Department of Water Resources
California Water News
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
July 16, 2009
4. Water Quality –
Lodi City Council approves 73.3 percent rate increase to wastewater bills
Lodi News-Sentinel
TRPA sues NV man over Tahoe shore work
Grass Valley Union
There's goo in them thar waters
Oakland Tribune
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Lodi City Council approves 73.3 percent rate increase to wastewater bills
Lodi News-Sentinel-7/16/09
By Maggie Creamer
Starting today, Lodi residents will pay more each month to flush their toilets and wash their hands.
The Lodi City Council approved a 73.3 percent rate increase that would take a three-bedroom home's monthly sewer bill from $27.74 to $48.06 by July 2012.
The council voted 3-2 in favor of the increase after receiving protests from less than 1 percent of the people who received notices.
The city sent notices to more than 39,000 property owners and renters in and around the city informing residents of the increase.
Councilwomen Susan Hitchcock and JoAnne Mounce said they could not support the wastewater increase because it is not tied with a decrease in the water rates to offset it.
"There has to be a way to give some relief to our taxpayers," Mounce said. "To raise the wastewater rates and not do something to ease pain on the other side is completely unfair."
Hitchcock also said she needed more specifics on how the city staff decided on the proposed rate structure.
"All of these facts don't tell me why we need the amount of money that we need. We need to see more than that, especially in lieu of the fact that there are all these past mistakes," she said.
The wastewater fund has been operating at a deficit with costs exceeding revenue by $1.5 million a year. The city also pays $4.1 million a year on debt service on bonds for upgrades to the White Slough wastewater plant.
The goal of the increase is to make the wastewater a "self-standing" utility, said Wally Sandelin, director of public works.
"We really have no other best option. We can't shut down the plant, can't use another city's plant, can't not comply with the regulations," he said.
Bill Fuhs was one of four residents who spoke against the increase.
"What bothers me is an employee that says there are no options besides raising these rates. You should fire any employee that doesn't see any options," he said. "Somebody should have seen this coming. Somebody caused this."
The council blamed the state's increased regulation as part of the reason the rates are increasing. The city has taken out $40 million in bonds to perform required upgrades at the White Slough wastewater plant.
Councilman Bob Johnson said it is frustrating that the council is essentially raising the rates to appeal to regulatory agencies.
As a member of the regulatory agency, Pamela Creedon, the executive officer of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, explained some of the requirements her board is required to place on plants.
"The need to comply with our requirements does not go away when a citizen group says it does not want to pay it," Creedon said. "Enforcement can be very expensive for a community and literally, bankrupt a city."
Councilwoman JoAnne Mounce said she feels like the state is "regulating itself to death," and it seems like lawmakers are creating rules and regulations as a way to substantiate their jobs.
"I have people living in houses making $600 a month, and how are they expected to pay these rate increases? Do you people who make these policies understand that?" she said.
Mayor Larry Hansen described the additional regulations as "unfunded mandates" and expressed frustration to Creedon that the state has not found a way to help cities make these upgrades.
The money will also be used for operations and maintenance, and to hire new employees needed to run the upgraded plant. A 25 percent reserve will also be established in case of emergencies, like a sewer main collapsing, Sandelin said.#
http://www.lodinews.com/articles/2009/07/16/news/4_wastewater_090716.txt
TRPA sues NV man over Tahoe shore work
Grass Valley Union-7/15/09
By Sandra Chereb (Associated Press)
Lake Tahoe regulators have sued a wealthy Nevada rancher and businessman, accusing him of performing illegal excavation work and other environmental violations at his lakefront property.
The civil suit filed last week by the bistate Tahoe Regional Planning Agency accuses Edgar "Red" Roberts of violating environmental codes in November while repairing and expanding a retaining wall at his $4 million home in Glenbrook on Tahoe's east shore.
TRPA attorney Nicole Rinke, in the suit, claims Roberts authorized the work without required permits.
Regulators investigated after receiving an anonymous complaint, the suit said.
Specifically, the suit alleged Roberts brought in roughly 80 cubic yards of earthen material and deposited it at or below the high water line. Additionally, it said he used construction equipment to dredge sand from a neighbor's property for use on his own.
The work also was conducted during an annual grading moratorium, imposed Oct. 15 through May 1, when winter storms are likely to cause erosion and sediment runoff into the lake, the suit said.
The violations carry a possible $5,000 fine, plus an additional fine of up to $5,000 for each day violations persist.
The TRPA is a bistate agency authorized by Congress in 1969 to protect the mountain lake's cobalt blue waters and delicate ecosystem. Construction codes in the Tahoe basin that straddles the Nevada-California line in the eastern Sierra are among the most stringent anywhere.
Roberts, in his early 80s, has made millions investing in land in the Tahoe area and northern Nevada. He was once business partners with the late Harvey Gross, founder of what became Harvey's hotel-casino at lake Tahoe. Roberts also owns the historic Goldfield Hotel in central Nevada.
