Department of Water Resources
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
February 13, 2008
4. Water Quality
INFRASTRUCTURE:
Marin's leaking sewer pipes need attention - San Francisco Chronicle
BAY AREA QUALITY ISSUES:
State pollution board to study Bay cleanup plan; Government, business leaders balk at cost of reducing PCB levels - Inside Bay Area
SEWER ISSUES:
Sewer rates may rise for residents of Angels Camp - Sonora Union Democrat
Survey unearths Palermo's septic problems - Chico Enterprise Record
INFRASTRUCTURE:
Marin's leaking sewer pipes need attention
San Francisco Chronicle – 2/13/08
By Peter Fimrite, staff writer
Worn-out, cracked and leaking sewage pipes snake through large portions of southern
Agency inspectors discovered that five of the six sewage collection systems that flow to the Sewerage Agency of Southern Marin have "significantly deteriorating sewage pipes," according to a report released Tuesday.
The condition of the sewage system is especially important after spills on Jan. 25 and 31 flushed more than 5 million gallons of raw and partially treated sewage into a portion of
"It is not surprising that the infrastructure problems are what contributed to the Southern Marin agency's problems," said Sejal Choksi, program director for the environmental group Baykeeper. "This should be a warning to all the cities in the Bay Area because this is not unique to Marin."
The spills, which caused public outrage and prompted several investigations, occurred after the sewage plant was overwhelmed by heavy rains. The public was not told about the contamination for 11 days in the first case and 20 hours in the second.
The Richardson Bay Audubon Center & Sanctuary announced a spike in dead birds found near the center in Tiburon, a possible impact of the sewage spills.
Choksi said the Sewerage Agency was warned last year by the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board and fined $12,000 for not having enough capacity.
"Nothing has been done to our knowledge to fix that problem," she said.
The agency treats sewage from 28,000 residents in the
The inspections, which were made in October, found that the pipes had deteriorated in the Almonte, Tamalpais, Alto,
Ken Greenberg, the chief clean water compliance officer for the EPA's Pacific southwest region, said most pipes in the area are about 50 years old and made out of treated clay, which was commonly use around the country until about 20 years ago.
Sewage and storm water runoff are supposed to be carried in separate pipes. What happened in southern Marin, Greenberg said, was that storm water runoff entered the many cracks and fissures in the sewer pipes and flowed into the treatment plant, overwhelming it with water and necessitating discharges into
"The root problem is that there is a heck of a lot of water coming to that treatment plant when it rains," Greenberg said. "We would like to see the sewer district control some of that at the source by patching up the old cracked sewer pipes."
Stephen Danehy, the general manager of the Sewerage Agency, said he would like to replace all of the pipes, but that would take money that his agency does not have.
"For a small agency like us, it would take years, and I cannot even guess what that would cost, but it wouldn't be cheap," he said.
Danehy took responsibility Tuesday for not reporting the first spill on Jan. 25.
"I failed to call in a timely manner," he said. "I got to tell you, I was exhausted. I'd been working 10 to 12 hours that day and I didn't have the procedures in front of me when I was called at home. It was sheer exhaustion, and I made a mistake."
Danehy, however, defended his actions on the Jan. 31 spill, arguing that he correctly followed reporting procedures.
That spill occurred when an employee failed to operate enough discharge pumps, according to the EPA report. The sewerage agency characterized it as a "controlled release of wastewater."
The
The environmental group also filed a lawsuit this week against the city of
"The infrastructure throughout the Bay Area is old and crumbling, and sewage spills are common," she said. "We're looking at revamping the entire wastewater system city by city. Suing cities focuses attention on the problem, forces cities to prioritize wastewater management, and helps the public understand its importance." #
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/13/BAL1V16BR.DTL
BAY AREA QUALITY ISSUES:
State pollution board to study Bay cleanup plan; Government, business leaders balk at cost of reducing PCB levels
Inside Bay Area – 2/13/08
By Dennis Cuff, staff writer
A state water pollution board this week will consider a cleanup plan to rid
Even though their manufacture was banned nearly 30 years ago, polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, persist in soil and air, and in the Bay and its shallow muddy bottom.
