Amador County – Jackson City Council last week discussed a tentative Time Schedule Order for its wastewater treatment plant, and learned it could lead to the lifting of minimum fines, but also open the city to potentially larger fines for noncompliance.
City Manager Mike Daly said the city discharges into U.S. waters and must follow federal law. The California Regional Water Quality Control Board “dictates exactly what we can have in the wastewater when we discharge it into the creek.”
“The kicker” in 2007 was “state implementation policies” and Mandatory Minimum Penalties for violations at the city wastewater treatment plant. The “Migden Fines” are named for San Francisco State Assemblywoman Carole Migden, who wrote the Clean Water Act, and the fines go toward compliance projects at the plant.
Harold Welborn of Stantec Engineering said he thinks often about Migden “tying the city’s hands” and leaving them “no ability to change the Minimum Mandatory Penalties.” The Board cannot respond, and fines become their money. If the city wants to get the fine money back, they “need to come up with compliance projects to accomplish that. Coming up with parts of a $500,000 project” and “doing portions of it,” he said, are not as good as doing the entire project. He said a large project will solve all of the problems, but when you take out the small parts, it makes it difficult.
Welborn said the city faces the Time Schedule Order, cease & desist, toxic rule limits, and “we are caught in a time crunch,” which could “put us into Midgen trouble.”
Each Minimum fine is $3,000 and the plant gets 5-10 violations a month. Penalties come from different metals, byproducts of dechlorination, and final filtering. The city already has had an “administrative civil liability order,” the money going for a filter replacement project.
The $147,000 in penalties last year, included $12,000 for salinity, Daly said, but you can’t do a salinity project for $12,000. The city has been working with the Regional Board on the Time Schedule Order, which excuses Minimum Mandatory Penalties. This fiscal year penalties have totaled $84,000.
On Sept. 29, the city received the tentative Time Schedule Order, with a March 2015 deadline to complete a project to better treat effluent. The tentative Schedule is out for public review and comment until Oct. 31. With comments, it would get review in December by the Regional Board, Daly said.
Chief Wastewater Treatment Plant Operator Eric Neuschmid has his hands full, Daly said. The plant is under strict orders with the Time Schedule and it can slip back into the penalty mode, where fines can be larger.
Story by Jim Reece This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
