In early May 2002, a gopher dug a hole at Hollister’s wastewater
treatment plant.
One year later, economic development in the county has halted,
once-thriving contractors have struggled to find work and funding
for parks has been eliminated. That’s just for starters.
In early May 2002, a gopher dug a hole at Hollister’s wastewater treatment plant.
One year later, economic development in the county has halted, once-thriving contractors have struggled to find work and funding for parks has been eliminated. That’s just for starters.
The snowballing effects of the city’s 15-million gallon wastewater spill – caused by the ensuing penalties from the state water board – have seeped through wide-ranging facets of the community.
On May 6, 2002, a 40-foot breach at the pond – which officials have concluded was caused by the gopher hole – enabled the treated sewage to uncontrollably rush into the San Benito River bed.
Officials could not then have imagined the mess that the spill would ultimately cause, long after the river had been cleaned.
“It certainly had a significant economic effect that was never desired,” said former City Manager George Lewis from his home Thursday.
In September 2002, the Regional Water Quality Control Board penalized the city with a cease-and-desist order, halting issuance of new building permits until completion of the new sewer plant in October 2005.
“Unfortunately, the spill does affect the community,” City Councilman Tony Bruscia said Wednesday.
Ken Lindsay, a developer of four industrial parks near the Hollister Municipal Airport, said he would not have invested $12 million into the Airpark Business Center if he had known about the forthcoming moratorium. Now his land, once highly coveted by potential industrial tenants, remains mostly deserted.
“I’m out of business, literally,” Lindsay said. “Companies just aren’t interested in getting involved.”
When speaking with potential buyers, Lindsay, who has lured nearly 40 companies to Hollister since 1980, said he starts all conversations with the phrase, “By the way, we have a sewer moratorium…”
He has lost three “very large” deals in the past year because of the moratorium. The lone business currently at the location, LifeSparc, a Japanese company that makes airbag detonators for vehicles, had already built its manufacturing facility before the spill. However, LifeSparc cannot build an office site, and administrative employees work out of a trailer.
“They chose Hollister out of the world,” Lindsay said. “They came here and now they can’t grow.”
Many local contractors would feel lucky if their businesses had merely stopped growing. A profession seething with expansion in recent decades, local construction companies may have collectively been hit the hardest.
“Everybody’s had to go out of town to work, which obviously adds extra expense and wasted time,” said Nick Prizant, president of the San Benito County Contractors Association.
In the past year, Bruscia and fellow City Council member Tony LoBue have met several times with the Contractors Association to examine how the city can help relieve the effect of lost business. Officials have mentioned giving priority to local contractors for city-financed renovations, but that idea has not panned out.
“Unfortunately, they can’t do it where they’ve been doing it for 35 to 40 years,” Prizant said. “Now they’re competing with people on their home turf.”
And with the poor economic times, Prizant said, “It’s tough on everybody.”
“It happened at a time when things are so challenging for business people… I feel for the contractors,” Bruscia said.
The list of people and projects vastly affected during the past year doesn’t end with the private sector.
Funding for park development in Hollister, for instance, comes solely from housing impact fees. Each new home built includes a fee of $1,123 paid to the parks development fund.
“No impact fees, no building,” said Robert Baumgartner, chairman of the Parks and Recreation Commission.
Without new construction, the Commission, until the moratorium is lifted in 2005, must find alternative sources of funding to continue developing local park land.
Safety for thousands of Hollister residents became an issue for months following the spill because of doubts surrounding plans – and an imminent need – for Fire Station No. 2 in the city’s southernmost area. Nonetheless, officials recently decided to move forward on construction, with hopes to use a septic tank or holding tank for sewage treatment until 2005.
Housing costs, already a bane to countless struggling residents, have increased even more since May 2002 because of stagnated supply and greater demand, said Brian Abbott, executive director of Community Services Development Corp.
“Obviously there’s some increases in home prices,” he said. “It makes housing less affordable for low-income people.”
And a local nonprofit organization – which had received a $940,000 grant to build a childcare facility for low-income families – could not obtain a building permit and will likely forfeit the funding because the money must be used within two years.
Whether a developer is losing millions or a struggling family cannot afford a home, city officials, often defenseless and frustrated, are at the mercy of stern mandates from a higher power.
The city’s offensive
Hollister had begun evaluating capacity at the sewer plant before the spill, according to Public Works Director Clint Quilter. To this day, officials maintain the sewer pond breach was not caused by over-capacity – which was the Water Board’s reason for the penalties.
Lewis referred to the suspected cause – a rodent, and erred supervision by the former plant manager, Bracewell Engineering – as “operational.”
“They (the Water Board) took action that was not necessarily related to solving the issues,” Lewis said.
However, city officials have since made efforts to clean up the city’s act and abide – rigidly – by the state Water Board’s wishes.
They started by replacing Bracewell Engineering, an outside consultant, and created an in-house position for better accountability. Plant Manager Dennis Rose was hired in August to oversee operations. Additionally, the city has increased rodent control at the plant, according to Quilter.
In September, the Council approved the Long-term Wastewater Management Plan, which culminates with a sewer plant having increased capacity.
The Council has established a stern emphasis on meeting all deadlines of the long-term plan, and for good reason. The Water Board’s penalties against the city included $1.2 million in potential fines if the city falls behind schedule.
Thus far, the city has met all deadlines except one, which did not carry a fine. The next key date is Aug. 1, when Hollister must complete two projects or pay $400,000 to the state.
“Really, all we’re doing is following the lead of the City Council,” Quilter said.
Bruscia said the Council, one year later, still considers sewage issues with “a sense of urgency.”
Mayor Brian Conroy has said the city’s commitment to solving wastewater issues should correlate with economic recovery.
“We really have to do a good job of getting that thing (the sewer plant) online and begin to address the infrastructure issues that will lure the good employers here,” Conroy said.
