An agreement made by the City of San Juan Bautista to treat
wastewater for three of the county’s leading lettuce processors
will help the city snare $7.9 million for a major infrastructure
project.
”
This is a win-win situation. We help the vegetable processors
and they help us get the grant from the Economic Development
Administration so that we can do the work that we need to do to
solve our problem,
”
San Juan Bautista City Manager Larry Cain said.
An agreement made by the City of San Juan Bautista to treat wastewater for three of the county’s leading lettuce processors will help the city snare $7.9 million for a major infrastructure project.
“This is a win-win situation. We help the vegetable processors and they help us get the grant from the Economic Development Administration so that we can do the work that we need to do to solve our problem,” San Juan Bautista City Manager Larry Cain said.
The agreement was recently given the go-ahead by the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO), allowing the city to treat up to 23,000 gallons per day of domestic wastewater for the Pride of San Juan, Coke Farms and Natural Selection.
The three businesses, which employ up to approximately 1,400 people, needed the city’s help because they could not treat the water on their own. Without a proper disposal system for their wastewater, they might not be able to stay in business.
“The vegetable processors had a problem because they could not get LAFCO approval for their processing because the ground in that area of the valley is super saturated and has a very high water table and they can’t build septic tanks,” Cain said.
The agreement was designed to help both the city and the businesses stay in operation.
“In cooperation with the County and the Regional Water Quality Control Board, we were asked if we could process their domestic sewage,” Cain said.
Domestic sewage includes wastewater from their bathrooms and employees’ cleaning areas.
“We have the capacity to do that and in the spirit of cooperation, as well as keeping those jobs in the valley, we said we would do that,” Cain said.
San Juan was having trouble because the state was clamping down on the city’s wastewater discharge.
“The deficiency we have is that our discharge has too much salt in it. The reason we have too much salt is, first off, our source water has a high content of salt,” Cain said.
He said some residents and businesses unwittingly contribute to the salt problem because homes and businesses with water softeners exchange salt to help remove minerals and other materials from the water. That salt then is added to the wastewater and adding to the work the city’s treatment facility has to do.
“What that project will do is it will give us the ability to receive and treat the imported surface water from the San Felipe system,” Cain said.
“It will improve our water mains, our fire service, our water storage and the quality of our water, which in turn will help us regulate the water softeners and eliminate that problem in our wastewater.”
With the agreement in place, San Juan would receive $3.8 million in federal grants. The remaining $4.1 million will be provided by both the City of San Juan Bautista and the San Benito County Water District
“The project includes replacing a number of the curbs, streets, gutters, storm drains, sewers and water lines,” Cain said. “The city has a very old system that is in need of repair.”
With the exception of a few patches and pipe replacements, the city’s water and sewer system have not been replaced since they were installed in the late 1930s.
The project, which city officials have been working on for about five years, includes a new and expanded water delivery system.
