“We always seek ways to protect both the environment and our customers’ pocketbooks, and our success with the Basin Plan amendments does just that.” said EID Board President George Osborne.
Placerville, CA… On March 21, 2008, the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco upheld a site-specific amendment to the state’s water-quality plan for temperatures in Deer Creek. The approved temperature standard was one of three amendments to the Cosumnes River Basin Plan that together saved at least $16 million by averting unwarranted upgrades to El Dorado Irrigation District’s (EID) Deer Creek wastewater treatment plant.
“This decision reaffirms that a proactive and collaborative approach to regulatory issues can reap multiple benefits,” said EID Board President George Osborne.
The court’s decision came in response to a suit filed by the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance against the State Water Resources Control Board, the agency that approved the site-specific amendments to the Basin Plan. The Alliance did not name the District as a defendant in the case, but according to EID General Counsel Tom Cumpston, “EID kept a close eye on the lawsuit. And we were pleased to see that the administrative record we and our partners built over nearly nine years held up in court.”
A background, in 1997, EID received a new permit for the Deer Creek plant that included phased-in limits for temperature, pH, and turbidity (cloudiness) before discharging the treated wastewater. The permit conditions would have required the construction of cooling towers for temperature control, chemical control systems for pH balancing, and microfiltration to achieve low turbidities—all at a conservatively estimated cost of $16 million, not including annual operating expenses.
Believing these requirements to be environmentally unnecessary, EID initiated a program to acquire site-specific amendments to the Basin Plan for the Deer Creek permit and conducted numerous scientific studies to determine how cooperative, less-costly measures could still meet Deer Creek’s unique environmental needs. These measures formed the basis for the amendments that the State Water Resources Control Board ultimately adopted.
This groundbreaking process involved coordination with and approval by many regulatory agencies, including the California Office of Administrative Law, California Department of Fish and Game, California State Water Resources Control Board, Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, National Marine Fisheries Service, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Nature Conservancy and University of California at Davis and Berkeley also contributed to the process, and consultant Michael Bryan of Robertson-Bryan, Inc. in Elk Grove, CA, was instrumental in providing technical information on the amendments.
Background: http://pubs.usgs.gov/dds/dds-43/VOL_III/VIII_C02.PDF
