Blame it on a gopher, as city officials did at the time, or
blame it on lacking foresight by Hollister’s leaders. The sewer
spill in 2002 and subsequent building moratorium that followed was
the biggest and most enduring story of the decade in San Benito
County.
Blame it on a gopher, as city officials did at the time, or blame it on lacking foresight by Hollister’s leaders. The sewer spill in 2002 and subsequent building moratorium that followed was the biggest and most enduring story of the decade in San Benito County.
Not just because 15 million gallons of treated sewage poured into the San Benito River in May 2002, after a breach in a berm burst at the wastewater ponds. The environmental impact was a start, a relative blip.
The economic consequence was a disaster, the residual effects of which continue on today.
Contractors were forced to leave town to find work. Businesses interested in developing here had just about no choice but to walk away. If developers had Hollister on the radar before the state-mandated building moratorium implemented in September of that year, they didn’t anymore.
From an economic perspective, the recovery couldn’t even begin until the city reached a slate of ambitious milestones set forth by the state, including the completion of a new wastewater plant to handle the capacity – and more – that built up during the Silicon Valley commuter population boom in the years prior to the spill.
From the government end, the infrastructure cleanup became city leaders’ primary focus for most of the decade. Initially, Hollister officials projected the new plant would get done by October 2005. But it became more complicated, and more costly, than first envisioned. Plant construction started in late 2006.
The moratorium that was supposed to last for three years stretched into 2008 when the project was completed. In December of that year, the water board that once chided Hollister leaders for blatantly neglecting a significant problem had high praise for their efforts toward finishing the sewer plant and establishing the necessary infrastructure for future growth.
The city’s gates once again opened to developers. Since then, building business in Hollister has been slow moving, but the potential now exists to recover that had been washed away for six years.
For the Free Lance’s Top 10 Stories of the Decade, see the newspaper Tuesday.
