Department of Water Resources
California Water News
A daily compilation of significant news articles and comment
July 23, 2009
4. Water Quality –
Stimulus funds to help clean up Colorado Lagoon
Long Beach Press-Telegram
Local oil drilling part of state budget deal
Santa Maria Times
City finalizes water agreement with Kit Carson School
Hanford Sentinel
Sewer plant now up and running
Santa Rosa Press Democrat
New wastewater plant provides multiple benefits
Santa Rosa Press Democrat
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Stimulus funds to help clean up Colorado Lagoon
Long Beach Press-Telegram-7/22/09
By Joe Segura
More than $3.2 million in federal stimulus funds have been earmarked for the city's effort to improve the the Colorado Lagoon's water quality.
Long Beach, Port of Long Beach, Long Beach Transit, and the Army Corps of Engineers have received $44,378,956 in stimulus dollars, with $23,528,816 more expected within the next month, according to city spokesman Ed Kamlan.
The $3.2 million funding - from the State Water Resources Control Board - is part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
The primary goals of the newly funded project, according to the spokesman, include:
Clean and modify the underground culvert that connects the Colorado Lagoon to Marine Stadium.
Construct a bioswale on the western lagoon area to help filter runoff.
Construct a low-flow diversion system to redirect dry-weather run-off into the sewer system.
The project will also include a diversion system to capture contaminated rain flows.
Construction of the bioswale will begin in September, according to Kamlan. Work on the culvert and low-flow diversion systems, he said, will begin in early 2010.
It is anticipated that the project will create or retain about 15 direct construction jobs and other related jobs associated with the engineering work, permitting effort, and project and construction management, Kamlan said.#
Local oil drilling part of state budget deal
Santa Maria Times-7/23/09
By Sam Womack
An offshore oil drilling project that once had strong local support has drawn vocal opposition since the governor added it to the state’s budget proposal this week.
But a representative for the proposed operator, Plains Exploration and Production Co. (PXP), said Santa Barbara County residents can still expect the same benefits from the project off Vandenberg Air Force Base even though the agency approving the project has changed.
A “ground-breaking” agreement between PXP and local environmental groups who have always opposed oil production — including the Environmental Defense Center, Get Oil Out! and Citizens Planning Association — still applies, said Steve Rusch, PXP vice president of governmental affairs.
“There have been a lot of misstatements ... from the various news and print media,” he said.
Project approval, Rusch explained, means PXP shuts down two offshore oil platforms and two onshore processing facilities in the county in less than 15 years.
Also, 4,000 acres of property near Lompoc would be preserved, the project’s greenhouse gas emissions would be mitigated, and funding to purchase clean buses would be provided to the county.
With all the benefits of his company’s project, Rusch said, “if the opponents are successful, the coast could be at greater risk.”
“It isn’t about ‘new’ platforms and pipelines. PXP will use its existing Platform Irene, using well-proven slant-drill technology,” Rusch added.
Platform Irene is in federal waters, but an extended-reach slant drill will be used to tap oil reserves in Tranquillon Ridge under state waters, which are within three miles of the coastline.
The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors approved the PXP proposal in October after dozens of residents and activists expressed their support, but the three-member State Lands Commission later denied it.
Now, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders must convince two-thirds of both houses of the Legislature to approve the state budget compromise they hammered out this week, which includes a bill regarding PXP’s project.
The legislation would allow the state director of finance to overturn the Lands Commission’s decision and grant approval.
But it would still need the green light from the California Coastal Commission and the federal Minerals Management Service, according to Thomas Sheehy, chief deputy director of policy of the Department of Finance.
Once all the permits were issued, PXP would write the state a check for $100 million, as an advance payment on royalties.
Over the life of the project, the state could receive $1.8 billion in royalties and Santa Barbara County could get anywhere from $200 million to $313 million in property-tax revenue, according to Rusch.
The previously supportive environmental groups are displeased by the round-about approval because it skirts the system in place, EDC Executive Director David Landecker said.
Rather than count on the PXP project being approved with the same conditions through the state budget process, the EDC will continue to work to allay the Lands Commission’s concerns and reapply for the PXP approval at a later date, Landecker said.#
http://www.santamariatimes.com/articles/2009/07/23/news/news03.txt
City finalizes water agreement with Kit Carson School
Hanford Sentinel-7/23/09
By Eiji Yamashita
A rural eastern Kings County school got its wish Tuesday night from the Hanford City Council — water. On Tuesday, city decision-makers unanimously approved an arrangement to allow Kit Carson School to hook up to Hanford’s water system. The decision finalizes the agreement that has been under negotiation for several months.