Pollution engineers predict their plan would cut PCBs entering the Bay by 70 percent over 35 years, primarily by requiring city and county storm runoff agencies to track down and contain or treat PCBs in soil that can wash into the Bay.
City and county leaders and some business leaders are gulping at the potential cost even as environmentalists complain the plan is too weak.
Homeowners in the nine Bay Area counties currently pay fees that range between $18 and $46 a year to clean urban runoff — rainwater that absorbs pollutants as it flows into storm drains and into the Bay.
Those fees could go up as much as four times over two decades to pay for all the measures that could be required to clean PCBs, according to estimates by the San Francisco Regional Water Quality Control Board.
"We all want to have a clean Bay, but we are concerned about the cost," said Don Freitas, chairman of the Bay Area Stormwater Management Agencies Association, a coalition of cities and counties. "We can live with the plan as a starting point, but we remain deeply worried about the ultimate cost."
Environmentalists say the plan looks good on paper but lacks firm benchmarks and deadlines to clean up runoff.
"There is no 'there' there in this plan," said Sejal Choksi, director of programs at San Francisco BayKeeper. "I worry that in 10 years, the cities and counties can check a box on a form and say, 'We tried,' but not really do anything meaningful to clean the Bay."
Most at risk, she said, are low-income people who make up a high proportion of those who regularly eat fish from the Bay.
The plan to reduce PCBs is the second of what could be several federally mandated plans to set limits on pollutants that have damaged the Bay. Regulators adopted a mercury limit last year, and plan to consider other limits for the banned pesticides DDT, dieldrin and chlordane, as well as selenium, a natural element.
The limits, called Total Maximum Daily Loads, are supposed to reflect what the Bay environment can tolerate.
The PCB plan is aimed at cleaning up the Bay enough to lift a 1998 health warning to limit consumption of many fish, including surf perch and white croaker. But the measures also will help reduce other pollutants as well.
Pollution experts say PCBs challenge them with a toxic legacy of a once-popular industrial chemical.
PCBs were widely used for cooling and insulation in electrical transformers, industrial equipment and caulking in building materials until their manufacture was banned some 30 years ago because of health concerns about cancer, liver damage and effects on unborn children.
The chemicals break down slowly.
The board says PCBs entering the Bay should be limited to 10 kilograms per year, a 70 percent reduction from the 34 kilograms per year currently entering the Bay from storm water, sewer plants,
Under the board proposal, the bulk of the reductions must come from city and county storm water, the biggest source of PCBs entering the Bay.
Rather than demand all cities and counties take expensive actions immediately, the board plan requires a series of pilot projects of cleanup measures to see which will yield the best results and should be required widely.
"We're taking a phased approach to gives us time to figure out what works best in a doable amount of time," said Tom Mumley, the regional board's assistant executive officer.
Under one pilot program, inspectors will target building demolition sites to determine if PCBs are present in caulking and other materials. "Will PCBs be the next asbestos?" Mumley asked. "We don't know."
In another test, cities and counties will jointly study five drainage areas to track down PCB hot spots, and test cleanup methods such as sand filters. In the potentially most expensive technology, the plan also calls for cities and counties to divert storm water from 10 places in the region into sewage plants for treatment.
Treating urban runoff could be expensive, incurring hundreds of millions of dollars for new pipes and equipment, Freitas said.
Regional board engineers say it may turn out that treating runoff from a few industrialized areas could be enough. A coalition of business and industrial groups argued that rather than requiring costly cleanups, the water board should focus more on warning anglers not to eat too much fish.
"The ostensible benefits of the Total Maximum Daily Load are minimal and speculative," said the statement signed by 14 groups, including Chemical Industry Council of California, and the Home Builders Association of Northern California.
Mumley said a relatively small percentage of Bay Area residents eat Bay fish, but the waterway is a public resource that should be protected for all.
