When it rains, it pollutes

During storms, most local wastewater agencies dump raw sewage into the Bay; EBMUD's storm-water permit being reviewed now

Despite having spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build state-of-the-art secondary-treatment sewage plants, every rainy season local water-treatment agencies let hundreds of millions of gallons of sewage flow into San Francisco Bay with no or only minimal treatment.

During larger rainstorms the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) discharges sewage from three "wet-weather facilities", one at Point Isabel near northern Albany and two in Oakland Harbor. The sewage receives minimal treatment; the harder it rains, the greater the discharge and the more minimal the treatment. The volumes are immense. From 1998 - 2003 the Point Isabel facility has averaged 8.6 "discharge events" per year, and total discharges from the three facilities have ranged from 214 to 549 million gallons per year.

The Clean Water Act requires that all municipal sewage be treated to "secondary treatment" standards. Secondary treatment involves first subjecting sewage to "primary treatment" (screening, removing grit, and allowing solids to settle out) and then running sewage through biological treatment systems which break down many toxic pollutants and filter out pollutants which don't break down. EBMUD's wet-weather facilities, however, provide only a limited form of primary treatment plus disinfection.

This wet-weather discharge is heavily contaminated with numerous toxic pollutants, including many of the same pollutants that have gotten the Bay onto the official list of polluted waters. For example, these facilities have discharged mercury at more than 10 times the water-quality standard meant to protect the Bay, dioxin compounds at six times the standard, DDT and dieldrin at about 20 times the standards for each of these pesticides, the pesticide breakdown product heptachlor expoxide at 50 times the standard, lead at nearly four times the standard, and cyanide at 28 times the standard. Secondary treatment would reduce these pollutants dramatically, mostly to levels within the standards.

EBMUD and the cities it serves are supposed to have a "separated" sewer system, with stormwater going into a separate set of pipes and not mixing with the sanitary sewage. In fact, however, many sewer lines are old, poorly designed, neglected - and leaky. Storm water works its way into the sanitary-sewer pipes, causing sewage flows to peak drastically. As currently designed, the sanitary-sewer system can't carry these peak flows to the main EBMUD treatment plant near the eastern entrance to the Bay Bridge. EBMUD and the nine cities whose sanitary sewers flow into the EBMUD system have devoted over half a billion dollars to the "infiltration/inflow" problem, but have not yet succeeded in fixing it. Much of the remaining infiltration probably comes from the private laterals that connect customers to the sanitary-sewer system. The city of Albany requires testing and repair/replacement of private laterals when residences are sold, and Berkeley is considering a more comprehensive ordinance on sewer laterals, but most EBMUD cities have not addressed this issue, largely due to the concerns of the realty industry.

EBMUD built its three wet-weather facilities to handle these peak flows, and these facilities are an improvement over the past, when overloaded sewers spilled peak flows of raw sewage into the Bay with no treatment. Most local water-treatment agencies still dump completely untreated wet-weather overflows without even EBMUD's level of primary treatment, but EBMUD's reported overflows are far larger, and EBMUD's treatment of them falls far short of the Clean Water Act standards. All these sewage discharges are still a significant source of on-going pollution to a seriously degraded Bay.

One local agency has devised an effective solution to this problem. The Central Contra Costa Sanitary District has constructed holding reservoirs large enough to hold all of its storm water until it can be treated. Most California cities are implementing measures to reduce infiltration and inflow and to convey peak flows to their main secondary-treatment plants. Such measures include adding "relief" sewers, fixing or replacing old leaky sewers, and building intermediate-storage facilities to hold peak flows until storms subside. Technology exists for making satellite treatment systems such as EBMUD's much more effective at removing pollution, but we know of no other California city using the strategy of satellite primary-treatment points.

A new permit, same mess

Unfortunately, EBMUD and the Bay Area Regional Water Quality Control Board are avoiding change. The Regional Board last issued a Clean Water Act permit to EBMUD for its wet-weather facilities in January 1998. This permit allowed the facilities to discharge without secondary treatment, relying on a 1986 opinion letter from the federal Environmental Protection Agency stating that this was permissible.

In 2004 EPA issued a new opinion letter stating that the previous letter was in error and that the Clean Water Act plainly requires secondary treatment or the equivalent. The 1998 permit expired in January 2003, and it is past time to issue a new one. The Sierra Club and other environmental groups have called upon the Regional Board to impose secondary-treatment standards as specified in the Clean Water Act. The Regional Board, however, has drafted a new permit with no requirement for secondary treatment. It further proposes to grant a "compliance schedule" expressly excusing EBMUD from essentially all limits for toxic pollutants for the permit's entire term. The Board has repeatedly delayed final action on its draft permit in the face of substantial opposition from environmental groups, but Regional Board officials have indicated that they are likely to finalize the draft permit in March or April.

What You Can Do

Speak out at the Regional Board's public hearing on the EBMUD wet-weather-facility permit, which will be announced in February or March on the Regional Board's website at www.swrcb.ca.gov/rwqcb2/

You can also send letters or comments to the Regional Board and requests to be notified about the hearing to:

Ann Powell
San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board (Region 2)
1515 Clay St., #1400
Oakland, CA 94612
(510) 622-2474

Urge the Board to issue a permit for EBMUD's wet-weather facilities that requires full secondary-treatment levels of pollutant reduction. EBMUD's primary-treatment facilities represent some improvement over past practices, but fall far short of what is needed to protect Bay water quality. It is important to make sure that EBMUD follows through and solves the problem.