Groundwater supplies at the school site on Seventh Avenue off Highway 198 do not meet the new federal standard for arsenic contamination level. Officials said the school district has made several attempts to address the issue by drilling deeper wells, but without success.
That has prompted the state Department of Public Health to recommend the school work with the city to secure safe drinking water. Tuesday’s council decision ratifies the preliminary OK it gave on the project in April.
Kit Carson’s Superintendent and Principal John Souza welcomed the city decision.
“Kit Carson is very pleased that the City Council approved allowing us to connect to their water system. This will solve our problem of arsenic in the water,” Souza said. “By ourselves, we had exhausted all possible solutions, so the only reasonable solution left was to connect to the city water.”
Under the agreement, Kit Carson will shoulder all the cost for the design and construction of the infrastructure improvement that would extend city water lines to the school and for the amendment of the city general plan to allow the provision of city water outside the city limits.
Kit Carson is one of many public agencies — schools and municipalities — facing expensive water infrastructure projects to bring their water into compliance with a federal arsenic standard that took effect in 2006.
Hanford itself is working on its own arsenic problem but is anticipated to meet the regulation by December.
Kit Carson’s water met the previous arsenic standard of 50 parts per billion but came out of compliance when the federal government lowered the standard to 10 ppb. Kit Carson water’s arsenic level fluctuates between 38 and 42 ppb.
Souza said the school had looked at options including filtration, but the system requiring filtration that would first lower the pH level before it could remove arsenic turned out to be too costly. So the school drilled a new well at the depth of 1,250 feet, but it still didn’t solve the problem, he said.
The school was ultimately faced with a fate of either providing bottled water to students or asking the city to help, Souza said.
Even with the city approval, it remains uncertain when the project could actually begin.
The $1.5 million project is shovel ready, but the construction is expected to be delayed because of the state budget crisis.
The project will be paid for by the state, but that’s both good and bad news, Souza said.
“I doubt that we will be able to start in the next six months,” Souza said. “There is bond money for this they’re trying to tap into. But all funds have been frozen in all these accounts. As a matter of fact, the state has not repaid us for drilling the well. They still owe us about $200,000.”#
http://hanfordsentinel.com/articles/2009/07/23/news/doc4a67510e4a785339788558.txt
Sewer plant now up and running
City prepares to celebrate completion of $114 million project that was 21 years in the making
Santa Rosa Press Democrat-7/23/09
By Corey Young
It took 21 years, 12 city councils and 262 acres of empty land, but Petaluma is no longer relying on a 1930s-era sewer plant.
This summer, the city turned on the pumps and filters at its $114 million Ellis Creek Water Recycling Facility, an enormous four-year infrastructure project and a linchpin in the community’s future water supply.
The completion of the Lakeville Highway plant will allow the city to stop using its Hopper Street treatment site, a 1938 facility once described as being held together with “Band-Aids and baling wire.”
The new plant could potentially last 100 years, and its treatment processes and methods will be the driving force behind Petaluma’s plan to turn sewage into re-usable wastewater to irrigate landscaping, parks and playing fields — thereby saving drinking water.
“By using recycled water for urban irrigation, we’ll be able to save that potable water being used right now,” said Mike Ban, the city’s director of water resources and conservation.
Using a combination of treatment methods, including ultraviolet rays and natural wetlands, the plant will produce more than 464 million gallons of recycled water a year — enough to offset the water use of 1,400 single-family homes, the city said.
After a new eastside reservoir and distribution pipe are built in the next couple of years, the city will begin tying nearby parks and landscaped areas into the recycled water system, Ban said.
“There are a couple of parks along the route, and Casa Grande High School,” he said. “Those would be the immediate ones right adjacent to the pipeline. Eventually we’ll bring it to Lucchesi and then continue out through the east side, out to parks like Eagle and the Corona area.”
The city is already using a lower class of recycled water, called secondary treated water, to irrigate local golf courses and agricultural land. The Ellis Creek plant will produce what’s called tertiary treated water, clean enough to be used on playing fields and for landscape irrigation.
