California’s nine Regional Water Quality Control Boards deal with the burgeoning number of wastewater issues affecting the state’s land and population. Also of growing concern are issues involving the impact of stormwater runoff from the smaller and mid-sized industries scattered around the state.
The San Francisco Bay Area has been affected by industrial wastewater longer, perhaps, than any other section of the state. That wastestream goes back to the 1850s in the wake of the Gold Rush in the foothills above the growing community.
Lila Tang, National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) chief with the Wastewater Division in the Bay Area’s Regional Water Quality Control Board in Oakland, says human activity over the past 100 years is largely responsible for the environmental legacy with which the region grapples. Mercury is currently listed as one of the main pollutants affecting the Bay Area. This results from both the early years of gold mining in the state and discharges from 20th-century industries. “The simultaneous cleanup of things that have occurred in the past and attempts to deal with the cleanup of current discharges is a real balancing act for us,” says Tang. “Even if those current discharges were eliminated, the restoration would actually still take just as long. It’s a real challenge for us to achieve that balance between the old and the new when it comes to dealing with our pollution problems.”
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| Towns that buried their creeks 20 years ago are now studying whether "day-lighting" of those same creeks and installing natural ditches may work to their advantage environmentally. |
Another area of concern for this region comes from its three large, natural-gas–burning, electricity-generating power plants, along with new regulations promulgated by the EPA in 2004. “It is technically very complicated to comply with these,” says Tang. “These plants were built back in the 1950s or 1960s. Back then it was traditional to take Bay water and run it through the system. The concern was the effect the thermal pollution would have on the environment.
“Now, over the past 10 years, the concern has been construction design related to the intake of the Bay water. When you draw water in from the Bay, organisms in that water are killed. The new technology and new regulations are going to force a change, which I think generally is going to be a positive change. But the implementation is definitely going to be a challenge.”
One of the area’s biggest success stories has come with the eight or nine industries still discharging directly into the San Francisco Bay. These industries include sugar refineries, steel mills, and oil refineries. Conducted by the regional water board, an investigation of five high-profile oil refineries took place during the 1990s. The refineries had to install treatment technologies reducing their discharge of selenium into the San Francisco Bay by more than one half.
In the 1980s, as a result of whole-effluent–toxicity efforts on the part of this region’s water board, area refineries also installed activated-carbon treatment filters. “Those installations resulted in tremendous reductions in aquatic toxicity as well as the removal of organics,” says Tang.
“The ‘gestation’ time of such efforts as carbon filter installations usually takes about seven years or so, and it also takes time to convince these industries that there is a need for these efforts. Two of the five refineries already had decent systems, so they did not have to install anything new,” explains Tang. “The other two had to install a ferric-chloride precipitation process, and the last one chose to install a copper precipitation process.”
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| New systems of pavement would allow water to infiltrate and absorb more evenly over greater areas.. |
Aside from these types of wastewater sources, Tang believes that the region is feeling even greater pressure from all the development in the Bay Area. “In some ways the area growth and development is of larger impact than individual industry-wastewater streams because it is harder to measure,” says Tang.
The fact that it is difficult to obtain a new permit for industry means that much of the area’s growth will be coming from new housing—especially since the economy is now largely driven by the high-tech industry. Impact from that industry is largely additional housing construction, road building, and discharge going into public sewage treatment facilities. “The impact that we see from this type of development is much more indirect than from traditional industries,” says Tang. “But the Bay does ultimately feel the impact from that extra flow from sewage treatment plants into the San Francisco Bay. For us as a district, that type of trend is definitely more difficult to keep track of.”
The region covering Santa Rosa, CA, to the Oregon border finds that its largest problems come from the fact that it has so many small businesses within its
boundaries. A drive from Santa Rosa to the northern end of the region takes eight hours, so there is clearly less of a field presence in this region. Industries there include everything from wood processors, pulp or lumber mills, and auto-wreckers to a wide variety of small manufacturing. Another challenge that the region faces is something beyond its control: the climate. The Santa Rosa area averages 30 inches of rainfall annually, whereas in the north that total may be from 60 to 80 inches per year. It is especially difficult to treat all that water.
In December 2005 and in the early weeks of 2006, the area experienced a 25-30–year storm. The office mobilized a crew to make onsite assessments, to inspect the largest industries, and to respond to complaints about flooding and discharges.
“It was really overwhelming to control that amount of water,” says Rick Azevedo, associate water resource control engineer for this region. “When you have so much rain, it is almost impossible to treat all the water.
“The BMP [best management practice] idea of roofing and asphalting, covering, and changing your process and how it works is really the best approach in an extremely rainy region. We are overwhelmed with water in our region of California, including high groundwater and close proximity to creeks that often flood, something some other areas rarely—if ever—have to deal with.”
Depending on the industry, a treatment system or a BMP will be put into place by the regional water board. In the case of a logging operation, this may simply be a large pond for storing sediment from the log deck. For some industrial processors, such as wood treaters, stormwater is collected, treated onsite, and then run back into the process.
