Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
June 29, 2007
4. Water Quality
Concerns over quality; Working to bridge troubles over water - San Diego Union Tribune
POTENTIAL SEWAGE PLANT UPGRADE:
Panel to weigh in on sewage plant - San Diego Union Tribune
Sewage wars could see talks on truce - LA Daily News
WELL WATER QUALITY:
McNerney gets House OK on $500K to help improve
Concerns over quality; Working to bridge troubles over water
By Michael Burge, staff writer
ESCONDIDO– Memo to
A long-term plan to exchange water between the inland
“We have a button here that says, 'What happens in Hodges stays in Hodges,' ” Mark Muir, an Olivenhain board member, told a joint meeting of his and the Santa Fe Irrigation District boards Wednesday.
But Gary Eaton, director of operations and maintenance for the San Diego County Water Authority, said it is working with Olivenhain and other water agencies on a plan to ensure that Hodges water meets quality standards before it enters the county's water supply.
“It's not in anybody's benefit to put poor-quality water into the aqueduct or anybody's system,” Eaton said yesterday. He said a committee composed of engineers from Olivenhain, the authority and other concerned agencies expects to propose an operations plan to the authority's board in November.
One of the group's first chores, Eaton said, is to separate fact from fiction.
“There is a perception that the trees you currently see (in the lake) are a real issue for water quality,” Eaton said. “The reality is that is not case.”
Water-quality issues stem from runoff from Hodges' 250-square-mile watershed, which extends east to Julian. Farms and city dwellers have dumped chemicals and bacteria into sewers that feed into the lake, polluting it. After years of drought, thousands of willow trees that sprouted in the lake's dry bed were submerged when Hodges filled again in 2005.
The issue of the lake's water quality drew attention in November when David McCollom, Olivenhain's general manager at the time, suggested draining the lake and refilling it with imported water to rid it of contaminants.
Banking water
Hodges will be connected to the aqueduct for the first time in its history when a 5,800-foot-long pipeline between it and the Olivenhain Reservoir goes into operation next year. The 318-foot-high Olivenhain Dam, in
The linkage is part of the water authority's emergency storage plan, which is designed to bank water in case a natural catastrophe severs the county's northern pipelines.
The Santa Fe Irrigation District in Rancho Santa Fe and San Dieguito Water District in Encinitas share rights to Hodges water with the city of
Santa Fe General Manager Michael Bardin said 30 percent of the district's annual supply comes from Hodges. The treated water meets or exceeds all federal and state health standards, district officials say.
“Our operators joke that they have to have their hand on that (treatment) joystick and they can't let it go,” Bardin told the joint meeting of the Olivenhain and
A joint project
The Olivenhain Reservoir is a joint project of Olivenhain district and the
The authority paid 83 percent of the dam project's $200 million cost, and it owns rights to an equal portion of the water. It holds that water for emergencies only.
Olivenhain owns the other 17 percent, which it taps every day for its 60,000 customers. It treats the water at the David C. McCollom Water Treatment Plant, using an “ultra-filtration” process that cleans and treats the water by forcing it under pressure through membranes with microscopic pores.
Kimberly Thorner, general manager of the Olivenhain district, said that contaminants in Hodges water could foul the plant's membranes, costing the district an additional $40 million to $60 million a year.
“Olivenhain is at a stage where we just spent all this money on a state-of-the-science treatment plant and now are we going to have taste and odor problems?” Thorner said at the joint board meeting.
Olivenhain has an agreement with the water authority that it will clean up Hodges water before it is blended with Olivenhain's, Thorner said.
“Hodges is useless as a source if it shuts down our plants or renders them cost-ineffective,” she said.
Wesley Peltzer, the Olivenhain district's attorney, said that because the state has classified
The water authority's Eaton declined to comment on Peltzer's legal interpretation, but said the authority agrees that Hodges water must be of an acceptable quality before it is pumped to Olivenhain's reservoir.
Eaton said the authority formed the committee of water engineers to devise a way to achieve that. He said that committee is looking at a list of possible methods now.
“The operations plan will set trigger points, so if TOC (total organic carbon) meets x or manganese meets y,” water will not pass from Hodges to Olivenhain, Eaton said.
“Our intent is to work with our member agencies so (we) provide the highest water quality,” he said.
Eaton said the group includes representatives from the water authority, Olivenhain,
Olivenhain district serves 48 square miles and includes parts of Encinitas, Carlsbad, San Marcos, Rancho Santa Fe, Solana Beach, San Diego and the recently developed 4S Ranch. #
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20070629/news_7m29hodges.html
POTENTIAL SEWAGE PLANT UPGRADE:
Panel to weigh in on sewage plant
By Mike Lee and Terry Rodgers, staff writers
A panel of top local scientists will help San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders decide whether to spend up to $1.5 billion to upgrade the region's main sewage treatment plant or seek another exemption.
“I'm right in the middle. I'd like to have science dictate the decision,” said Sanders, who will unveil his plan today.
Sanders aims to choose a strategy in October, about two months before the city would have to apply for its third waiver from the federal Clean Water Act.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which reviews such applications, issued similar waivers to
The Point Loma issue is crucial to ratepayers: Their sewer bills could increase 75 percent over several years to cover the cost of retrofitting the treatment plant, city officials said yesterday.
Fifteen other cities and wastewater agencies use the facility and would have to pay for one-third of the construction bill.
