water official now running for mayor.

 

State officials are hoping savings generated through the Bajagua plant will give them money to invest in projects to collect raw sewage or deliver treated water.

 

“If they're treating the water, I'd lower my own costs,” said José Guadalupe Zamorano, head of the state's public service agency in Tijuana. “And since I'll be spending less, I'll have a greater chance to build more infrastructure.”

 

State and federal water agencies are considering building a 12.5-mile line to carry recycled water from a future treatment plant in eastern Tijuana to the Otay Mesa industrial area. They have begun asking businesses about their interest in such a project.

 

Saúl García Huerta, president of the 250-member Tijuana Maquiladora Association, said 15 to 20 percent of his members are heavy water users, with their own on-site water treatment plants. But they could be persuaded to switch to a public distribution system.

 

“This could sound attractive and interesting for maquiladoras, but it needs to be competitive,” Garcia said.

 

But José Ibarra, who heads the Association of Otay Mesa Industrialists, is not entirely convinced about the feasibility of selling treated water and investing in new pipelines to deliver it.

 

“We need to know that this water will be guaranteed,” Ibarra said. #

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070320/news_1n20bajagua.html

 

 

RUNOFF ISSUES:

Orange glop fouls sewage plant; Unknown material causes Woodland facility to violate state water law

Sacramento Bee – 3/20/07

By Lakiesha McGhee, staff writer

 

An unknown substance or chemical was found in the city of Woodland's Water Pollution Control Facility last month, leading to a violation of the state Clean Water Act.

 

The substance, described as harmless to humans and wildlife, caused unspecified monetary damage to Woodland's sewer treatment operations.

 

The city discovered an orange-colored substance containing pulpy material in the wastewater it treats and releases into the Tule Canal.

 

The substance caused the treated water to have higher levels of turbidity, or cloudiness, than is allowed by the state, Chief Plant Operator Mark Hierholzer said.

 

The city increased its treatment process since identifying the problem Feb. 13 and is offering a $2,000 reward to help find the source of the contamination.

 

"We think it's a business or an industry that changed its operations in February and is probably not aware that we have local limits," Hierholzer said.

 

The city is collecting samples of wastewater at five different sites in the city to help track the source of the murky orange substance, he said.

 

The substance is being analyzed, but no evidence was found that the problem poses health effects to humans or wildlife, Hierholzer said.

 

Woodland's Pollution Control Facility, on County Road 24, treats 6.8 million gallons of residential and commercial wastewater each day. The wastewater undergoes biological treatments and is released into the adjacent Tule Canal, which is used for agricultural irrigation and recreation.

 

The agency reported to the Regional Water Quality Control Board that it exceeded the state turbidity levels from Feb. 23 to 25.

The plant has been in compliance with state law since Feb. 25, Hierholzer said.

 

The financial impact of the contamination to the plant continues and is unknown at the moment, he added.

 

The water quality board could enforce a maximum fine of $10,000 a day or $10 per gallon of the total water treated and discharged into the canal during the time the agency was in violation of the Clean Water Act, Kenneth Landau, the board's assistant executive officer, said Monday.

 

He explained that such a hefty fine is unlikely and that the board has the option to levy no fine at all, depending on the circumstances.

 

"We consider how bad the contamination was, did they take reasonable action to stop it and if it was their fault," Landau said.

Pesticides, oil, grease and antibiotics are among the agents that can harm or kill the biological treatments in a sewer treatment plant, Landau said.

 

The problem can take days or weeks to correct.

 

"If somebody is continuing to dump these things in the sewer, it can take as long as it takes to find them," he said.

 

Whoever or whatever is responsible for the substance could end up responsible for any fines, penalties and additional costs incurred by the treatment plant, Hierholzer said. #

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/140753.html

 

 

WATER RUNOFF REGULATIONS:

Guest column: Water rules soak home buyers

North County Times – 3/20/07

By Michael D. Patterson, a freelance columnist for the North County Times, is president of Barratt American, a builder based in Carlsbad, and past president of the California Building Industry Association

 

Flower grower Eric Anderson has it all wrong when he says people are unhappy with him because he voted to impose a billion dollars of new regulations on San Diegans.

 

On the contrary, Anderson should be admired for the way he protected his flower-growing business.

 

Anderson, a member of the largely unknown and totally unelected San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, recently voted to force new home buyers to pay for what essentially is a small water treatment system at each new home -- a retention basin -- to treat the pollution from stormwater runoff, with each costing about $20,000 by my estimate.

Anderson also voted to require San Diego business owners to submit to an army of inspectors that are required to make about 8,000 visits a year to enforce the new regulations.

That's a heavy burden for all businesses in San Diego, save one: flower growers -- Anderson's business.

Even though agricultural chemicals are a major source of poor water quality, Anderson knew nurseries would have to shut their doors if they had to comply with the same rules he recently imposed on others -- the same way some North County business owners will have to close their doors once they see the bill for complying with these regulations.

That is why he spoke up to make sure his industry was "exempt."

These new rules are among the most draconian ever imposed by non-elected officials in San Diego. In addition to agricultural chemicals, curiously missing from this latest round of rule-making is San Diego's other largest source of poor water quality, sewage.

Every year, billions of gallons of raw sewage from Tijuana flow into San Diego waters. A few miles north, two sewage plants add billions of gallons more partially treated sewage. In North County, a surfer is suing local sewer authorities when he got a debilitating brain disease after surfing in allegedly sewage-infested waters from local sources.

Anderson's new rules do nothing about that.

Maybe Anderson and his pals ignored it because they thought sewage was some kind of agricultural chemical.

These new regulations come on top of existing stormwater regulations that already add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of a new home -- as they have at my home sites, including Toscana in Bonsall to the tune of $25,000 per home; Country Glen in Escondido for $16,000 each; and Aurora Hills, also in Escondido, which came in at $13,000 each; and at Sienna Hills in Encinitas, it was $19,000 each.

All for a solution many say is not very effective.

City officials in Oceanside said last week they are already spending $2.5 million a year to comply with old rules, and new rules will add $1 million to that. And they have no idea what the benefits are. Other cities and school boards around the region have said the same.

But unlike the flower growers, they did not have someone on the board to carry their water. So they did not get an exemption.

 

Criticize Anderson? Heck, they should have hired him.

http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/03/20/opinion/pattinson/22_20_563_19_07.txt

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