Delta salt removal order on hold
Alex Breitler
Recordnet.com
05/17/2011
Cities that dump salty wastewater into the delicate Delta have won at least a temporary reprieve from rules that they claim would force them to spend hundreds of millions of dollars upgrading their treatment plants - costs that would be shouldered by the ratepayers.
A Sacramento County Superior Court judge last week ordered the state to rewrite plans to control salt in the south Delta, letting Stockton, Manteca and Tracy off the hook for now.
All three cities have sued the state over salt; Tracy's lawsuit was the first to be resolved.
The judge ruled that the State Water Resources Control Board failed to consider the costs of cities' complying with the rules, among other issues. Judge Timothy Frawley ordered that analysis be done before new rules are written.
"It's going to mean quite a lengthy process before they're able to do anything. The can got kicked quite a ways down the road," said Larry Parlin, deputy director of Stockton's Municipal Utilities Department.
Stockton officials estimated in 2004 that building a reverse osmosis facility could cost $295 million, with yearly operational costs of $21.6 million.
"It's huge dollars. Nobody can afford that," Parlin said.
The state water board has insisted that there are other ways to meet the standard and that it's not forcing anyone to use reverse osmosis.
Water cops have been trying to kick the Delta's salt habit since the 1960s. As more freshwater has been diverted from the Delta to other portions of California, more saltwater has crept into the estuary from San Francisco Bay. And that's a problem for those who drink Delta water and farm with it.
The water board set salt standards in 1978. For decades, the onus was on state and federal water managers to make sure there was enough freshwater flowing through the Delta to dilute the salt.
But the government has not provided the flows, and the water board has not enforced the issue, the judge wrote.
Starting in 2006, the board began focusing on salt discharges from city treatment plants - a "radical change," Frawley wrote, adding there was almost no discussion how cities could comply or how much time they'd have to do so.
"The Board has delayed enforcement of the objectives against (the state and federal governments) for many years," the judge wrote. "Viewed from this perspective, Tracy might argue that it is the victim here - because it is being requested to reduce its salt loading so that (the state and federal governments) may export more water."
