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CSD fined $200,000 for wastewater handling

Published Tuesday, February 27, 2007

The Community Services District has been fined $200,000 for violating the cease and desist order issued by a state regulatory agency last year and wastewater discharge requirements.

The cost works out to $80 for each of the district's 2,500 ratepayers.

The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board issued a notice of violation to the CSD in December, citing the district for failing to keep wastewater treatment plant ponds lowered to the required level, exceeding the limit specified in the cease and desist order for annual wastewater inflow to the treatment plant, and for discharging wastewater to surface waters in April 2006 in violation of wastewater discharge requirements. The notice also flagged inconsistencies in monitoring and reporting.

The notice informed the CSD of possible fines totaling thousands of dollars per day for the various violations. The CSD responded to the notice of violation by the Jan. 15 deadline and discussed its response at the January CSD board meeting.

On Monday, the process moved to the next level when the CSD received notification of the fine from the regional board by certified mail. The CSD has the option of appearing at a hearing in early May or waiving the hearing and paying the fine by March 25. That is also the deadline for the CSD to submit written comments to the regional board for consideration at the May hearing. Documentation for the notice of violation and the fine is available here.

Half the fine is payable to the State Water Cleanup and Abatement Account and the remaining $100,000 is payable to the Waste Discharge Permit Fund.

The CSD discharged approximately 13 million gallons of tertiary treated wastewater to the Cosumnes River when it made deliveries to Bass Lake in April 2006 to relieve storage constraints at the wastewater treatment plant during the wet spring.

Tertiary-treated wastewater meets standards for recycled water established by the state Department of Health Services under Title 22 of the California Code of Regulations. The water is used by the Country Club to irrigate the golf courses and stored in golf courses lakes and Bass Lake during the irrigation season.

The water the CSD released to Bass Lake in April was treated to Title 22 standards, chlorinated, and then de-chlorinated, according to the regional board's documentation on the discharge.

On Tuesday, when asked how the CSD was going to respond, General Manager Ed Crouse said he couldn't comment until the CSD directors had a chance to review the complaint. "We're going to be reviewing it and talking to our consultants and attorneys," he said.

Crouse, who has been with the district since 1994, said, as far as he knows, this is the first time the CSD has been fined.