Shams and Bad Plans
by Ken Wikle
Posted on 2007-12-02 11:40:42
The Sonoma County Permit and Resource Management Department (PRMD) has announced that it will ask the Board of Supervisors to cancel the long-planned Monte Rio sewage treatment plant. It is now estimated that the project would cost over $20 million, $2.6 million in excess of “available funding.”
The item below appeared in the Russian River Times as an Against the Flow column on June 8, 2001, and is reprinted now because the reasoning is still valid and its recommendations worth repeating. To reiterate and update those recommendations: a locally controlled district should be formed to design and build a decentralized wastewater disposal system similar to the one recently built in the Bohemian Grove to serve downtown Monte Rio, and also build smaller decentralized systems to serve areas such as those parts of Starrett Hill where soil percolation is poor. The new district should also serve as a septic system management district to ensure that septic systems work well in those locations where soil percolation is good.
Now, back to 2001:
Before you decide how to solve a problem, you need to ask how the problem was defined. If the county’s proposed Sheridan Meadow sewage treatment plant is the solution, how, then, did the county define the problem? Answering that question requires plumbing the depths of some murky waters. It turns out that there are two “problems,” one of them a sham.
The real problem, according to some local property owners and County Supervisor Mike Reilly, is that downtown Monte Rio cannot expand its commercial base without increasing its wastewater disposal capacity. Without the increase, Reilly says, “downtown Monte Rio will shrivel up and blow away.” Moreover, according to county officials, some residential properties have inadequate septic systems. The only technologically feasible way to correct both conditions, so the county told the Citizen Advisory Committee that voted to green-light the project, is to build a centralized sewage collection and treatment plant.
But that solution raised a new problem: sewer plants are expensive. The Monte Rio businesses and the homeowners couldn’t afford one, so the answer to that problem was to get money from state and federal agencies. The way that is done, say our county leaders, is to convince the agencies that the county is correcting an environmental emergency. Hence, the sham problem. Using (and misusing) outdated, incomplete and scientifically dubious data, county authorities announced that Monte Rio septic systems were polluting the river. They declared a moratorium on growth in Monte Rio and went to the state and federal governments with their hands out. The result was $6 million from agencies eager to stop the pollution of a major waterway.
The sham problem is not just overstated, it doesn’t exist. The so-called septic tank river pollution at Monte Rio has been thoroughly and capably refuted in these pages by Daniel Wickham, Ph.D., a scientist, wastewater treatment professional and Duncans Mills resident. He has examined the county-generated evidence and has, among other investigative steps, taken readings for pollutants from the river. He convincingly concludes that there is no raw sewage going into the river at Monte Rio. Tellingly, there have been no beach closings or even near-closings by health agencies.
“Okay,” say the County Pooh-Bahs, “so we’ve pushed the envelope fact-wise. Still, we’re fixing the real problem in a way that is affordable to those affected by it.” But the moratorium is not part of the real problem; it is part of the sham. As Dr. Wickham points out, there is no evidence of significant failures of residential septic systems in the proposed sewer plant service area. The only real problem, then, is a lack of wastewater disposal capacity sufficient to permit the commercial expansion of downtown. So is the only solution an expensive and problematic tertiary sewage treatment plant? The answer is clearly no.
During the past five years, there has been a major shift in thinking among wastewater disposal experts. The building of a sewer plant was once considered the only acceptable way to upgrade from, for example, seemingly primitive septic tanks. But sewer plants have serious shortcomings. They are expensive to build and maintain; they are ugly, often smelly, and dependent upon expensive and unreliable electrical power. Moreover they produce wastewater which itself must be disposed of, which has been a problem for the Guerneville plant. To a certain extent, the Monte Rio waste disposal question would be simply be shifted down-river to Sheridan Ranch, where 26 acres of leach fields will be installed in flood-plain marshland.