The science panel, which will begin its work Monday, includes experts in marine biology and microbiology from
Over the next three months, they will analyze up to five years of sediment and water data collected by
But that may not be the case. UCSD professor Paul Linden, leader of the science panel, said it's not clear whether his group can make a conclusive pronouncement about the facility's ecological impacts.
“That is one of the questions,” he said. “We don't know precisely what data is available yet.”
The Point Loma plant provides advanced primary treatment, which captures fewer dissolved solids and other pollutants than the secondary process.
City officials said their ongoing analysis shows that the facility's effluent has not caused any significant environmental harm.
Last year,
Alan Langworthy, the city's deputy wastewater director in charge of the monitoring, said the idea now is to take “a completely fresh look at everything.”
Lisa Shaffer, an assistant director for the Scripps institution, said the panel will “see if there's anything significant that the people working on it day to day might have missed.”
Environmentalists, including those who have a track record of forcing San Diego to upgrade its sewage system, plan to spend more time looking at the city's coastal monitoring data. They've threatened to sue if
“It's a little disheartening that we are revisiting this question” of data analysis, said Marco Gonzalez, a lawyer who represents several conservation groups. “We know that (the existing) level of treatment is not good in the long term.”
But Lani Lutar, head of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association, praised Sanders' review plan.
“That is a good move,” she said. “I would hope (city officials) are making a fully informed decision.” #
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20070629-9999-7m29loma.html
Sewage wars could see talks on truce
LA Daily News – 6/17/07
By Jim Skeen, staff writer
PALMDALE - Negotiations could begin anew in the long, contentious battle over the
On June 27, the two boards governing the
Sanitation district officials voiced disappointment over the proposal being shot down.
"I'm not sure where we need to go from here," said Palmdale Mayor Jim Ledford, who sits on the boards for both sanitation districts. "Our residents are taking a substantial increase to go to tertiary treatment. I'm not sure what else they want from us. It seems like they want to punish us. I thought their goal was clean water."
The Lahonton Regional Water Quality Control Board determined the proposed payment was not large enough, even though it would have been the largest penalty ever issued by that board and one of the largest ever by state water regulators.
"They (the Lahontan board) really encouraged us to re-negotiate the settlement," said Harold Singer, Lahontan's executive director. "They felt the dollar amount was too low. They also said they would like us to consider stipulated penalties if the districts did not complete the upgrades in time."
At issue are two cease-and-desist orders Lahontan made in 2004. Lahontan ordered the
It also ordered the Palmdale district to clean up groundwater nitrates.
But district officials said the timetables - 2008 and 2009 - were unreasonable.
District officials filed litigation, triggering nearly two years of talks that have resulted in the proposed $4 million settlement.
Under the proposal, the districts would have paid $4 million to the state with $3.8 million to be used for a recycled-water distribution system in
The project, estimated to cost $119 million, would include 38 miles of pipeline, three storage reservoirs and five pump stations to link wastewater-treatment plants serving Lancaster, Palmdale and Rosamond.
If a settlement is not reached, it puts the recycled water project in jeopardy, said Ray Tremblay, head of the sanitation districts monitoring section.
"That is disappointing to the water community and it should be disappointing to the people of the
One of the proposed settlements most vocal critics is Gene Nebeker, a former Lahontan board member who is involved in the
"This is a tremendous victory for the community," Nebeker said of the proposal being rejected. "This sent a shockwave to the decision makers."
Nebeker has long argued for the sanitation districts to look at groundwater recharge as a way to deal both with their capacity issues and as away to build up the region's water supply.
"I'm trying to get the community to get together and propose a settlement to Lahontan - a settlement that doesn't stick it to the ratepayers," Nebeker said. "We need something that won't hurt the environment and has an immediate impact on groundwater.
"We have to put that water into the ground or we won't have any for the future."
Sanitation district officials said they looked at groundwater recharge, but getting approval for that would take as long as a decade.
The districts both want "tertiary" treatment plants, large storage reservoirs and the ability to use effluent to irrigate crops such as alfalfa.
In Palmdale, another issue is groundwater quality, including cleaning up nitrates.
Of the district's 27 monitoring wells, two have had readings above the state standard of 10 milligrams per liter. #
http://www.dailynews.com/antelopevalley/ci_6159714
WELL WATER QUALITY:
McNerney gets House OK on $500K to help improve
Congressman Jerry McNerney has managed get $500,000 to help Manteca offset part of the cost of complying to tighter federal arsenic standards for drinking water in the U.S. House of Representatives 2008 Interior and Environment Appropriations bill adopted Wednesday night.
The Senate and President Bush must still approve the spending plan.
"Providing clean drinking water for our citizens is one of the most basic, and necessary, functions of government," McNerney said. "I am pleased that the House approved funding I requested to allow
City Manager Bob Adams noted Manteca now meets arsenic standards in its drinking water drawn from wells but tighter standards that will further reduce the allowed level are being imposed by the federal government.
"Having $500,000 means that's $500,000 less we'd need from ratepayers," said
"It's funding like this that helps us improve the quality of drinking water for our citizens, without affecting monthly rates," said Manteca Mayor Willie Weatherford. "
The funding will be used to retrofit existing wells in
http://mantecabulletin.com/main.asp?FromHome=1&TypeID=1&ArticleID=523&SectionID=28&SubSectionID=58
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