_{Thumbnail: Crescent City has five, up to 10, years to bring its wastewater treatment plant up to date, City Manager Eric Wier said. | Photo by James Brooks}

Updated at 10 a.m. Thursday to make some corrections. Crescent City hasn’t been under a cease and desist order since 2011 and it didn’t receive a cease and desist order in August, though it was fined. City Manager Eric Wier also said that the rotating biological contactors aren’t able to meet the stricter NPDES standards on total Coliform.

Crescent City Manager Eric Wier blamed aging infrastructure and stricter pollutant discharge limits for the $228,000 fine the cease and desist order the sewer plant received last August.

But he differed from a member of the public who argued that the city’s 76 National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit violations were due to new connections.

The sewer plant can meet new NPDES permit requirements governing total Coliform bacteria limits during dry weather, the city manager told Councilors on Monday. When it storms, however, the plant’s rotating biological contactors — equipment installed in the 1970s — are overwhelmed can’t produce effluent that complies with those stricter standards, he said.

“The loading and the hooking (up), what we’re talking about as far as connections go, isn’t our problem,” Wier said, adding that the fine imposed on the city could be used to bring it back into compliance. “It’s dealing with this wet weather and not having a secondary biological treatment that can efficiently deal with the new permit requirements.”

Crescent City has five years — potentially 10 — to replace its rotating biological contactors with new technology and ensure another more up-to-date piece of equipment, its membrane biological reactor, has the redundancy necessary to meet wet weather demand. Other needed upgrades to the plant include replacing other “key facilities” that are past their useful life, including the HVAC system.

Councilors on Monday adopted a basis of design report from Jacobs Engineering. According to Wier, this report is needed for the city to pursue $50 million in grants from the Clean Water State Revolving Fund. Crescent City may also qualify for low-interest loans if the project cost exceeds the grant maximum.

The project cost ranges from $46 million to $86 million, Wier said.

“”It’s not going to be cheap,” he said. “Eighty-six (million) is not going to be affordable. At that point we’re really going to have to buckle down and look at value engineering options and try to get it within this funding source.”

The basis of design report will also allow Crescent City to seek a consultant who would finish designing the project, Wier said. The report from Jacobs Engineering was paid for through a $951,000 technical assistance grant the California Water Quality Control Board awarded to the city in 2021.

Councilors also found that the upgrades to the wastewater treatment plant are exempt from California Environmental Quality Act requirements. According to Bob Brown, acting city planning director and a consultant with SHN Consulting, construction will stay within the walls of the existing facility. Biological and cultural studies also found there would be no significant impact to cultural resources or endangered species as a result of the project.

On Feb. 12, the Crescent City Planning Commission submitted a request to the California Coastal Commission for a consolidated permit, Brown said. 

“It was a decision to give up the city’s right to issue a coastal development permit, which could be appealable to the Coastal Commission and just have the Coastal Commission handle the whole thing,” he said. “They’ll be looking at the cultural report, the biological report and other aspects of the project. They’re looking at the project as a whole.”

Crescent City will also apply for a California Coastal Commission Coastal Development Permit for the project, Brown said. Coastal commissioners will also be concerned about the timing of the process to ensure the city’s wastewater continues to be treated during the construction. There will be another public hearing with the Coastal Commission, Brown said.

Crescent City completed its last major upgrade to the wastewater treatment plant in 2011 thanks to a $40 million loan from the California Water Quality Control Board’s Division of Finance. The city was paying 2.4% interest on the 20-year loan, Wier said.

In 2016, city officials successfully renegotiated the terms of the loan, reducing the interest to 0%, but extending the terms to 30 years. According to Wier, this saved rate payers $14 million.

Since 2019, Crescent City has contracted Jacobs Engineering to operate the wastewater treatment plant.

On Monday, Wier said the treatment plant is capable of producing “high quality effluent.” That hasn’t changed, but meeting state requirements have gotten harder.

On Thursday, the city manager told Redwood Voice that the state has granted the city five to 10 years to be able to make improvements to address the violations that were noted over the summer. Those violations put the city in a better position to receive the funding necessary to make those upgrades, he said.

Jody Mangum, a resident who ran for City Council in 2008, said she remembers the community discussion surrounding the wastewater treatment plant upgrade that was finished in 2011. Between 250 and 300 people showed up at the Cultural Center, she said, and police were also there in case there was “an eruption of people being upset about the bill doubling because of the expansion component,” she said.

In addition to asking why a moratorium hasn’t been declared on new sewer connections, Mangum asked about broken storm drains coming into the plant. She also pointed out that Crescent City has expanded a lot since 2008. 

Mangum raised concerns about the effluent draining from the plant to the ocean as well as the number of new housing units being constructed within the city limits.

“We want to see this community be the greatest that it could be and that means stop hooking up to the wastewater treatment plant,” she said. “You can’t keep hooking up to the wastewater treatment plant because it’s not working. And I’m not sure when you’re planning on fixing that, but it’s a serious situation.”

Mayor Pro Tem Candace Tinkler, however, pointed out that more people use Crescent City’s sewer system during the dry weather, particularly during the 4th of July. 

“Many years ago I read that the City of Palm Springs used to be able to tell, to a person, how many college kids came there during their spring break based on their wastewater treatment levels,” she said. “One of the things we’re dealing with is that we are a temperate rainforest and it rains hard here.”

Plant manager Austin Nova, who worked for the city before he worked for Jacobs Engineering, said he and his staff do see higher concentrations of suspended solids during the dry weather. But the membrane biological reactor is able to handle that because the water flows are lower, he said.

“I can produce water clean enough (that) you can see clear to the bottom of our clarifier. I’m proud of that, and that’s part of the MBR,” he said, adding that he’s also a fisherman. “I want to see these upgrades go through just so we’re able to protect the ocean.”