The Pajaro River, which lines the western border of San Benito
County, will be the dumping ground for wastewater from Gilroy,
Morgan Hill
Hollister – Once the rain begins to pour down on the South Valley this winter, the cities of Gilroy and Morgan Hill will be allowed to pipe their highly treated wastewater into the Pajaro River, which will travel downstream and through the western borderline of San Benito County. But John Gregg, manager of the San Benito County Water District, said there’s no reason to worry.
“It will flow along a part of the county, but the possibility of it being dangerous is extremely low,” he said. “I don’t see it as an issue of concern, and it doesn’t come in contact with our principal ground water basin.”
The decision to let the county’s neighbors to the north put their waste water in the river during the rainy season came after a six-year legal battle between the South County Regional Wastewater Authority and the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. The control board agreed to give the South County cities’ a five-year seasonal water discharge permit.
Jay Baksa, Gilroy city administrator and executive officer of SCRWA, confronted the regional water board at the meeting in San Luis Obispo, which lasted roughly three hours and also dealt extensively with land disposal requirements. Baksa deemed the permit agreement a landmark victory.
“The bottom line is that in the end, everyone got what they wanted, which is the sign of a good negotiation,” Baksa said.
The permit specifies that wastewater can only be discharged to the river November through April, California’s wet season. It must be treated by a tertiary treatment process, a high level of treatment that releases wastewater into the river at a much higher quality than the river water itself, Baksa said. In San Benito County, the city of San Juan Bautista pipes its highly treated waste water to local streams and rivers 365 days a year, according to Gregg.
Also, the river must have a minimum flow rate before wastewater can be discharged. In dry years, when the flow rate is below the minimum standard and downstream flooding becomes a concern, wastewater will be directed to reclamation and land disposal. The new permit also sets concentration limits for acceptable amounts of salts in wastewater.
The permit will eventually expand the current practice of distributing south Santa Clara County cities’ treated wastewater into the ground or using it to irrigate some south Santa Clara County parks, golf courses and farms, Baksa said. Until now, the wastewater management plan, created in 1984, covered only reclamation and land disposal. Seasonal discharging is the third leg of that plan.
The quest to secure the permit dates back to 1984 when the authority created its general plan, and litigation was pursued in 1998. A May 2003 Santa Clara County Superior Court decision granted the authority the right to the permit, but the ruling did not set any specific terms and regulations. The Santa Clara Valley Water District supported SCRWA through the litigation.
Authority members say the proposal is a proactive plan to pump small amounts of relatively clean water into the Pajaro without significantly impacting downstream communities. The extra capacity is especially important during the winter, authority officials claim, when wastewater flows increase but the water table rises and the need for treated wastewater for irrigation declines sharply, making traditional disposal inadequate.
But the regional board – which protects the water along the coast from south Santa Clara County to Santa Barbara – and the State Water Resources Control Board argued that the authority hadn’t done enough to address environmental and flooding concerns before filing the lawsuit.
Santa Clara County Supervisor of District 1 Don Gage, who served as Gilroy’s mayor in the early 1990s during the water authority debate, said Friday’s decision is a good thing even for downstream city residents.
“Those folks say they don’t want to see the wastewater, but that’s really not even an issue,” he said. “This is tertiary water. During the summer, that water will clean the aquifers and will keep the creek open for fishing and other activities. I don’t think it will harm them in any way.”