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| Low-impact development would include paving with some porous sections so that the runoff would be absorbed instead of flowing in sheets off the surface down to the curb. |
Another option is simply putting an impermeable surface down and a roof over the sensitive areas to keep pollutants out of surface water. “Though this is the most capital-intensive thing to do, it is also the best thing to do because it eliminates the stormwater contact,” says Azevedo.
Another challenge Santa Rosa faces is that its stormwater program is newer and many of its small businesses are not as sophisticated and don’t have the money to put into advanced systems. “We are relatively short on resources and therefore are not able to be out in the field working with these people, educating them, doing enforcement or oversight and supervision. This is one of our biggest problems.”
Lumber mills were under regulation before the enactment of the stormwater-permit system, so they are a bit more sophisticated and up to speed already, according to Azevedo. But the mid-sized companies—the small auto-wrecker businesses, towing shops, or trucking shops, for example—present the greatest challenge for this region’s environmental protection board. “There is much work to be done with a lot of pollution coming from small places that you would never suspect as having a problem,” says Azevedo. “On a physical scale, say at an industrial park, it’s really hard to go back and retrofit things when someone has already constructed a site.”
Greg Gearheart, senior water resource control engineer with California’s State Water Resources Control Board, echoes some of Azevedo’s comments and puts this idea in perspective with the entire state. “When stormwater and other regulations came out for treating various pollutants, a lot of people starting thinking, ‘Well, what do we do at the end of the pipe?’” he says. “We have these communities and industries in place and everything is hardwired already except this problem with pollutants, so they created ways to put devices in the storm-drain inlets or things that you could do on the property itself to change your practice, like sweeping in the morning.
“But our people in the field decided that there has to be a better way to design the site so that the runoff has to run through areas that provide treatment. Then along came philosophies involving natural systems and low-impact development so that what we see now is a principled approach.”
What low-impact development says is that an attempt should be made to try to mimic the natural hydrology of the landscape to protect the resources and the watershed. Gearheart uses the example of an industry with a large parking lot that needs to have repavement work done.
The low-impact approach would be to pave with some porous sections so that the runoff would be absorbed instead of flowing in sheets off this surface down to the curb, where a drain would have to be installed and treated. The new system would allow the water to infiltrate and absorb more evenly and over a greater area.
“This approach works well with retrofitting many sizes of projects from single facilities right on up to entire communities,” says Gearheart. “Some towns that buried their creeks 20 years ago are now studying whether ‘day-lighting’ of those same creeks and installing natural ditches may work for them. It’s a new way of thinking that is quite intriguing. Though regulations haven’t yet caught up to this way of thinking, they don’t preclude it either.”
According to Gearheart, the idea of a BMP being a single device or activity is the old way of thinking, whereas the new way of thinking links various BMPs in a principled manner.
The state has a permit system for monitoring industrial wastewaters (NPDES), according to the state’s Victorville Office of Water Quality Board of the Lahontan Region, (one office of two for this huge region of the state). Under that program everything from airports to manufacturing firms pledges to do everything they can to keep stormwater on their site and not let it run off. These permits also require onsite water testing to make sure the water is acceptable. If the water does not meet the minimum requirements, it must be treated in some way, such as with a filter system to keep everything harmful out of the natural water system.
This huge high-desert region, with average rainfall totals of 6–8 inches per year, includes wastewater produced by airports, construction, manufacturing, paint storage and mining. One of the Victorville office’s biggest successes has been seen in the construction industry.
Several years ago, if a construction contractor was asked what stormwater BMP was, he would not have known, says a spokesman for the region’s office. “Now, since construction is such a big industry—houses being built all over the place—developers are doing a great job of getting BMPs on their sites to keep their mud and other wastes from infiltrating the watershed.”
The northern section of the Lahontan Region is administered out of their South Lake Tahoe office. This region has no large urban centers, with the western edge of the boundary following the crest of Sierra Nevadas. Wood industries are one of the largest concerns, as are agriculture, ranching, and protecting bodies of water and fish habitat from sedimentation sources.
“As with other areas of the state with gas stations, fuel distribution centers, and tanker trucks, wastewater contamination of the groundwater is a major concern in the region,” says Richard Booth, senior engineering geologist for this region.
Also contained in the region is the 150-year-old Leviathan Mine, a sulfur mine recently acquired by the state of California and involved in a joint-venture cleanup with Atlantic Richfield Co. This mine was originally worked for gold and silver before its copper sulfate and pure sulfur were targeted.
The sulfur was used mainly in processing gold and silver ore mined from the Comstock Mine during the 1800s. In recent years the sulfur was used for another mining process in Nevada. Acid drainage from this mine is now being cleaned up.
Some sections of this mine are being treated year-round, according to Booth. Other places have water that is being collected and treated in ponds during the summer months when there is access to this high-elevation site. At one section of the mine a bioreactor runs year-round using highly specialized bacteria that precipitate out the waste metals. “One challenge with this project that we’ve met is that we have been able to prevent mine acid overflow from our ponds every year since 1999,” says Booth. “This took a lot of effort on both the part of our staff and the contractors involved.”
