_{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.