The news came as a surprise to Bobkiewicz and city public works staff and special counsel was hired to examine the matter.Attorney Melissa A. Thorme, a water quality specialist, reviewed the permit and advised the city that the 1997 document was “problematic and contained potentially illegal limits that our treatment plant was not designed to meet.”Thorme, Bobkiewicz and Mayor John Procter have met with the RWQCB and settlement options have been discussed. City representatives met with the executive RWQCB director and staff for a tour of the wastewater treatment plant on March 20, and the city was presented with a letter denying the request for modification of the permit at this time. The letter also requested information by May 20 to be used in drafting a “cease and desist order to be adopted simultaneously,” with a new permit in August 2003. The letter started the clock ticking on a 30-day filing deadline for a petition for review of “this failure to act with the state board.”The cease and desist order is a “roadmap for us to fix our problem, it doesn’t mean a shutdown,” said Bobkiewicz on Thursday. “One way or another, we have to come up with a plan to allow us to move forward.”When Bobkiewicz joined the city late last year, “in my initial review of all city operations and talking with public works staff is was clear there were issues regarding fines. . .when I asked staff for more information we then discovered that the issue was larger than anticipated.”
City facing fines for non-compliance of wastewater treatment plant permit
May 28, 2003
Santa Paula City Council
Even as the city works to construct a new wastewater treatment plant in partnership with Fillmore, non-compliance with the current discharge permit could rack up state fines of more than $3 million, according to a report to the City Council.
By Peggy KellySanta Paula TimesEven as the city works to construct a new wastewater treatment plant in partnership with Fillmore, non-compliance with the current discharge permit could rack up state fines of more than $3 million, according to a report to the City Council.The council will discuss the issue at the May 27th meeting.The report is a double-whammy, coming just a few months after the city’s aging Corporation Yard wastewater treatment plant was the focus of a raid by county and federal agents who hauled off computer records, documents and water samples. The search warrant reportedly was part of a nationwide investigation of OMI, the city’s wastewater treatment plant operator since 1998. According to a federal spokesman, the City of Santa Paula, which built the plant near the Santa Clara River in 1939, was not suspected of any wrongdoing.According to the report by City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz, in 2001 city staff began preliminary work on a renewal of the discharge permit rejected as incomplete by the California Regional Water Quality Control Board (RWQCB). The RWQCB finally accepted the permit application as complete in November 2002.At a December 2002 meeting between the city and RWQCB, water board staff “indicated that the city was facing substantial fines for non-compliance with its current discharge permit,” issued in 1997 when the Ventura Regional Sanitation District operated the wastewater treatment plant. The fines were estimated to be in excess of $3 million.
