CCSD tracer test labeled successful on 2nd try

The Cambria Community Services District has completed a 67-day test to track how long it takes for bromide-laced water to flow from the Sustainable Water Facility to the district’s San Simeon Creek supply wells. Staffers say initial analyses indicate that the test was a success this time.

Jerry Gruber, general manager of the Cambria Community Services District, told his Board of Directors at its Dec. 15 meeting that the preliminary results had come in that morning.

“The tracer study is completed; it was successful,” he said. “We will move forward today on shutting down the Sustainable Water Facility” that, for now, is only operated in emergency circumstances when the town is short of water.

Running the plant for the test was allowed, however. The approximately $14 million reclaimed water facility draws a brackish blend of treated effluent, fresh and seawater into the plant, where it goes through several different treatments and filtering before it is re-injected back underground for the slow trip toward the well field.

Gruber has said previously that the sodium bromide used in the test did stay “at extremely low concentrations” in the water that went into Cambria’s drinkable water supply. He said, “However it does not result in any changes to the taste, color or viscosity of the water that our customers receive.”

The test, approved by the state Division of Drinking Water, is “deemed completely safe.”

What it means

District engineer Bob Gresens said in an email interview Monday, Dec. 19, the study’s success means “that we exceeded the underground, 60-day travel time required by the state’s Title 22 regulations.” To complete the tracer study fieldwork, he said, “we analyzed for bromide concentration, which was the only analysis done other than those already required in our permits.”

Gresens explained that the test’s success “has been verbally confirmed by our project’s geo-hydrologist, who has been carefully reviewing and analyzing” the data. “A technical report on the tracer study will follow the recently completed fieldwork phase later on during January 2017. This technical report will also be subject to final review and approval by the State Water Board’s Division of Drinking Water.”

Déjà vu

The district has been down this road before.

In a tracer test done in 2014, the travel time to the most distant of the two primary supply wells was within the required parameters, according to a report of more than 300 pages. However, travel time to the closer well was three days short of the minimum for the operating permit from the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.

That’s why a second test was required.

What’s next

Gruber said in his Dec. 15 report that the facility “continues to be operational. He told the board that Water Department staffers will take meter readings throughout town Wednesday, Dec. 28, and then begin the process of shutting down the plant “based on continued protocol which relies on three variables.” Those are:

▪  The well levels in the district’s San Simeon and Santa Rosa wells.

▪  The level at the Winsor Bridge East well (a monitoring well).

▪  The gradient levels at a “hydrologic mound” of underground wastewater that’s supposed to keep seawater out of the well field, a dreaded condition often referred to as “seawater intrusion.”

For the shut-down process, Gruber said in an email interview, “We will need to coordinate the contractor coming up and removing the membranes for storage. We will also need to coordinate with H20 Innovations with shutting the system down (and) with one additional contractor for taking all of the metering devices off line to include the probes to make sure they are properly stored.”

Once the plant shutdown starts, he said, the district will stop adding to consumers’ bills an operational charge for the facility (labeled EWS on the bills, for emergency water supply, the plant’s original name). The operational charge is only added when the plant is running; two other EWS fees are added to the bimonthly bills year-round.

This story was originally published December 21, 2016 at 10:16 AM with the headline "CCSD tracer test labeled successful on 2nd try."