“The amount of recycled water we can produce here is going to be higher, but it’s the quality that’s the difference,” Ban said. “Right now, we’re producing recycled water that can be used for irrigation of agricultural land and golf courses, but the tertiary recycled water that we’re going to be producing can be used on school grounds and even for irrigation of edible food crops.”
The completion of the plant is the culmination of a 21-year process to replace the Hopper Street facility.
Through numerous city councils and countless staff members, the city considered both privately and publicly run sewer plants, heard from 3,000 Petalumans who signed a petition asking for the use of wetlands in the treatment process — and as recently as November, turned back a sewer rate rollback measure that officials said would compromise the plant’s loan-repayment plan.
Grants from the California Coastal Conservancy and the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District helped purchase parts of the 262-acre project site, which includes public-access trails that connect to Shollenberger Park and Alman Marsh.
But the centerpiece of the site is the treatment operation, which transforms raw sewage into re-usable water through a system of screens, ditches, ponds and wetlands.
It’s a unique combination that has been called a “state-of-the-art” system and earlier this summer attracted the attention of 30 Japanese wastewater engineers, who made a side trip to Petaluma while in the United States for a wastewater equipment expo in Las Vegas.
“There are certainly plants that have components of what we’re doing here, but as far as putting all those different components together in one large plant, this facility is unique,” Ban said.
While the use of tertiary water outside the plant must wait until a distribution system is built, the city is putting that water to use inside the plant — to aid in the treatment process, irrigate the operations building’s “green roof” and even flush the toilets.
Since the plant reached “substantial completion” in mid-June, systems have been running well — a testament to the effort the city and its contractors put into preparing for the start-up phase, Ban said.
“It has gone very well, and I would attribute it to we’ve got a very good team that worked on this project,” he said. “Everybody’s who’s been involved with this has done outstanding work for the city. I think the other thing that has helped the project be successful is, we spent a lot of time planning the project — not only the construction but also the startup, which is a huge component.
“The perception is that you build the plant and that’s all you need to do — but that’s really just part of what has to happen. The coordination and the testing and making sure that all of the thousands of pieces of equipment that are here function as designed is a very intensive effort, and we began that work from the first day of construction.”
The planning and the careful selection of a project engineer, contractor and construction manager has paid off for the city, Ban said. The original $110 million construction cost has gone up by just 4 percent, or $4.4 million, less than what officials had expected.
“A good range for a job this big is 5-10 percent,” project manager Margaret Orr told the City Council Monday during her final monthly update on the project’s progress.
Orr was hired specifically to oversee construction of the plant and has done “an incredible job,” Ban said. “She is really the force behind getting this project completed on time.”
When construction began in October 2005, work progressed quickly — so quickly that the contractor, Kiewit, thought the project might be done in April of this year.
But the heavy winter rains in late 2005 and early 2006 used up all the expected weather days, inundating the newly graded site and dashing hopes of an early finish.
“It definitely impacted our ability to prosecute the work, but we were able to make up that time over the summer,” Ban said. “We worked very closely with the contractor to do what we could to help them make up that time, and the contractor did the same thing. Everybody was very interested in getting this project done in a timely manner and not letting something like that delay the completion.”
Since that first winter, the project has proceeded without any major hiccups, he said. Last year, the City Council authorized the hiring of 15 new city employees to run the plant, and nearly all of them are now on board, Ban said.
The city is planning a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the plant and the new trail system on Friday, July 31. Speakers will include Mayor Pamela Torliatt and Supervisor Mike Kerns, representing the open space district, as well as representatives of the coastal conservancy and Congress-woman Lynn Woolsey’s office.
“When this project began, there was a lot of community interest in doing exactly what we ended up with out here,” Ban said. “The grand opening is going to be a nice celebration to show off the facility that the community wanted.”#
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20090723/COMMUNITY/907229898
New wastewater plant provides multiple benefits
Santa Rosa Press Democrat-7/23/09
Editorial
A new sewer plant isn’t something people tend to get excited about. But Petaluma’s new $114 million Ellis Creek Water Recycling Facility isn’t just a run-of-the-mill sewer plant.
It’s a state-of-the-art system that is already attracting international attention. The plant, located on 262 acres off of Lakeville Highway on the southeast end of town, is unlike any facility of its kind.
