Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
April 6, 2007
4. Water Quality
L.A. to turn sludge from treated wastewater into energy; Methane gas from biosolids pumped into deep wells in San Pedro will run fuel cells - Los Angeles Times
Sludge ban still safe; L.A. lawmaker backs off of bill that would override ban - Bakersfield Californian
SEWAGE SPILL:
Much of beach near lagoon mouth reopened after large sewage spill - San Diego Union Tribune
TREATMENT PLANT DELAYS:
Funding stream for treatment plant might get plugged; FEMA may rescind $500,000 grant because of lack of progress -
By Duke Helfand, staff writer
Officials unveiled the five-year plan at the city's Terminal Island Water Reclamation Plant, calling it a first-of-its-kind in the country that could serve as a model for other cities.
"This renewable energy project is absolutely electrifying," Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said in announcing the plan, which is part of a broader effort to increase the city's use of alternative energy sources. "It will save money and make money."
The renewable energy project calls for injecting spongy organic material left over from treated wastewater into depleted oil and gas reservoirs more than a mile underground.
High temperatures and pressure in those pockets will compress the biosolid material, creating methane gas that will be captured to power fuel cells on the surface, engineers say. The underground processes also will dissolve carbon dioxide that the organic material would normally release into the air, removing the equivalent of exhaust from 3,200 cars each year over the next five years.
The system is expected to cost $3 million to $4 million to build, and it will come on line in phases, starting in the spring of 2008, project director Homayoun Moghaddam said.
When fully operational in three years, it is expected to produce 3.5 megawatts of electricity, enough to power nearly 3,000 homes — energy worth $2.4 million a year. The energy, however, is expected initially to go to port-related facilities around
The biosolid material for the new system will come from the
City engineers said the energy project would reduce by about half the 750 tons of treated solid waste trucked daily to a city-owned farm in
The project received an enthusiastic thumbs up Thursday from an administrator with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the head of Santa Monica Baykeeper, a nonprofit group dedicated to protecting inland and coastal waters throughout
"There is a great deal of interest among researchers, among operators, among other cities and utilities in exploring what can be gained as this operation moves forward," said Alexis Strauss, the EPA's water division director in California.
The L.A. Public Works Department is coordinating the project with Terralog Technologies USA Inc., which will operate the system during the initial five years.
The city must obtain a permit from the EPA to continue operations permanently. Engineers and city leaders voiced confidence in its success.
City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, who represents San Pedro, said she was an early skeptic but came around to the project's potential benefits.
"I have no concerns about this project now," Hahn told the
Sludge ban still safe; L.A.
Bakersfield
By Stacey Shepard, staff writer
A Los Angeles-area lawmaker has backed away from a bill that would override
Assemblyman Cameron Smyth, R-Santa Clarita, introduced legislation earlier this year that would give the state authority over regulating sludge and override local ordinance that banned or restricted spreading of treated sewage.
Officials with
While Smyth's camp claimed that the bill was intended to set statewide standards for biosolids, Kern County Legislative Analyst Allan Krauter said it was another attempt by the
"This bill would have attempted to achieve through legislation what they haven't been able to achieve in court," Krauter said.
Voters in June approved a measure that would halt the land application of sludge in unincorporated Kern. Sanitation districts in the city of
A letter from Kern County officials opposing the new bill said: "This legislation exists for one purpose: Southern California sanitation agencies want to continue spreading their sludge in nearby counties so they can avoid safer, more costly methods of disposing of their waste."
The letter went on to say that by overriding a local ban on sludge spreading, the bill "would trample local governments' authority to protect the health and safety of their residents."
Kevin O'Neill, Smyth's chief of staff, said the senator's office received several letters like the one from
"We're planning on pursuing options to come to some sort of agreement," he said. "Whether we get to that or not, we're not sure." #
http://www.bakersfield.com/102/story/113671.html
SEWAGE SPILL:
Much of beach near lagoon mouth reopened after large sewage spill
By Michael Burge, staff writer
The Department of Environmental Health has reduced the amount of closed beach to 1,000 feet – 500 feet on each side of the lagoon mouth. Previously it had posted signs warning of contamination along 6,000 feet of beach in northern
Mark McPherson, chief of Land and Water Quality for the department, said yesterday that water samples taken at the beach showed no sign of contamination from the sewage spill.
The county has detected elevated levels of bacteria in a pond near the mouth of the lagoon, so it has posted signs warning people to stay out of that water. However, McPherson said the bacteria levels there do not indicate the sewage has reached that far west. The spill occurred when a pipe broke at the lagoon's eastern end, near
“They're elevated but they're not at the level you would expect for sewage-contaminated water,” he said, noting other factors could raise bacteria levels in the standing water.
McPherson said the plume of sewage is migrating, and has extended west of Interstate 5.
“The plume of contamination has moved farther west than it has in previous samplings,” McPherson said. Tests of water quality had not detected higher bacteria levels west of the freeway until yesterday.
He said the contamination could have been worse had
The city removed sewage from the failed pump station Monday and trucked it to an intact part of the pipe downstream of the break, where the sewage was dumped into the sewage line to continue to the treatment plant.