More recently, he owned the property that is now a large shopping development in northern Douglas County just south of the state capital.
Reached Wednesday at his home just outside Carson City, Roberts said he had just returned from his ranch in northern Washoe County, was unaware of the suit and declined comment.
In the lawsuit, Rinke said efforts earlier this year to negotiate a settlement with Roberts stalled after he didn't respond to a TRPA request for an engineer's report on the structural soundness of the wall.
The suit further said that Roberts, in a Jan. 27 letter to TRPA, said he had approached the agency about a permit but was advised by staff the project was unallowable under code.
That admission, the suit said, showed Roberts' violations were "willful and/or the result of gross negligence."
When it comes to running afoul of environmental regulations at Tahoe, Roberts is not alone.
In 2005, retired LPGA golfer Annika Sorenstam agreed to a $7,500 fine for moving dirt illegally at her beach-front home in Incline Village. That same year, former major league baseball pitcher Scott Erickson agreed to a $25,000 fine for construction of an illegal hot tub at his Stateline home.
In 2006, a California business executive agreed to pay $50,000 for poisoning three trees to enhance the view from his Lake Tahoe home.#
http://www.theunion.com/article/20090715/WEBEXCLUSIVE/907159990&parentprofile=search
There's goo in them thar waters
Oakland Tribune-7/15/09
By Don Hunter
Something big and strange is floating through the Chukchi Sea off the Alaska coast.
Hunters from Wainwright, Alaska, first started noticing the stuff early last week. It's thick and dark and "gooey" and is drifting for miles in the cold Arctic waters, according to Gordon Brower with the North Slope Borough's Planning and Community Services Department.
Brower and other borough officials, joined by the U.S. Coast Guard, flew out to Wainwright, on Alaska's north coast, to investigate. The agencies found "globs" of the stuff floating miles offshore Friday and collected samples for testing.
Later, Brower said, the North Slope team in a borough helicopter spotted a long strand of the stuff and followed it for about 15 miles, shooting video from the air.
The next day the floating substance arrived offshore from Barrow, about 90 miles east of Wainwright, and borough officials went out in boats, collected more samples and sent them off for testing too.
Nobody knows for sure what the gunk is, but Petty Officer 1st Class Terry Hasenauer says the Coast Guard is sure what it is not.
"It's certainly biological," Hasenauer said. "It's definitely not an oil product of any kind. It has no characteristics of an oil, or a hazardous substance, for that matter.
"It's definitely, by the smell and the makeup of it, it's some sort of naturally occurring organic or otherwise marine organism."
Something else:
No one in Barrow or Wainwright can remember seeing anything like this before, Brower said.
"That's one of the reasons we went out, because in recent history I don't think we've seen anything like this," he said. "Maybe inside lakes or in stagnant water or something, but not (in the ocean) that we could recall ...
"If it was something we'd seen before, we'd be able to say something about it. But we haven't ...which prompted concerns from the local hunters and whaling captains."
The stuff is "gooey" and looks dark against the bright white ice floating in the Arctic Ocean, Brower said.
"It's pitch black when it hits ice, and it kind of discolors the ice and hangs off of it," Brower said. He saw some jellyfish tangled up in the stuff, and someone turned in what was left of a dead goose — just bones and feathers — to the borough's wildlife department.
"It kind of has an odor; I can't describe it," he said.
Hasenauer said he hasn't heard any reports of waterfowl or marine animals turning up.
Brower said it wouldn't necessarily surprise him if the substance turns out to be some sort of naturally occurring phenomenon, but the borough is waiting until it gets the analysis back from the samples before officials say anything more than they're not sure what it is.
"From the air, it looks brownish with some sheen, but when you get close and put it up on the ice and in the bucket, it's kind of blackish stuff ... (and) has hairy strands on it."
Hasenauer said the Coast Guard's samples are being analyzed in Anchorage. Results may be back sometime next week, he said.
The two Coast Guard experts sent up to overfly the area with the borough said they saw nothing that resembled an oil slick, Hasenauer said.
"We brought back one sample of what they believe to be an algae," he said, and a big algae bloom is one possibility.
"It's textbook for us to consider algae because of all the false reports of oil spills we've had in the past. It's one of the things that typically comes up" when a report turns out not to be an oil spill after all.
But, he said, "there's all types of natural phenomena that it could be."
Meanwhile, the brownish-blackish gunk is drifting along the coast to the northeast, Brower said.
"This stuff is moving with the current," he said. "It's now on beyond Barrow and probably going north at this point. And people are still encountering it out here off Barrow."
For the most part, the mystery substance seems to have stayed away from shore.
"We did get some residents saying it was being pushed against the shoreline by ice in some areas," Brower said, "but then we get another east wind, and it gets pushed back out there."#
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