Well, we’ve gone another year in the San Francisco Bay Section, have installed our new officers, given kudos to our fellow members with our awards program, and are ready to begin another great year.

As incoming President of our Section, I have some ideas that I’d like to implement this year. One of them is to improve our communications process with our membership by reviewing the use of the Sewer Club Ink, our website, and notifications to our members via e-mail. This was to be a slow, methodical process but sometimes we don’t have much choice about things…

You may have noticed that the Sewer Club Ink looks a little different this month. There are a couple of reasons for this:

1. Our long time, dedicated newsletter editor, Anita Labossiere, has decided to move on to pursue other opportunities for her creative outlet. Anita performed the duties of newsletter editor for ten years! We are most grateful to Anita for undertaking this difficult task and producing an excellent newsletter year after year. Anita was recognized for her efforts at our awards banquet and was provided a resolution and small gift in appreciation for her dedication.

2. Your Bay Section Board has been discussing the topic of communication to determine the most efficient and effective way to disseminate information to the membership. We would like to begin moving towards relying more heavily on electronic means (website and e-mail). We also realize the importance of retaining some form of hard copy mailings.

We are still working on this topic but have come to the conclusion that the content of a newsletter is the most critical aspect. The aesthetics of the newsletter is of secondary importance as long as the information is presented in an easily readable manner.

We’re interested in hearing your opinions of our ideas and what you think of this form for your Sewer Club Ink. We’re contemplating calling this the "Sewer Club Inkspot"…. what do you think of that, too? Feel free to call or e-mail any of the Board members to give feedback.

Also, our Secretary/Treasurer, Edith Hadler has so kindly volunteered to produce this newsletter for the months of March and April. After that time, we’ll need a permanent newsletter editor volunteer.

Welcome to old and new faces that make up the Board and Committees. I want to personally welcome Ray Busch of Oro Loma, who was just installed as our First Year Director. Ray has been active on the Professional Development Committee for many years. He has great enthusiasm and energy and is always full of good ideas. I am happy to be serving on the Board with him.

Our Committee Chairs and their members are really the core of the Bay Section. Their tireless efforts to provide education, training, and information exchange to the membership are greatly appreciated. If you’re interested in joining one of these fine committees, please feel free to contact the committee chair or any of the Board members. An immense amount of satisfaction comes from volunteering, giving back to the your fellow wastewater professionals, and making new friends.

I love this time of year because, not only is it time to snowboard, it’s time to recognize our fellow Bay Section members who have displayed outstanding traits in their jobs through our awards program. We held our Annual Awards and Installation Banquet on February 2 and it was a wonderful evening. Please help me to congratulate those award winners listed below and enjoy some photos from the Banquet.

The award winners pose for a group photo.

The new 2001 Board.

Enjoying the festivities... 

As I noted that night, we are going to move the awards banquet to the first Friday in December this year (December 7, 2001). The reason for this is to make the Section award winners more competitive on the state CWEA level. so that our Section’s awards process can be more in concert with the State CWEA awards process. Now, the application packet for the Section’s award winners are due to the CWEA office the second week of January. The Bay Section does not let the award winners know they’ve won until the night of the Banquet, so the winners’ packets get sent to CWEA without the winners’ knowledge. Many times, the Committees reviewing the packets have some ideas of how the application can be strengthened to be more competitive on the State level; but now, we can’t take advantage of these tips. Moving our Banquet to December would allow those award winners the opportunity to strengthen the applications if they so choose.

In addition, this year we are going to try to create simplified Bay Section application forms for some of the awards. We’re hoping this will get those "fence-sitters" who want to apply but are intimidated by the amount of effort required to complete an application to get off the fence and join in on the awards process.

Now, without further ado, a HUGE congratulations to the following individuals and agencies for the excellence they consistently exhibit in their jobs.

• Black & Veatch
• Brown and Caldwell
• Camp Dresser and McKee
• Carollo Engineers
• CH2M Hill
• The Covello Group
• DC Frost Associates, Inc.
• Damon S. Williams and Associates
• Dan Cortinovis, Consulting Engineer
• G. S. Dodson & Associates
• HDR
• Kennedy Jenks
• Whitley, Burchett & Associates

SBSA Manager Jim Bewley said that he would appeal some of the conditions required by a 5 to 3 vote of the Regional Water Quality Control Board in its extension of SBSA’s National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) to the California Water Quality Control Board.

The cities of Belmont, Redwood City and San Carlos, and the West Bay Sanitary District own SBSA. West Bay serves Menlo Park, Atherton, Portola Valley and portions of Woodside and East Palo Alto.

Several other public water treatment facilities in Northern California have appeals pending before the California Water Resources Control Board on many of the same issues opposed by SBSA. Simplified, the protests maintain the regional board’s requirements for interim and future limits for controlling the discharge of mercury, dioxin and copper are unreasonable in environmental and economic terms and inconsistent with the law.

"The interim mass limits for mercury and dioxin have the long-term potential to result in restrictions on residential and commercial growth in SBSA’s service area and, as a result, would produce adverse economic and social impacts on the communities served by SBSA," Bewley told the regional board.

Bewley said the impacts would occur because of the limited options available to meet the future discharge limits.

"Available options include curtailing flow increases to the plant by limiting growth and economic development; increasing recycled water uses to offset influent flow increases; or, installing advanced treatment facilities to reduce effluent concentrations. Higher levels of wastewater treatment or increased level of recycling, although technically capable of maintaining mass emissions at current levels under increased influent flow conditions, would take many years to implement, would be prohibitively expensive, and would not measurably improve water quality. Therefore, the only real option for compliance would be the curtailment of new flows to the SBSA plant."

The pollutants of concern for SBSA are copper, nickel, mercury, dioxin, cyanide and tributyltin.

Several wastewater facilities and others have formed "The Partnership for Sound Science in Environmental Policy" to present a united voice against the proposal for zero discharge limits and a dilution credit ban for bay dischargers.

The Bay Area Dischargers Association (BADA) estimates these provisions would cost publicly owned wastewater facilities in the Bay Area more than $1 billion per year to construct and operate facilities sophisticated enough to removed all discharges to the Bay of what is called 303-d listed pollutants.

Bewley gave another example of the consequences of the permit’s conditions. Though the SBSA is well within compliance of current discharge limits on copper, potential future restrictions would force SBSA to build additional treatment facilities that would cost $14 million annually for annualized capital, operation and maintenance.

SBSA and other opposing groups maintain that the regional board’s zero discharge limits and dilution credit ban represent a fundamental departure from the Water Quality Control Plan (Basin Plan) without the analysis and public review a Basin Plan amendment requires.

The Basin Plan is the master policy document for the region. It contains descriptions of the legal, technical, and programmatic bases of water quality regulation in the San Francisco Bay Region. The Regional Board first adopted a plan for waters inland from the Golden Gate in 1968. After several revisions, the first comprehensive Basin Plan (Water Quality Control Plan) was adopted in 1975. Subsequently, major revisions were adopted in 1982, 1986, 1992, and 1995.

Voting to support the staff position were Board members John Muller of Half Moon Bay, Josephine De Luca of Redwood City, Doreen Chiu of Fremont, Kristin Addicks of Stinson Beach, and Clifford Waldeck of Mill Valley; voting against the staff recommendation and in the minority in seeking more time to resolve issues disputed by SBSA and other wastewater dischargers were William Schumacher of Daly City, Shalom Eliahu of Lafayette, and Mary Warren of Oakland.