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Bay Spill Nets Record Fine: 1.8 Million Gallons Spilled

Posted on: Thursday, 8 June 2006, 09:00 CDT

By Paul Rogers, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

Jun. 8--State water regulators have slapped South San Francisco with a $516,000 fine -- the largest water pollution fine ever levied against a Bay Area city -- for repeatedly spilling raw sewage into San Francisco Bay over the past three years.

The city of 60,000 people, known for the giant concrete sign on San Bruno Mountain that proclaims it "The Industrial City," has spilled 2 million gallons of raw sewage into the bay since 2003, according to the San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board, based in Oakland.

That's the equivalent of 80 backyard swimming pools full.

Most of it came in one spill of 1.8 million gallons on Dec. 27, 2004, when a sewage pump station on San Mateo Avenue shut down in a rainstorm, sending rivers of untreated waste from South San Francisco's toilets, sinks and showers backing up through manhole covers onto its streets and into Colma Creek.

The creek flows into the bay just north of San Francisco International Airport, an area popular with wind surfers.

"It definitely is one of the larger spills," said Bruce Wolfe, executive officer of the water board. "That's what triggered the size of the fine."

Water board records show that South San Francisco has violated the Clean Water Act 147 times since May 2003 -- an average of one spill a week -- by releasing raw sewage into the bay because of breakdowns, clogs and other mishaps in its sewer system. The 146 other spills totaled about 185,000 gallons.

The water board is expected to approve the fine Wednesday at its monthly meeting.

"Raw sewage has a significant impact," Wolfe said. "The bacteria consume oxygen in the water, which is the same oxygen that fish and other organisms in the bay need to survive."

In addition to bacteria and human waste, raw sewage also contains viruses, trash, even cancer-causing chemicals at times.

Apart from fish and other wildlife, wind surfers, boaters and swimmers are exposed to bay waters.

There are about 60 sewage treatment plants that put millions of gallons of treated sewage into the bay every day, most of it very clean. But spills are not uncommon.

Each year, tens of thousands of gallons of raw sewage flow into the bay when sewage plants are overwhelmed with storm water, or when grease, tree roots and other obstructions clog or break underground pipes.

Now, Wolfe said, the water board is trying to do more to cut back on city sewage spills into the bay.

Environmentalists say the effort is long overdue, but that more needs to be done.

"I support the regional board taking this enforcement action. It seems great," said Sejal Choksi of Baykeeper, an environmental group based in San Francisco.

"Having 147 spills in nearly three years is a very high number. We've got to have something in place that will be a deterrent."

Choksi said, however, that the water board -- the main state agency charged with enforcing the Clean Water Act in the Bay Area -- needs to do more, including building better computer databases to track the cities and companies with the most violations.

The board's sewage spill database includes only incidents since December 2004, for example. Most of its older records are kept in paper files. It has no current database ranking fines, or a complete ranking of which cities have the most spills.

The water board also should do more follow-up, Choksi added, requiring not only fines when spills happen, but also better training, equipment upgrades and other improvements -- on strict timetables -- to prevent them.

"Sewage spills are a huge problem," Choksi said. "You've got 60- to 70-year-old pipes in some cities that are crumbling and breaking, and no consistent system to maintain them."

Since the 2004 spill, one sewage spill into the bay has been larger: a spill of 10.6 million gallons last December by the East Bay Municipal Utility District when power and backup power failed in a rainstorm. The board has not yet issued a fine.

For their part, South San Francisco leaders say the big spill in 2004 was an accident. They note that they reported it immediately. And they said there were no signs of dead fish in Colma Creek, although they didn't check the bay.

The spill happened at a pump station that a private contractor had been upgrading, said Terry White, public works director for South San Francisco. Rain caused electrical wiring to get wet and shut down four pumps. It took frantic city workers more than three hours to start them again as sewage on surrounding streets reached two inches deep.

"We are doing everything we can within our financial powers to make sure the effluent we put into the bay meets or exceeds all standards," White said. "We had an unfortunate incident -- one big major spill -- but every city has blockages."

Because of other spills, South San Francisco was issued a cease-and-desist order in 1997 by the water board and was ordered to expand and modernize its sewer system and treatment plant, which is east of Highway 101 on the north side of the airport.

That $95 million job is scheduled to be finished by the end of 2007.

White said his city is asking the contractor, who he said wired the pumps incorrectly, to help pay the fine. South San Francisco will be able to offset $484,000 of the fine by setting up a program to help homeowners replace leaky sewer pipes leading to their homes.

"There's nothing that can be done about the black eye it gives us," he said of the incident. "What's done is done. This is by far the worst thing like this that's ever happened in our city."

Contact Paul Rogers at progers@mercurynews.com or (408) 920-5045.

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Copyright (c) 2006, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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Source: San Jose Mercury News

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