State Gives Norco Deadline on Sewage Discharge Issue

The regional water quality board set a timetable Friday for Norco to stop discharging inadequately treated sewage into the Santa Ana River.

The order, issued by the California Regional Water Quality Control Board, Santa Ana Region, sets a Nov. 15, 1986, deadline for the city to close an outmoded plant now treating wastewater from a state prison and a U.S. Navy facility in Norco.

The order “sets a realistic timetable” to divert the untreated waste to a high-capacity regional sewer line next year, said James Bennett, executive officer of the regional board.

Norco was not represented at the board’s public hearing Friday, but Jim Ashcraft, the city’s public works director, later said the order put city officials “in a better position than we were before,” because it recognizes the 40-year-old plant must continue operating for another year.

No Immediate Action

“As far as what is going into the river,” Ashcraft said, “there will be no (immediate) effect at all.”

The water quality board had closed the plant in the mid-1970s, because of inadequate treatment and odor problems, said Gordon Anderson, the board’s environmental program manager.

Norco, however, began to suffer from insufficient sewage-treatment capacity, which left home building in the city at a virtual standstill from September, 1976, until April, 1985.

Because the city and the prison together were producing more wastewater daily than the Corona treatment plant could handle, the board in 1980 allowed Norco and the California Rehabilitation Center to refurbish and reopen the plant to process 500,000 gallons of wastewater daily, Anderson said.

State Billed for Costs

The state-owned treatment plant is maintained by the City of Norco and operated under contract by a private firm, Envirotech Operating Services. Norco bills the state for the plant’s operating costs, Ashcraft said.

Even operating at 500,000 gallons daily, the plant could meet only secondary state standards for making treated wastewater technically safe for human use. Flow into the plant from the medium security prison and the Naval Weapons Center generally has exceeded 500,000 gallons daily, however.

As the inmate population of the California Rehabilitation Center increases, the prison alone could soon produce as much as 700,000 gallons of sewage daily, or almost half again the treatment plant’s capacity, predicted John Donlevy, Norco city manager.

The solution required by the water quality board is a sewer connection from the prison to a regional sewer line designed to carry poor quality commercial wastewater for treatment in Orange County and dumping in the Pacific Ocean.

Pollutant Standards

The order approved Friday limits daily flow through the Norco plant to 500,000 gallons by Nov. 15, 1986, sets standards for pollutants in the plant’s discharge and requires construction of the regional sewer line link to begin by Feb. 15 and to be completed by Oct. 1, 1986.

The California Legislature last month appropriated the $1.9 million needed to connect the sewers. Construction “is going to take at least another year,” Donlevy said.

But Norco is connecting its own sewer system to the regional sewer line this month under a 10-year lease agreement that will allow the city time to build a new plant for itself--and perhaps some of its neighbors.

That will free some of the city’s capacity in the Corona treatment plant to take the California Rehabilitation Center’s excess sewage, Donlevy said. The prison is already connected to the city sewer system which will carry the sewage to Corona.

Corona’s Complaint

Once the prison gets its own connection to the regional sewer line, he said, “we’ll discontinue the (old Norco treatment plant’s) operation entirely” and destroy the facility.

But Corona officials dispute Norco’s right to send the prison’s sewage to their plant.

“The authority for Norco to do that sort of thing is still in question, for the City of Corona,” said Bill Garrett, Corona’s deputy city manager.

A lawsuit is pending between the two cities to determine “who actually owns the rights to that capacity,” Garrett said. Corona maintains it owns the capacity. Norco has the right to use it, “but not to turn over that right to someone else.”