Court orders will force homeowners in nine East Bay cities to fix or replace sewer lines at sale, upgrade
Doug Oakley
Contra Costa Times
10/26/2009
Homeowners in nine East Bay cities who sell or upgrade their properties starting in March must spend hundreds to thousands of dollars replacing their sewer lines under court orders obtained by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.
The orders are an attempt to stop the dumping of as much as 400 million gallons of partially treated sewage into the Bay each year as the result of overflows during rainy weather.
About 50 million gallons of partially treated sewage ended up in the Bay as recently as Oct. 13, when about 4 inches of rain fell on the East Bay, said officials from the East Bay Municipal Utility District, which treats East Bay sewage.
Most of that was because of broken residential sewer lines that go from homes to pipes in the street, officials said.
One court order, expected to be signed next month by all nine cities, requires the cities to strengthen existing laws or write new ones that require homeowners to fix or replace their lines when a home is sold or upgraded. It also will require those cities to fix their broken sewer collection systems.
The order, which includes the California State Water Resources Board as a plaintiff, applies to Oakland, Emeryville, Piedmont, Berkeley, Alameda, Albany, Kensington, El Cerrito and the Richmond Annex section of Richmond. Of the nine cities, six already have laws of varying strengths requiring homeowners to replace their sewer lines, said Michelle Moustakas, an environmental engineer with the EPA.
But Oakland, Emeryville and Piedmont have no laws on replacement of residential sewer lines. Homes in those cities make up 60 percent of the residential sewer lines in the East Bay, said David Williams, director of wastewater at EBMUD.
The sewage overflow problem comes when it rains. Rainwater goes through the ground and gets into residential sewer lines through cracks and breaks. The extra water mixed with raw sewage overwhelms the sewer treatment plants operated by EBMUD.
When that happens, the district diverts excess sewage to three "wet weather facilities," where the sewage is only partially treated then released into the Bay — 200 million to 400 million gallons each year, according to Williams.
The overflows into the Bay happen from two spots in Oakland and from one in El Cerrito.
"The lines that go from the houses to the street are probably the worst problem," said Hugh Barroll, lead EPA attorney on the case. "Instead of 5 gallons a minute, you see 20 gallons a minute when it rains."
A second court order, obtained by the EPA against EBMUD and signed July 22, requires the district to write a new sewer line replacement law for all nine cities and have it go into effect in March.
The regional law will be a "backstop" for laws already in place in Berkeley, El Cerrito, the Richmond Annex, Albany, Alameda and Kensington, said Barroll.
Berkeley homeowners, who are under a sewer line replacement law enacted in late 2006, have replaced 3,748 residential sewer lines when they sold or upgraded their homes, said Ken Emeziem, supervising civil engineer for the city. That's more than 10 percent of the approximately 30,000 homes in the city.
In addition to having a new regional law on residential sewer lines, the order against the cities will force them to install monitoring equipment so sewer officials can tell where the biggest problem areas are during rainy weather, develop a sewer system cleaning and root control plan by April and develop a sewer pipe maintenance plan, also by April.
