Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation for DWR personnel of significant news articles and comment
April 5, 2007
1. Top Item -
Sewage fine could be as high as $5 million
By: BARBARA HENRY - Staff Writer
The fine for the sewage spill could be as high as $5 million, since a typical fine for recent spills into waterways has been about $1 a gallon, an official with the state Water Resources Control Board said Wednesday.
Whether the fine will actually be that high will be debated by state control board officials in the coming weeks as they review data on how this week's spill happened, how quickly local officials responded and the history of spills in the two cities, said Eric Becker, water resources control engineer for the resources control board's San Diego office.
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How the two cities will share costs of the repair work and other expenses also has yet to be worked out.
"Both parties have devoted their efforts at the moment to stopping the leak and beginning a cleanup effort," said Vista City Attorney Darold Pieper said. "We have not dealt with the cost-sharing issue."
Pieper said those conversations would in all likelihood be scheduled by next week.
Once any fine is paid, there also may be a battle over what to do with the money, which would go into a special state cleanup and abatement fund.
The money could pay for immediate restoration work to help the lagoon recover from the spill or it could go for long-term projects, including a proposal to shift the lagoon from a freshwater body to a mostly saltwater environment, officials said.
A rusty pipe
Meanwhile, the environmental effects from the spill are becoming evident. Already, an unpleasant smell lingers around the lagoon on the Carlsbad/Oceanside border, and dead fish are turning up in increasing numbers.
"So far, we think there's a couple hundred that we've collected," state Fish & Game spokesman Steve Martarano said Wednesday, adding that a full report will be available today.
The spill, which is believed to have begun Saturday, was reported by a lagoon visitor Sunday evening. When contractors dug up the pipe, they discovered a hole about a foot long and 3 inches wide, Mark Stone, the city's water department director, said Wednesday.
The 25-year-old pipe appeared to be rusty, but whether that condition led the pipe to break is not yet known, he added. The city has hired investigators to look into that issue, he said. Typically, such a pipe should last 50 years, but a variety of factors, including environmental conditions around the pipe, could reduce that, he added.
So far, the city has spent roughly $250,000 on the contractor's pipe repair work, Stone said. The cost of city staff overtime, long-term environmental monitoring expenses and any fines haven't been calculated, he said.
Testing the water
Contractors removed the broken pipe section and installed a new pipe Tuesday but waited until Wednesday to cover over the work area with dirt. They wanted to make certain the repairs had held, Stone said.
They're not waiting to see what the spill will do the environment, he said. The city already has about five devices pumping oxygen into the water in an effort to keep fish alive. And they're sucking water out of the lagoon at about 2,000 gallons a minute and sending it into the city's sewage system for treatment.
How long this will continue to occur depends on how quickly the water quality improves, Stone said.
"It could be several days, it could be a few weeks," he said.
As machinery put oxygen in the water and removed sewage-tainted liquid from the lagoon Wednesday, two chemists with the Encino Waste Water Authority tested three areas for fecal contamination. The samples, which were taken at the west end of the lagoon near
Biologists with Reston Solutions, a biological firm hired by the city of Carlsbad to take water samples and identify dead fish and bird species, also took water samples from the middle of the lagoon.#
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2007/04/05/news/top_stories/1_81_574_4_07.txt
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