Water Board Meeting Notes

I attended the Regional Water Quality Control Board's meeting today in SLO. Staffer David LaCaro was giving an update to the Board on the status of the wastewater project. John Waddell, Project Manager from the County, was there to answer questions from the Board. The Los Osos regulars were there too of course.

The first and only public comment at Public Forum (comments for items not on the agenda) mentioned CDOs (Cease and Desist orders). You might recall those orders were issued because the LOCSD Board stopped the sewer project in 2005 after a recall election. These orders were "the stick" to get a sewer project going again as the Water Board was NOT pleased, to say the least. This technique was objected to by a group called PZLDF and they went to court to try to overturn these orders. They kept losing in court after higher court—up the food chain—but until they stopped suing the Water Board, the Water Board was not going to drop the CDOs. It finally ended, and you can read about it here, but since the sewer IS being built, the CDOs are meaningless and the desire to drop them was forgotten until now. The request was noted for investigation by the Water Board's legal counsel.

There was a report on a field trip to the sewer project by Water Board Vice Chair Dr. Wolff. It had been attended by two locals, LOCSD District Engineer Rob Miller, the Water Board's Executive Officer Kenneth Harris and board members including  Dr. Wolff. How this trip came into being is a bit of a mystery, as only a large community activist and a local developer represented the public of Los Osos on this trip. I looked back on Water Board minutes and my notes from a meeting on February 1, 2013 and found that Chairperson Young had directed board members Wolff and Hunter to a sub-committee meeting with the County at the that Water Board meeting to study the wastewater plans. I'm not sure what the nexus to this trip might be or why this trip happened. In any case, the report was glowing, that the project was coming along in an organized and clean fashion. Not what some Los Osos members of the audience wanted to hear.

Anyway, not to write a book, but the main points were these:

• On the water to dewater from the trenches, there was only 10% of the expected amount predicted;
• Some areas expected to have high groundwater had none;
• It was clear that both discharge to land and bay were permitted;
• The Water Board has an unclear, or not much of an, ability to influence the ISJ;
• There were 12 citizen comments and 3 agency comments on the Draft Basin Plan;
• The Draft Basin Plan has no timeline to meet the goals;
• The Basin Plan should hopefully be released in early 2014;
• Anything Los Osos water purveyors wish to do regarding water improvements requires coastal review;
• Dr. Hunter had multiple questions on everything and was asked by Dr. Wolff to give other Board members a chance to get their questions out;
• Private well metering was discussed in the context of getting accurate data for modeling the basin—the Board of Supes can issue ordinances forcing well owners to meter, but politically it is a burning-burning-burning hot potato;
• Walker Ditch (used for three weeks only) and the Solano pump station property are no longer needed for dewatering;
• The contractors are rapidly wrapping up dewatering, the flows average 50,000 gallons per day now;
• Dewatering water is going into a blackberry thicket and a eucalyptus grove where plant uptake helps to remove nitrates;
• The salts in the dewater water are significantly less than has the seawater in the bay;
• The dollar per acre foot cost on the recycled water being sold to the farmers is comparable to their pumping costs to give them incentive to use it;
• Once the resistant farmers see how well the farmers taking the treated water are doing, they will be encouraged to sign up;
• The Board was VERY unhappy getting Keith Wimer's hugely long Draft Basin Plan comments submitted 5 minutes before the meeting started; several Board members commented on that. The staff will read the document and make comments in May;
• Some of the public's comments on the wastewater project do not fall into the Water Board's preview;
• The Water Board cannot assist Los Osos citizens if they do not like their Supervisors, as they are elected;
• The Regional Water Board has no latitude to change the nitrate limit requirements (none at this time) in the discharge permit, those comments should go to the State Board;
• Mr. Young and Mr. Harris spoke to the public commenter's and Dr. Hunter's hoopla over the amount of nitrate in the dewatering water going into the bay—

 —the reason we are here today is because of the environmental impacts of the septic flows into the bay....any pumping into the bay is minor compared to what is going in there now. Any nitrate impacts to the bay (if there even are some) are transitory and will self correct (example; the Elkhorn Slough);

• Mr. Young would rather staff take up issues on saltwater intrusion than those around dewatering water's nitrates.

Great staff report by Mr. LaCaro and very helpful background information from Mr. Waddell, thank you both!

And that was pretty much it. (Meeting time: two and one half hours.)

Our new CSD General Manager was in attendance which was a good thing. Her professional, positive, friendly attitude is vital to the success in the relations between the CSD and the County on the subject of the wastewater treatment plant.