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California Sportfishing Protection Alliance
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State Board Tentatively Rules for CSPA on City of Stockton Appeal

 

August 6, 2009 -- The State Water Resources Control Board (State Board) issued a tentative decision on the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance's (CSPA) appeal of the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board's (Regional Board) wastewater discharge permit for the City of Stockton Wastewater Treatment Plant on August 4, 2009, .  The tentative order agrees with a number of CSPA's objections to the permit and remands the permit back to the Regional Board to revise in compliance with state and federal law.

Westlands and the San Luis & Delta-Mendota Water Authority (Westlands) and the City of Stockton also appealed the permit.  Stockton challenged the electrical conductivity (EC) limits, the inclusion of a salinity reduction goal and required monitoring and claimed the State Board's Bay-Delta Plan does not apply to the city.  Westlands supported CSPA's allegations regarding EC.  

The Stockton treatment plant discharges up to 55 million gallons of treated effluent a day to the San Joaquin River within the Sacramento-Dan Joaquin Delta.  The Delta in the vicinity of the discharge is heavily polluted and is identified as “impaired” because of chlorpyrifos, DDT, diazinon, dioxin, EC, exotic species, furan compounds, group A pesticides, mercury, pathogens, PCBs, and unknown toxicity.

The identified beneficial uses of the receiving waters include: municipal and domestic supply; industrial supply; agriculture supply; contact and noncontact recreation; cold and warm freshwater habitat; spawning, reproduction, and early development; and wildlife habitat.

The Regional Board adopted the permit in October 2008 and CSPA filed an appeal with the State Board alleging that the permit was illegal, failed to comply with mandated regulations and was not protective of the receiving waters.

A number of issues CSPA raised were not addressed in the Order, including: exemption from Title 27 requirements, effluent limits for aluminum and oil & grease, failure to include mass limits, inadequate antidegradation analysis, backsliding and the use of hardness in computing effluent limits.  CSPA will seek to have the State Board address these issues in the scheduled workshop but, if necessary, may need to litigate to resolve our concerns.

However, the State Board agreed with CSPA on several important issues, namely improper mixing zones and EC limits.  The State Board's tentative order concludes that:

1.     The Regional Board must revise the effluent limitation for electrical conductivity so that they are not contingent on submission or and compliance with a salinity plan.
2.     The Regional Board must clarify whether there is a basis for a mixing zone for human health criteria and, if so, specify the boundaries of the mixing zone.  If necessary, the effluent limitations for chlorodibromomethane, dichlorobromomethane, manganese, and nitrate plus nitrite should be revised.

Comments on the tentative order are due by noon on 3 September 2009 and a workshop is scheduled for 15 September 2009.  The State Board will make a final decision at a later date.

The decision represents the seventh time in little more than a year that the State Board has remanded a CSPA appealed permit back to the Regional Board with direction to comply with basic regulations.  CSPA has some 50 appeals still pending before the State Board of Regional Board actions that do not comply with the law and are not protective of water quality.  CSPA is the only organization routinely reviewing and commenting on proposed waste discharge permits throughout the Central Valley