The East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) receives wastewater from seven East Bay wastewater collection agencies in the cities of Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland, and Piedmont, and the Stege Sanitary District which serves El Cerrito, Kensington, and a portion of Richmond. Together the EBMUD and its satellite systems serve a population of approximately 650,000 through infrastructure that spans 1,500 miles.
Each satellite owns and operates its own wastewater collection system, which delivers wastewater to EBMUD’s Interceptor System. The Interceptor System transports wastewater to EBMUD’s year-round main wastewater treatment plant (MWWTP) located near the eastern anchorage of the Bay Bridge.
During wet weather, EBMUD at times discharges wastewater from three wet weather facilities (WWFs), two located Oakland, and one in Richmond.
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These WWFs provide only solids removal and disinfection, not secondary treatment, before discharging to San Francisco Bay, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) determined in 2004 they were in fact publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) and thus required secondary treatment for discharges. Shortly thereafter, the Regional Water Board issued an amended permit prohibiting discharges from the WWFs and adopted a Cease and Desist Order (CDO) with requirements and time schedules for EBMUD to cease discharging from the WWFs.
The satellites also operated under a CDO to reduce inflows and infiltration coming into their systems. From 1986 forward the satellites spent approximately $335 million to rehabilitate sewer infrastructure, and reduced inflow and infiltration reaching the EBMUD’s Interceptor System by 29 percent before 2007. Despite this work, the Consent order notes that inflow and infiltration of stormwater into the collection system through cracks, cross connections and other infrastructure weaknesses and sewer laterals during wet weather can lead to increases in stormwater to the interceptor of 10-fold or more. As a result, each year hundreds of millions of gallons of sewage are discharged to San Francisco Bay and as much as 600,000 gallons of raw sewage from satellites is discharged into the streets and public areas through outlets like manhole covers, before draining to the Bay.
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The 2014 settlement is the result of a Clean Water Act enforcement action brought by the EPA, U.S. Department of Justice, California State Water Resources Control Board, San Francisco Bay Regional Water Board, San Francisco Baykeeper, and Our Children’s Earth Foundation. Ultimately, the objective of the settlement is to achieve compliance with the Clean Water Act (CAA) and California’s Porter-Cologne Act by eliminating both discharges from the WWFs and sanitary sewer overflows. To accomplish this EBMUD and the satellites will spend an estimate $1.5 billion over the next 21 years to assess and upgrade sewer infrastructure. These actions will include:
- Repair and rehabilitating old and cracked sewer pipes,
- Regularly cleaning and inspecting sewer pipes to prevent overflows of raw sewage;
- Identifying and eliminating illegal sewer connections,
- Continue enforcement private sewer lateral ordinances, and
- Ensuring proactive renewal of existing sanitary sewer infrastructure.
Since the sewage discharges are expected to continue until the upgrades are complete, EBMUD will also immediately begin work to offset the environmental harm caused by the sewage discharges by capturing and treating urban runoff and contaminated water that currently flows to the Bay untreated during dry weather. All eight entities will also pay cumulative penalties of $1.5 million for past sewage discharges that violated federal laws.