Its primary purpose, of course, is to treat raw sewage. But it also is designed to transform sewage into re-usable wastewater to water lawns, parks, golf courses and playing fields — saving millions of gallons of more expensive potable water in the process.
The city will celebrate the opening of the facility with a ceremony on July 31. At that time, local residents will begin to realize the wisdom of the city’s decision to use wetlands in the treatment process instead of building a traditional, closed facility.
Open-water settling reservoirs, creatively designed in the shape of the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse, move the water from stage to stage by gravity feed — not costly pumping — and provide habitat for birds and animals.
Although the plant went online this summer — replacing the badly outdated 70-year-old Hopper Street treatment site — it will be a couple of years before the recycling component is fully operational.
Right now, the plant is producing secondary treated water used to irrigate two golf courses and nearby agricultural land. But the Ellis Creek plant is designed to recycle water to a higher quality, called tertiary treated water, which will be clean enough to be used to water school grounds and irrigate edible food crops.
An exciting byproduct of the plant is the adjacent Ellis Creek trail, which will provide a new destination for bird-watchers, nature lovers and hikers. The new trail links to the south end of Shollenberger Park’s 2.2-mile trail loop. If you start at the trailhead next to the Sheraton Hotel, the total distance past Alman Marsh, through Shollenberger Park and along the Ellis Creek trail and back is about 8 miles round trip.
The opening of the Ellis Creek segment of the trail is expected to attract thousands of birders and other eco-tourists to Petaluma. Visits from birders could even help to boost the local economy.
Parts of the project site and wetlands were purchased with grants from the California Coastal Conservancy and the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District, enabling the city to create the public-access trails at very low cost.
Despite these laudable achievements, not everyone is happy with the new plant. Petalumans for Fair Utility Rates placed an unsuccessful measure on the November 2008 ballot that would have rolled back water and sewer rates. Voters wisely rejected that reckless proposal after realizing it could have bankrupted the city.
But the PFUR folks are back again, this time collecting signatures for yet another costly ballot proposition to roll back sewer rates to their 2006 levels and cap future rate increases to the consumer price index.
While lowering sewer rates sounds good on the surface, this ill-advised proposition would devastate the city’s finances and services beyond the level already wrought by the recession. What signature gatherers are not telling people is that if their measure passes, city services would have to be drastically slashed in order to repay a multi-million-dollar loan from the state to build the plant.
Moreover, the city would be forced to default on the loan, have its credit rating shredded and face probable bankruptcy.
The city made the correct decision to replace its failing, circa-1938 sewer plant with the new one in order to meet increasingly stringent state guidelines for wastewater discharge while also producing recycled water and reducing demand for more expensive potable water.
The state loan carries an interest rate of just 2.4 percent, saving local ratepayers $60 million in interest charges.
To finance the new plant, the city adopted a rate structure that calls for increasingly higher rates over a five-year period that began in January 2007. The increases have left Petaluma’s rates in the mid range as compared to other cities in the county.
While utility rate increases represent a financial challenge for many families, especially during a recession, the reality is that building a new sewer treatment plant was not something the city could avoid doing.
Responding to citizens’ legitimate concerns about rates, the city has hired an independent consultant to evaluate the current rate structure against the operational, maintenance and repair costs of the new system.
The results of the study, expected next year, could produce ideas to reduce operating costs and potentially, the amount of pending rate increases.
If you’re approached by a signature gatherer promising how much money you can save if you sign their petition, you might want to ask how they propose the city will find the money to repay the loan without the necessary revenues.
Or invite them to go for a walk along the restored and expanded wetlands that constitute Petaluma’s new, state-of-the-art wastewater recycling facility.#
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20090723/COMMUNITY/907229912
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
DWR’s California Water News is distributed to California Department of Water Resources management and staff, for information purposes, by the DWR Public Affairs Office. For reader’s services, including new subscriptions, temporary cancellations and address changes, please use the online page: http://listhost2.water.ca.gov/mailman/listinfo/water_news . DWR operates and maintains the State Water Project, provides dam safety and flood control and inspection services, assists local water districts in water management and water conservation planning, and plans for future statewide water needs. Inclusion of materials is not to be construed as an endorsement of any programs, projects, or viewpoints by the Department or the State of California.
No comments:
Post a Comment