The city is also drawing 3 million gallons a day of tainted water from the lagoon and sending it to the Encina wastewater treatment plant.
“If they hadn't pumped it would have made it to the weir (at the mouth of the lagoon) and beyond that,” McPherson said.
Denise Vedder, a
“Our preliminary numbers show lower than normal oxygen levels,” Vedder said. “That's expected.”
He said there have been no dead water fowl so far, but the spill may have disturbed the nest of a pair of light-footed clapper rails, which are on state and federal endangered species lists.
“There was a survey done right before” the spill, Martarano said. “They found a breeding pair right near the leak.”
A 2004 study on the feasibility of restoring the lagoon said seven nesting pairs of clapper rails had been counted at the lagoon in 1997.
Martarano said it is not known what has become of the pair since construction crews and trucks moved into their area Sunday to repair the broken pipe.
A 5 million-gallon sewage spill in 1994 killed 5,000 fish and sickened many birds, a scenario that city and environmental resource agencies did not want to see repeated.
Bill Paznokas, a senior scientist with the Department of Fish and Game, said conditions are different for this spill.
“It was hotter then,” Paznokas said Wednesday. That spill occurred in mid-August. “We're not seeing as many dead fish so far,” he said #
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070406/news_1mi6lagoon.html
TREATMENT PLANT DELAYS:
Funding stream for treatment plant might get plugged; FEMA may rescind $500,000 grant because of lack of progress
By Kyle Jorrey, staff writer
In January, city manager Mike Sedell received a letter from the state's Department of Emergency Services notifying him that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) had denied the city's October request for a oneyear deadline extension on the funding due to the fact that "no substantive progress" had been made on the treatment plant project in the three years since the last extension was granted in January 2004.
"The city is currently at the review and design stage that was supposed to have occurred three years ago," wrote Don Smith, FEMA public assistance officer, in a letter dated Jan. 3.
In June 2003, FEMA committed $509,087 toward the rebuilding of the water treatment plant, which was badly damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake. The new plant, which would tap into the Tapo Canyon Basin, is part of the city's Capital Improvement Program approved after the quake and is expected to yield 1,350 acrefeet, or around 450 million gallons, of drinking water per year- or about 2 percent of total water sales in the city.
Joe Deakin, assistant director of public works, disagreed with FEMA's assertion that no real progress has been made toward constructing the treatment plant- and said the city is more than prepared to defend its case.
"We've taken so long with the FEMA-granted money for the repair, that they told us that the money had expired," Deakin said.
"But we've appealed that and we think we have a good shot at a successful appeal."
On Feb. 27, Sedell sent a letter of appeal to the Governor's Office of Emergency Services outlining all milestones related to the
"They didn't think we were moving diligently enough, so we provided to them additional, factual information to prove we are still moving forward," Deakin said. "In my mind, that evidence is sufficient."
Sedell is on vacation and couldn't be reached for comment on this story.
According to Deakin, public works has spent much of the past three years trying to accurately get an assessment of what impact the water treatment plant could have on the Arroyo Simi.
The city's sanitation division was particularly concerned over whether or not waste byproduct discharged from the treatment plant to the Simi Valley Water Quality Control Plant via municipal sewer lines would affect certain regulatory limits in the Arroyo set by the California Regional Water Quality Control Board.
"We were trying to come up with the best design to comply with our wastewater discharge requirements. That took some time," Deakin said.
In the meantime, Deakin said, staff was in the process of applying for voter-approved Proposition 50 grant money, which it eventually acquired. In November 2006, a grant in the amount of $1.5 million for the treatment plant was recommended by the California Department of Water Resources and the State Water Resources Control Board as part of $25 million coming into the county to fund a variety of water projects.
"We were making sure we had all the funding necessary to be economically viable," Deakin said. "While half a million dollars on a $4-million project is important, it wasn't enough for us to go ahead."
With this evidence, and with the backing of the Department of Emergency Services, Assistant City Manager Laura Behjan said she is hopeful FEMA will accept the appeal and change its mind about the $500,000, one of the last remaining chunks of emergency federal money left over from the '94 quake.
But even if FEMA doesn't change its decision, Behjan said, her staff will likely continue to back a project that is expected to save the city thousands of dollars a year in water bills- even if the $500,000 in lost funding has to be shouldered by local taxpayers.
"I'm hopeful FEMA will view (our appeal) positively, but if not, staff would continue to recommend the project," Behjan said.
"Even without the funding it still makes sense from a fiscal perspective to go ahead with it."
When asked if, in hindsight, his staff could have completed all the necessary work in a shorter period to meet the FEMA deadline, Deakin said "no," refusing to point any fingers or apologize for his department's use of time.
"I stand by the fact that we have been working diligently," he said. "There is a tremendous amount of technical analysis that went into this project.
"We knew it would take time, we even knew we were staring down a deadline, but we thought it was necessary to take that time," Deakin continued.
Like Behjan, he said even without the "big chunk of funding," the city should still see the water treatment plan through to completion.
"The project would still be economically viable, but just not as favorable," Deakin said. #
http://www.simivalleyacorn.com/news/2007/0406/Front_Page/002.html
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