Thumbnail photo by James Brooks
Following a public hearing and the adoption of increased sewer rates, Crescent City City Manager Eric Wier said staff have begun pursuing the state funding connected to the utility’s next phase.
The next phase involves installing the infrastructure the sewer plant needs to meet updated National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit regulations.
After fining the city $228,000 for not complying with those stricter permitting regulations last year, the state has given Crescent City five, potentially 10 years, to make those upgrades, according to Wier.
On Monday, the City Council unanimously approved spending about $1.2 million in California State Water Quality Control Board grant dollars to find a consultant to complete 30% of the project’s design. The consultant will also finish an Infill and Infiltration study to determine where the city’s sewage collection system is vulnerable to stormwater encroachment.
“It’ll be the same consultant team that will then take it to the 100% design (phase) and then upon approval of all the funding that we need, we’ll go out for bid and construction of the project,” he said.
Three months ago, councilors had allocated about $951,000 in grant dollars to Jacobs Engineering to do a basis of design report, which accounted for about 10% completion of the project.
On Monday, the city manager said his staff had submitted an application for a $50 million forgivable loan to the Water Quality Control Board — the same agency that fined the city — to complete the design, permitting and construction phases.
However, at an estimated cost of between $46 million and $86 million, Wier said there would be some valued engineering needed.
Wier’s presentation to the City Council on Monday came after a Proposition 218 protest failed to halt an increase in water and sewer rates. This project is not part of that rate increase, he told Redwood Voice Community News on Thursday.
“If people do have questions or concerns … they can call me at any time and we can sit down and talk about any of the information they would like to know more about,” he said.
At issue is whether the sewer plant can meet new NPDES permit requirements governing total Coliform bacteria limits. During dry weather, the plant’s 50-year-old rotating biological contactors and its more recently-installed membrane biological reactor can meet those requirements, Wier said.
During wet weather, Crescent City’s plant isn’t able to meet those stricter NPDES permit requirements, Wier said. This is why the State Water Quality Control Board issued a time schedule order that allows the city’s former permit to apply once inflow into the plant exceeds its capacity.
However, in addition to installing upgraded equipment to replace the rotating biological contactors and a second membrane bioreactor, councilors also approved allocating about $1 million in grant dollars to analyze the almost 60-miles of pipe that collects the community’s sewage.
Wier said the goal is to figure out and eliminate the more egregious infill and infiltration points that allow stormwater to get into the system during major storms.
“The sewer system and the storm water system are two complete separate systems,” he said. “Storm water should not be entering the sewer system.”
The sewer plant’s original headworks were built in 1958 and one of the first upgrades involved installing the plant’s primary clarifiers in 1972. These are still working and will be operational into the future, Wier said.
The plant’s membrane biological reactor was part of the plant’s big expansion. Crescent City completed its last major upgrade to the wastewater treatment plant in 2011 thanks to a $40 million loan from the Water Quality Control Board’s Division of Finance.
In 2016, city officials successfully renegotiated the terms of its loan, reducing the interest to 0% and extending the terms to 30 years, Wier said in March. According to him, this saved rate payers $14 million.
