Water plant EIR draws agencies’ concerns

The hefty report on environmental studies of Cambria’s Sustainable Water Facility can be daunting to read and understand, but apparently a lot of people tackled that task.

By the Oct. 26 deadline, according to Jerry Gruber, general manager for the Cambria Community Services District, the agency had received 210 written comments on the Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the water reclamation project. The comments came from other agencies and individuals.

Some of the weightiest comments are from agencies that have the clout to stop the project or require substantial revisions, such as the California Coastal Commission, state Department of Fish and Wildlife and Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Some comment letters focus on a few specific concerns, citing particular sentences in the EIR. Others address issues in more general terms. And some, like the Coastal Commission’s 15-page letter, do both.

The draft EIR is posted at www.cambriacsd.org.

The plant

The facility draws from underground a brackish blend of fresh water from creek underflow, dilute ocean water and treated wastewater effluent. The blend goes through microfilters, three stages of reverse osmosis and advanced oxidation before being reinjected into the aquifer and flowing toward district supply wells.

The district built the plant under a county emergency permit issued in 2014 because CCSD officials said that, without the facility, the community could have run out of water during the drought. That permit required the district to apply for a full permit to operate the plant on a permanent basis. The EIR is part of that application process.

Coastal Commission

The commission’s response, written by Senior Environmental Scientist Tom Luster, addresses item after item, section by section from the EIR, and indicates issues about which staffers want changes or additional information.

The staff’s “overall recommendation” is that the district “substantially revise” the EIR “to incorporate more complete and accurate data and information, and to use this information to fully re-evaluate the project’s known and expected adverse effects” on the environment and the community.

The summary section continues with an itemization of “primary concerns”:

▪  “The San Simeon watershed does not appear to have adequate water available for the proposed project.

▪  “Both the existing project and the proposed project will have significant adverse impact on habitat and biological resources, including listed species, that have not been adequately analyzed” in the EIR.

▪  “New growth anticipated by the proposed project … would not be supported by the project once the constraints of the water available in the San Simeon watershed are adequately analyzed.”

The comment letter also maintains that the EIR “does not analyze how such new growth would be provided with water beyond the project’s expected 20-25 years of operations, and it does not evaluate the adverse effects that would result from that situation.”

District reaction

The Cambrian sought a response to the comment letters, especially the one from the commission, from Gruber, who said Oct. 27 that he was still studying the documents.

However, district Director Greg Sanders, who serves with board President Gail Robinette on the EIR ad hoc committee, said Tuesday, Nov. 1, that “I’m very confident we can answer their questions and their concerns.”

He said the comments and the district’s responses to them “are a process” that was expected.

Sanders acknowledged some things in the EIR might need further explanation, answers, fixing and/or even rewriting in some sections, actions often triggered by the filing of comments by the agencies and members of the public.

If there are too many changes, or those changes are significant enough, he said, “we may need to recirculate the EIR” for further comments after those changes are made, rather than releasing it as a final version.

For instance, he said, “we’ll need to include better calculations about how much water we will withdraw from the creek and how much treated effluent from the wastewater treatment plant we’ll add to the aquifer.”

Sanders said those statistics and a better explanation of that process could help verify why the district feels there will be enough brackish water in the aquifer for the plant to process on a regular basis, thereby producing enough highly treated water for the community on a sustainable basis while still protecting the habitat and keeping enough water in the creek and the lagoon.

Sanders estimated that the next step — reacting to all those comment letters and making changes those comments prompted — probably will take at least three months. If the EIR needs to be recirculated, that process will take considerably longer, he said.

The district board’s next meeting is at 12:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 17, at the Veterans Memorial Building, 1000 Main St.

State Parks

Surprisingly, State Parks did not submit comments on the project’s EIR, even though representatives had problems with the project as it was built and operated as an emergency measure to provide water to the town of 6,000 during the drought.

Local state park officials declined to say why the agency hadn’t provided comments on the plant’s EIR, and instead referred a reporter to the department’s public information staff in Sacramento. Messages were left with department staffers, but no reply or response was received by press deadline.

This story was originally published November 2, 2016 at 10:24 AM with the headline "Water plant EIR draws agencies’ concerns."