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

Department of Water Resources

California Water News

A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment

 

April 3, 2007

 

4. Water Quality

 

SEWAGE SPILL:

Major sewage spill; More than 4 million gallons have gushed into lagoon - San Diego Union Tribune

 

WETLANDS:

Brawley wetlands deal may sour - Imperial Valley Press

 

 

SEWAGE SPILL:

Major sewage spill; More than 4 million gallons have gushed into lagoon

San Diego Union Tribune – 4/3/07

By Michael Burge, staff writer

 

More than 4 million gallons of raw sewage have spewed into a North County lagoon since a sewer main broke Sunday night, forcing county health officials yesterday to close more than a mile of beach in Oceanside and Carlsbad.

 

The ongoing spill, at Buena Vista Lagoon on the border of Carlsbad and Oceanside, ranks as one of the worst in the county in the last decade.

 

Experts said it was too soon to assess the potential damage to wildlife, but the spill compares with a 5 million-gallon overflow that killed about 5,000 fish and wiped out at least seven fish species at the lagoon in 1994.

 

The county also has posted signs warning of contamination and discouraging people from fishing at the lagoon. The North Coast Highway bridge over the lagoon is a popular spot for anglers.

 

The pipe, which is co-owned by Carlsbad and Vista, broke at 7 p.m. Sunday. Carlsbad crews chose not to completely shut down the pump station that forces sewage into the pipe because it would cause an adjacent containment pool to overflow into the lagoon.

 

Instead, workers have been scrambling to move raw sewage from the pump station into 5,500-gallon tank trucks and dump the waste into the pipe south of the break.

 

Yesterday, city crews also were laying pipe above ground in an attempt to pump sewage around the break and onto the Encina wastewater treatment plant, on the coast south of the pump station.

 

Today, they hope to dig up the broken pipe, assess the damage and begin repairs.

 

The county Department of Environmental Health has closed the beach between Beech Avenue in Carlsbad and Cassidy Street in Oceanside. That area takes in St. Malo, a gated community in Oceanside just north of the lagoon's mouth.

 

Carlsbad Public Works Director Glenn Pruim said he did not know what caused the break. The section of metal pipe that failed is 25 years old. He said other pipe in the vicinity had been upgraded but not the section that broke.

 

Pruim said he would not know how long it would take to repair the break until workers dig up the pipe.

 

As of 4 p.m. yesterday, 4.1 million gallons – equal to nearly eight Olympic-size swimming pools full of sewage – had spilled into the lagoon, said Denise Vedder, the city of Carlsbad's spokeswoman. That figure is expected to go higher, she said.

 

John Robertus, executive officer of the San Diego Regional Water Quality Board said even a 2 million-gallon spill would rank as one of the worst spills in the county in the last decade.

 

Robertus said the board will require Carlsbad to assess how the spill affected the lagoon and prepare a technical report to determine whether it could have been prevented. The board may fine the city if the spill was preventable.

 

Yesterday afternoon, the pump station area was swarming with activity. Workers and trucks converged on the spill site at Jefferson Street, on the lagoon's eastern edge just west of Westfield Plaza Camino Real.

 

Crews hadn't dug to the broken pipe by yesterday evening because the priority was to wall off the area from the lagoon. They were sinking long sheets of metal into the ground near the pipe breach last night.

 

“We're getting ready to install sheet pile shoring – a barrier between the lagoon and the work site,” Pruim said. “If we don't have something to contain it, it would just flow into the lagoon.”

 

Ron Wootton, executive director for the Buena Vista Lagoon Foundation, said the lagoon can tolerate some raw sewage, but it is unhealthy for plants and animals. More than 100 bird species and numerous fish and plant species thrive at the lagoon, a 200-acre state ecological reserve operated by the Department of Fish and Game.

 

“Generally speaking, there isn't a lot of damage from a sewage spill unless it goes on for a long time,” Wootton said. He said the lagoon typically dilutes the sewage, minimizing its long-term effect.

 

The bigger the spill, the less the dilution and the greater the environmental harm, Wootton said.

 

Kimberly McKee-Lewis, a senior environmental scientist with the Department of Fish and Game, called the spill “a big nutrient bomb coming in.”

 

The organic material speeds the growth of plant life, which use up oxygen in the water. That in turn deprives fish of oxygen, resulting in deaths, which then leads to a cascade of environmental problems.

 

Water fowl feed on the fish, which can make them ill. That scenario played out on the lagoon's waters and shores in 1994.

 

McKee-Lewis said the problem is compounded because Buena Vista is not open to the ocean, so it does not have regular flushing to help cleanse the water. “For wildlife, this is not a good time for a sewage spill – never is a good time – but it's a breeding season for wild birds,” McKee-Lewis said.

 

She said while the spill is bad, the repair also will be disruptive, particularly for the light-footed clapper rail and the Belding's savannah sparrow, which are both listed as endangered species and live at the lagoon.

 

“They're disrupted by noise,” and possibly lights that will illuminate the work through the night. “Hopefully we can get the thing stopped and remediate the problem as fast as we can,” she said.

 

McKee-Lewis said the lagoon is surrounded by development on three sides – state Route 78 runs along the northern shore, the mall is on the west, and stores and houses rim its basin. Lawn sprinklers and other urban uses cause runoff that flows into the lagoon, affecting its long-term health, she said. #

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/northcounty/20070403-9999-1n3sewage.html

 

 

WETLANDS:

Brawley wetlands deal may sour

Imperial Valley Press – 4/3/07

By Jonathan Athens, staff writer

 

BRAWLEY — All bets are off on a $200,000 deal Brawley had with the federal government to establish a wetlands project that was expected to alleviate some of the problems with this city’s failing wastewater treatment facility.

And the reasons this three-year-old deal is tanking?

The federal Bureau of Reclamation doesn’t have the extra money to make up for the $28,000 that Brawley spent on land appraisals and a study.

The city was unable to cut a deal with the owner of the property where the project was to be located before the federal grant expired.

And even if the deal did go as planned, it still wouldn’t have accomplished everything it was intended to accomplish — the wetlands wouldn’t have adequately reduced the high levels of ammonia nitrogen the wastewater plant is discharging.

 

 

Those reasons are spelled out in a March 19 letter the bureau sent to Brawley City Manager Oscar Rodriquez and in the City Council’s agenda requesting the two governments terminate their April 2004 agreement.

The agreement was extended twice because the city and the property owner did not move forward with the plans, according to the letter and the agenda materials. The property owner, whose name was not listed in either of those documents, rejected the first appraisal and requested a second one.

“Since there’s been no other action, we’ve decided to terminate the grant,” bureau spokesman Steve Leon said.

Leon said the grant was for $200,000. A portion of that paid for the property appraisals and an assessment, leaving $172,000, an amount the bureau said was insufficient for the project.

And now the city will have to pay back what’s left.

“I think it will be the right thing to do to give that money back,” Brawley Mayor Don Campbell said.

Campbell said the real estate boom here made it difficult for the city to make a deal with the land owner.

The property is north of the wastewater plant at 5015 Best Road.

Campbell said he thinks the city will seek another such wetlands grant in the future.

California environmental regulators this month are expected to issue an order giving the city three to five years to fix the plant, build a new one, or face a sewer hook up ban.

The City Council on Tuesday night is expected to vote on whether to terminate the deal with the bureau.

http://www.ivpressonline.com/articles/2007/04/03/news/news03.txt