Interstate 80, especially at Donner Pass and Summit, presents a major challenge in the region as tanker trucks spin out of control on icy roads and spill their contents several times per year. Ski-area development is another concern for the district, with increased sedimentation due to new ski runs being cleared from the region’s forests.
The Lake Tahoe Basin is working on a 20-year master plan, “Pathway 2007,” that will set up how the area grows and develops, including such issues as its economic base, its environmental base, and community development. “Protecting the area’s water quality is perhaps this region’s biggest issue,” says Booth. “Total maximum daily load, [TMDL] is something that we have started using to look at all the water bodies in our region to determine if they are impaired or not, and if they are impaired what we can do about it.” Various criteria studied include sediment load, heavy metals, and nutrients encouraging algal growth.
Gary Stewart, chief of the Compliance Section at the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board, headquartered in Riverside, notes that his region has very few direct permits issued for industrial wastewater other than stormwater permits. Orange County, also within this water control board’s boundaries, contains many print and circuit-board manufacturers, but still, these are mainly handled by the sanitation district’s pretreatment program.
Even California Steel’s wastewater is not completely treated within the region. Its wastewater is treated and then placed into a nonreclaimable line that actually goes into L.A. County’s wastewater treatment plants.
“One saving grace for our region’s industry is that we have two ‘brine lines,’ or nonreclaimable lines,” says Stewart. “These allow industrial waste to be treated to safe levels. But oftentimes industrial wastes contain a very high dissolved-solid content that is detrimental to our groundwater basin. These brine lines allow the water to be taken to the ocean for discharge, though the water is treated additionally in municipal treatment plants in either L.A. or along the coast in Orange County. In the ocean, these wastes do not present a problem for the environment.”
Any industry with a reverse-osmosis system in its wastewater treatment will produce brine, according to Stewart. The region also has some power plants with cooling water reused in several passes before the salinity is concentrated to the point that it cannot be discharged safely on land. In those cases the brine line is also used. The brine line runs from some areas east of San Bernardino all the way to the ocean, up to 50 miles long in some cases.
“The region’s groundwater is already high in TDS,” says Stewart. “In a number of places municipalities have already built desalters to pump the high-TDS water through reverse-osmosis filters to achieve drinking-water levels. The brines taken out of this water are then sent to the brine lines too. Other area industries require ultra-pure water for their work; these also use the brine lines.”
Toxic chemicals and heavy metals are for the most part not a problem with this region’s industries. Its main problem is high salinity. “It’s not harmful to place this water out in the ocean as the salt water is already in place,” says Stewart. “Other areas of the state, especially the Central Valley region, don’t have the luxury of a brine line. They are grappling with problems of high salinity from the wastestreams of some of their wineries and cheese manufacturing operations. Because of the bowl-like geography of the Central Valley, salinity remains an ongoing problem for them.
“We were lucky that a number of agencies in our region met early on and decided to fund the brine lines we have today. That showed a great deal of foresight on their part. Without it, additional industry would not have been able to come into our area as it’s simply too expensive to truck the brine wastewater from the area.”
San Diego’s Regional Water Quality Control Board addresses industrial-wastewater concerns largely dealing with its bay, port facilities, and large military presence. Recycling operations, including auto dismantlers from San Diego to the Mexican border, require a general industrial-stormwater permit as they are dealing with many of the same fluids as industry. In general, though, the industry in this area is considered light compared with the central and northern parts of the state.
The area also has several power plants, including the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. San Diego’s manufacturing includes electronics, cabinetmaking, printing, and significant construction activities. The large military facilities in the area have their own wastewater treatment plants, various recycling operations, storage for their munitions, fleet vehicle maintenance, automotive refueling, and shipyard operations, and they are individually permitted.
“We haven’t been able to repopulate our units lately,” says Tony Felix, scientific and industrial compliance engineer with Region Nine. “This problem is driven by the fact that there is a lot more opportunity in private industry and the living costs in this area are especially high. These things have driven people away from state employment and into private industry. We’ve been dealing with the problem for almost a year now.”
Something that has kept the San Diego region in the spotlight has been the intense scrutiny it has been under with many watchdog environmental groups in the San Diego area. “We get high visibility for any industrial-wastewater issues that may come up,” says Felix. “A heated issue for quite a while was the permitting of the boatyards. We had to craft regulations and that was a huge undertaking. Boatyards are being looked at carefully as their activities involve hydro-blasting of marine growth, cleaning, painting, and maintenance of the boats. We have to be very careful of how we prescribe permit requirements to satisfy state and federal regulations and the concerns of the public. Recently, the boatyard permits were renewed for another five years without too much controversy.”
In an age of shrinking budgets for a myriad of environmental concerns when it comes to industrial-wastewater treatment and stormwater-runoff issues, California’s Regional Water Quality Control Boards continue to grapple with these challenges.
These are issues most industries must face only once when it comes to treating wastewater.
For the state of California they remain ongoing issues. As with all our other states, the future ultimately lies in the hands of a population who may not always seem ready to bear the costs of such treatments and compliance when it comes to the industrial-wastewater stream in their midst.
PETE HILDEBRANDT is a writer specializing in science and engineering topics.
OW - May/June 2006 |