If no cleanup is done, it would take more than a century for PCBs to break down enough naturally to make the fish healthy to eat, board engineers estimated.
"We believe we have a doable plan to make that happen much faster," he said. #
SEWER ISSUES:
Sewer rates may rise for residents of Angels Camp
By James Damschroder, staff writer
Angels Camp's adoption of a state-mandated sewer-system management plan could raise household sewage rates $12.17 to $17.12 per month, City Administrator Tim Shearer said.
The plan, approved last Tuesday, is required of
The possible rate increase is not for improvements to the sewer system's infrastructure but to cover the additional costs due to the plan's mandated checklist of strict procedures and Angels Camp's continued compliance, City Engineer Gary Ghio said.
The plan is trying to get
The plan is meant to minimize sewage spills, Ghio said.
Ghio said the plan will impact smaller districts heavily, because larger districts can spread the cost across a larger population.
The city is looking at other ways to cover the costs, Ghio said.
The State Water Resources Control Board estimated that the plan would affect household sewage rates by an average of $5.99 per month.
But Ghio said this estimate was based on larger sewer districts.
Angels Camp conducted its own financial impact report that put the rate hike for Angels Camp residents at $12.17 to 17.12 per month.
"It's not pretty at all," Shearer said.
"The rates for water and sewage are already so high here," Ghio said.
Ghio said that this is due to stricter dumping practices, because of area reservoirs supplying water to the
"The thinking has been that we can't dump here — with technology that is slowly changing," Ghio said.
Some of the big ticket items on the plan are identifying substandard parts of the sewage system and building an hydraulic model of the system, Ghio said.
Since the plan was passed by the state in 2006, city officials have testified at hearings to fight the enforcement of the plan on rural communities that can't afford the price-tag.
In response, smaller districts were granted an extra year to start implementing the plan, Ghio said.
That year was up, when the city council approved the plan at last week's meeting. A series of steps must be met by May 2010, when the final SSMP certification will be brought to the city council.
"These are good things to have, but we never had the money to do it," Ghio said. "Now, they're forcing us to do it." #
http://www.uniondemocrat.com/news/story.cfm?story_no=25759
Survey unearths
By Roger Aylworth, staff writer
OROVILLE — A Butte County supervisor is hoping a sanitary systems survey done in Palermo will lead the way to grant money, and even some kind of a fix for septic and drainage system problems for the area.
Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors heard a report on a study of septic systems, surface water and well water done last year on 336 parcels of land in the
Brad Banner, director of the county's division of environmental health, told the board questionnaires were mailed to the property owners surveying them about the operation of their septic system and other topics. Of those mailed out, 95 were filled out and returned.
Of the 95 returned, 69 of the landowners opened their property to on-site inspections by county health officials.
Banner said much of the area covered by the survey contains heavy clay soil where private septic systems have problems. In the one part of the survey area with good soils, according to Banner, residents reported that during wet seasons the water table almost reaches surface level
As a result of the combined problems, about a third of those responding to the survey said their sinks drain slowly in the wet season, and another third reported their sinks and toilets back up in the wet season.
Significant numbers also reported water, sometimes foul, pooling over their leach fields.
Banner said the surface water studies conducted by his department found elevated levels of nitrates and bacteria called non-fecal coliform organism in the water.
Banner also told the supervisors of a similar study conducted in the
Banner also said the area is crisscrossed by a network of drainage ditches.
"Some people's ditches go a couple of blocks and then end in front of somebody else's property," said Connelly.
Oroville Supervisor Bill Connelly, whose district covers the
Connelly said after the study and two community meetings in
The supervisor said he stressed during the meetings that
However, he said
He proposed, and the other supervisors endorsed, an effort to track down grants that could fund a detailed study of the problem and then look for additional grant money to fix the problem.
Connelly said the funding must not come from the county's general fund. #
http://www.chicoer.com//ci_8247111?IADID=Search-www.chicoer.com-www.chicoer.com
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