Waste Water treatment Plant

By Thomas J. "Tom" Malson

First, growth never has and never will be the reason we have regulatory issues with our current plant. Simply put, the regulations have changed for our City to get a new 5-year permit to operate our existing waste water treatment plant for our existing plant capacity for our existing citizens now living in our existing city. Any new plant expansion always has and always will be paid for by new development.

There is nothing "nice" about this problem and whoever is on your City Council has only "wicked" decision options to choose from. Our rates will go up and due to Prop 218, passed by the citizens of California; discounted rates (for low income & seniors) can no longer be subsidized by other rate payers. The best any Council can do is to balance current and future needs while insuring that regulatory permit requirements can be met, all the while doing their best to minimize the cost to our citizen's. Council Members do not get discounts; we pay the same bills you do and have NO incentive to spend any more money on this then we absolutely have to.

The California Central Valley Water Board is the agency calling all the shots here, not your City Council. They now require us to comply with 112 different components (last permit only had 35). In addition we now have what is called a "zero dilution discharge permit" and we are classified as discharging into a potential drinking water source. This means that our discharge water must be clean enough to be used as a drinking water source and all chlorine's must be completely removed from it (adding millions of dollars to the cost). It is also the first permit issued in California that specifically required tertiary filtration (water board estimate is "$18,000,000"). What this means is that we can no longer use a time proven chlorine disinfection system, but now must go to a much more costly ultraviolet type system. Furthermore, since it is a "zero dilution" discharge permit we can not use any receiving waters (like a river or an ocean) to comply with permitting limit requirements. In fact the Water Board has told us that this type of requirement will be more common in the future. What this means is that our discharge water must meet all requirements before it leaves the plant. Also, no water of any kind (even if completely clean) can leave the plant except at the permitted discharge point. This makes it extremely critical that all spray fields are graded to drain BACK to the plant and our plant lands are not for cattle grazing or raising crops + their sole purpose is to evaporate plant water in the most efficient way possible.

At present we are "hoping" that we can meet regulatory requirements with our current secondary treatment system and then tertiary filtration and not have to build engineered wetlands, which are expensive to design, construct and operate. Please do not confuse engineered wetlands with "wetlands" they are NOT the same. Engineered wetlands have only one purpose; they are designed and constructed to remove certain particulates in waste water to below permit requirements for each specific waste water treatment plant.

Our permit is also referred to as a "tertiary plus" permit meaning we must go to a tertiary system and then another treatment process on top of that to meet permit requirements. That is where the engineered wetlands come into play, at the very end of the process. There has also been a lot of discussion about continuing land application of our waste water. Since we are very close to plant capacity, if we had all the open land around the current plant it would still not be enough for any expansion with a "zero dilution" permit.