Sewer directors recycle ideas on water reuse
SAM manager urges board to commit to strategy
Mark Noack
Half Moon Bay Review
03/10/2011
In 2005, more than 80 percent of Half Moon Bay voters endorsed the idea of building a recycled water facility on the Coastside, but today that goal remains just a concept.
Recycled water - basically, treating sewer water so it is usable for irrigation - seemed like a perfect political bridge for the fractious interests on the Coastside. But now six years later, Coastside utilities have made scant progress toward funding and planning for water reclamation, despite countless discussions and multiple contracted studies.
As a way to get back to the drawing board, directors at the Sewer Authority Mid-Coastside last week held a lengthy review session on recycled water to try and find ways to resurrect the stalled program.
Sewer Manager Steve Leonard urged the six-member board to consider a "reboot" of the recycled water project by setting a focused strategy for the future, something the project has lacked so far, he said.
"Having no concept of what the (recycled water) project would look like is our biggest obstacle right now," he summarized.
Showing a short presentation to the board, Leonard compared two different strategies for trying to bring recycled water to the Coastside.
One scenario would involve SAM unilaterally building a facility and selling water to only the Half Moon Bay Golf Links, which is perhaps the only large-scale water user that could legally buy direct from the sewer district.
Leonard warned that going that route would likely lead to a lawsuit because the Coastside County Water District maintains exclusive rights to sell water to its customers. Leonard said he believed the sewer district could win a legal battle over selling to the golf course because it already used a private supply of water on its property. But the district probably couldn't sell to anyone else, he said.
"We could make an agreement with the golf course, but it might be over someone's dead body," he said. "We'd have a fight and we might win the first one, but we'd probably lose the war."
The other model, clearly favored by Leonard, would involve the sewer district cooperating with the local public water districts on the project. Going down that path would split the hefty costs with CCWD and the Montara Water and Sanitary District, but the sewer district would have to surrender much control of the recycled water project.
The sewer agency and the Half Moon Bay water district have had difficulties working together. Last year, the two agencies refused to partner together when applying for federal funding, and each tried to tap revenue sources independently.
Leonard, previously a water manager in Monterey County, strongly recommended restarting efforts to work with the water districts, but he struggled to convince the sewer directors to commit to that strategy.
SAM director Scott Boyd suggested that picking a recycled-water strategy wouldn't make sense because the funding needed to be located first. He suggested sewer officials continue to scout out new grant opportunities while keeping discussions ongoing with the water agencies.
