There is great interest and concern regarding the City of
Hollister’s efforts to implement a wastewater treatment and
disposal system to lift the current cease and desist order imposed
by the Regional Water Quality Control Board and to provide for the
healthy development of our community.
There is great interest and concern regarding the City of Hollister’s efforts to implement a wastewater treatment and disposal system to lift the current cease and desist order imposed by the Regional Water Quality Control Board and to provide for the healthy development of our community.
At times it may appear that little is being done to address this most significant issue, but I can assure the community that this is not the case. Great effort, in terms of both staff and financial resources, is being directed at this problem.
Since 2002, the city has completed a headworks and interim treatment project at a cost of over $5 million. The city funded and completed, in cooperation with the San Benito County Water District and San Benito County, a hydrogeologic study of conditions in the vicinity of the city’s wastewater treatment facilities. The city and San Benito County Water District are performing on-going monitoring as recommended in that report to aid in the understanding of the conditions in the vicinity of these treatment facilities.
The City Council has also selected a treatment process that will provide tertiary treatment and disinfection. The wastewater will be capable of meeting Title 22 standards, which is the standard that drinking water must meet. Design of this process is 90 percent complete pending development of a wastewater management strategy.
A wastewater management strategy is responsible use, reuse or disposal of the treated wastewater. Over 12,500 man-hours have been devoted to engineering, management and review work related to the treatment design and development of a long-term treatment improvements noted above.
The three agencies mentioned above have entered into agreements that will hopefully provide relationships and processes for the management of all water resources for our community in a broad and responsible manner. I believe that we as a community have an obligation to not only act as quickly as possibly, but as responsibly as possible. That is what we are doing.
To this end, the city is now working with those agencies to jointly develop and bring forward to the community disposal strategies that are in the best interest of all concerned and ensure that any project undertaken will provide appropriate environmental evaluation and disclosure to the public.
In order to ease the impacts of the cease and desist order, the city has adopted a policy which allows for the use of holding tanks under certain circumstances for commercial and industrial development. We continue to look for examples from other communities, such as credit programs, that might allow some level of development while remaining true to both the letter and the intent of the cease and desist order.
Again, I want to assure the community that the city’s No. 1 priority is resolving water resource issues, including wastewater treatment and disposal, in the most responsible and expeditious manner possible.
