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Current Articles A Tough Call on Wastewater Awaits Council February 10, 2003 By
CHRIS COURSEY It may be the toughest political decision the Santa Rosa City Council ever makes. So don't expect this council to make it. Or the council in office four years from now, or the one four years after that. But sooner or later -- within the next 20 to 30 years at the latest -- Santa Rosa leaders will face a choice of staggering political proportions. The issue combines the Big Three concerns of Sonoma County residents in the last quarter of the 20th century, and the beginning of the 21st: growth, wastewater and the environment. Something has to give. Observers got a taste of the process last week, when the city's Board of Public Utilities voted to breathe life back into a plan that would transport Santa Rosa's wastewater for disposal into the Pacific Ocean somewhere off of Bodega Bay. That "ocean outfall" plan, which is used by 92 other jurisdictions up and down the California coast, has lurked around Santa Rosa's sewage deliberations for decades. It's simple. It's efficient. It's almost infinitely expandable. And it's a political nightmare. Ocean lovers, fishermen, coastal advocates and others long have opposed the city's ocean outfall alternative. The city has responded that the ocean is needed as an option, because other possible disposal methods might not work. But in September, the City Council finally acknowledged that the option is unlikely to be politically feasible and dropped it from the city's long-range plans. Four months later, though, it's back. Because of new rules governing the release of toxic substances into rivers and streams, along with questions about habitat for the endangered tiger salamander on the Santa Rosa Plain, the city's existing fallback options for wastewater disposal have come into question. The Russian River, where hundreds of millions of gallons of treated wastewater are released during high winter flows, may become off-limits. New storage ponds or irrigation sites -- now sited on the broad plain between Santa Rosa and Sebastopol -- may be impossible to develop because of concerns about endangered salamanders. "This is not about growth," Deputy City Manager Ed Brauner said at last week's utility board meeting. But of course it is, at least in part. Because eventually, growth has to become part of the equation. Eventually, city leaders must decide among three options: restrict growth, send wastewater to the ocean or put treated sewage back into the ground, where it will become a recycled part of our water supply. Growth decisions that already have been made require the city to add disposal options beyond the current $180 million Geysers pipeline project. And growth beyond the 2020 general plan will add extra pressure to find disposal methods that aren't limited by land availability or river regulations. Even if a plan to restore salt marshes on the edge of San Pablo Bay proves workable -- as utilities board members expressed hope in last week -- it's only a temporary solution. That $200-300 million project may be limited to a 20-year life span, a city consultant said. Which will leave the city, ultimately, facing the same questions. Should growth -- and the sewage it produces -- be stopped or restricted? Should we spend $400 million to clean up the wastewater and pump it back into our drinking water supply? Should we build a pipeline and dump it in the Pacific? The implications of each of those questions are enormous. Each has huge economic, political and environmental costs. The politician who says "yes" to any one of them will be vilified, threatened with lawsuits, maybe even voted out of office. But, eventually, an answer will have to be given. The only question is, by whom? Contact
Chris Coursey at 521-5223 or ccoursey@pressdemocrat.com.
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