Water board tightens Delta discharge rules for polluters
Tracy Press Staff
Tracy Press
10/01/2009
A Delta watchdog group celebrated a recent move by a regional water board to tighten up standards about how much salt water cities are permitted to discharge into the ailing estuary.
The California Sportfishing Protection Alliance applauded the decision by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board to bring its policies in line with federal and state law by giving the cities less time to bring salt water discharges into compliance. Before, according to the nonprofit alliance, the water board allowed Tracy and Lodi, for example, several more years than the legally mandated 5-year deadline to comply.
The nonprofit appealed to the California Office of Administrative Law — a government agency that reviews and decides the legality of local regulations and guidelines — about the local water board’s practice of considering its own guidelines over state and federal standards when it issued discharge permits to cities, according to alliance spokesman Bill Jennings.