Nearly two decades ago, the west Marin community of Stinson Beach faced a problem similar to Monte Rio’s. Their waste disposal systems needed improvement. There was strong feeling in the community that a sewer plant was not what they wanted, even though county powers insisted it was their only solution. The residents stuck to their guns, and the result was a comparatively low-tech and inexpensive solution. They built a community septic system that incorporated re-circulating sand filters. Its striking success inspired a revolution in wastewater disposal theory and applications.
Experts around the country and around the world are seeing that decentralized systems are superior to cluster systems such as sewer plants. Decentralized systems are now emphasized in university courses on wastewater management. The predominant text, Small and Decentralized Waste Water Treatment Systems by George Tchobanoglous of UC Davis has been translated into 27 languages and is used everywhere. Leading authorities consider sewage treatment plants dinosaurs of the past, and promote biologically-based technologies enhanced by modern innovations as better and cheaper.
Some geographic areas are more suited for decentralized systems than others, and according to Dr. Wickham, ours is among the best. Our soil percolation is called outstanding, meaning that wastewater effluent can be filtered clean and the redwoods will suck up the water and nutrients. Moreover, there is no hazard to groundwater. These attributes were recently recognized by the Monte Rio School District when it built a wastewater system for the school. Some 19 wooded acres were acquired for leach fields, but just one acre was sufficient to serve the school. How much acreage would be needed to serve all of downtown Monte Rio? Could it possibly require as many as the 26 acres now planned in the meadow downstream of the proposed sewer plant?
Such a simpler and cheaper system was not considered an option to solve the downtown Monte Rio problem. Why? According to Jeff Ball of Orenco Systems, Inc., the company that built the equipment used by the school district, no more than one percent of wastewater treatment engineers is up to speed on decentralized systems. Is it possible that this sad ratio also applies to the county’s engineering firm, Questa Engineering? They may have been retained with the instruction “design us a sewer plant.” But if they were presented the broader question, “What should we do to improve wastewater disposal in downtown Monte Rio,” and Questa answered “sewer plant,” the county is in dire need of a second opinion. Questa was designer of the sewer plant successfully resisted by the community of Bolinas, and has a reputation there as a promoter of large-scale sewer plants.
The Questa-designed Monte Rio plant depends on electrical power. If power is lost, raw sewage goes into the river. The county says that in the event of a power outage, it will truck in a phalanx of diesel-powered generators. But what if the roads are flooded? Moreover, the total estimated construction cost is now $10 million and climbing. The owners of Sheridan Ranch don’t want to sell their meadow, so by the time it is condemned through eminent domain, the outlay will be horrendous, far in excess of the $6 million from government agencies. The balance will be paid by those forced to hook up to the system. Any Monte Rio parcel owner in the assessment district would be nuts to vote for taking that kind of property tax hit when there are much cheaper alternatives. The Sheridan Meadow sewer plant is a train wreck waiting to happen.
We need a leader with the courage to bring the runaway train to a halt. One of the most difficult things for a politician to do is admit being wrong, but we need a performance worthy of a profile in courage. Mike Reilly needs to stop the sewer plant project before it hemorrhages any more taxpayer money. We need to go back to square one. We need a sanitation district that is entirely under local control and that can decide the future of the community after examining all courses of action, just as the school district did. The US EPA strongly encourages the building of decentralized wastewater treatment systems. The EPA web site lists five sources of federal funding for such projects. The fact that the $6 million now lined up for a sewer plant might be lost, at least in part if the project is delayed, becomes irrelevant because new funding will be found. The net result will be a system that better serves the community at lower assessment cost to the parcel owner. The entire community, business and residential, will be better off. Mike Reilly needs to act quickly, in partnership with all sectors of the community.
To return to 2007:
The time has come for the Monte Rio community to take charge of its destiny and move ahead with new solutions. Hopefully this will be with the full backing of Supervisor Reilly.
Ken Wikle writes the Against the Flow column for the Russian River Times
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