Townsfolk Along Russian River See Red Over Sewage Dumping

Along the scenic Russian River, where mellow practically was invented, about the only time folks find time to worry nowadays is when it rains.

And when it doesn’t.

The problem isn’t so much the floods that seem to regularly wash over Monte Rio, Guerneville and other quaint towns in this redwood-and-whitewater resort area 60 miles north of San Francisco.

The real problem is with the City of Santa Rosa--and its sewage.

When it rains too much or too little at the wrong times during the year, as it has in each of the last three years, Santa Rosa’s sewage system threatens to overflow. This prompts the city to send large doses of treated sewer water into the river--up to 5% of the river’s total volume at one time.

A few miles downstream, however, the same river flow is the main source of tap water for about 30,000 people.

“It’s outrageous,” said Virginia Hechtman of the town of Jenner, chairwoman of the Committee to Save the Russian River. “Everybody buys bottled water. I don’t know anybody who would put their glass under a tap in Guerneville. You might use it (tap water) to wash with, but that’s about it. We’re miserable.”

For years, Santa Rosa has dribbled highly treated waste water from its regional sewage plant into a tributary of the Russian River during the winter, when heavy rains swell the waterway and swiftly sweep the diluted effluent out to sea.

Waste water is what remains after virtually all of the solid material has been removed and chlorine added to the water that people flush down toilets, pour down sinks and tubs, and use in washing machines and dishwashers.

This seasonal flow and the negative publicity it brings has long irked the restaurateurs, innkeepers and fishermen who rely on the river for their income as well as their drinking water.

The battle has escalated following several large, unscheduled, unpleasant, but well-publicized waste-water releases over the last three winters. These have been countered with a barrage of angry politicking and silly pranks, including the delivery of horse-manure gift packs by men dressed as Groucho Marx to Santa Rosa officials.

Anonymous pranksters also have paved one Santa Rosa street with cow dung and delivered tons of Christmastime coal to Santa Rosa City Hall, while at the same time showering flowers on politicians who change their ways.

“It’s a war of wits,” said Lenny Weinstein, a Monte Rio sign painter and sculptor who enjoys the pranks but disavows any part in them.

Oddly, the horseplay seems to have helped. Sort of.

Hookups Grow by 60%

Santa Rosa, which has let the number of hookups to its regional sewer system grow by 60% in only nine years, faces a deadline today to find a new method for disposing of its waste sewage water. It is a deadline that city officials frankly acknowledge cannot--and will not--be met.

Santa Rosa officials hope their city will not be punished if they can show significant progress toward solving its problem.

“Believe me, we are not happy with the unreliability of the present system,” said Jan Dolan, Santa Rosa’s assistant city manager. “We probably abhor it more than river residents do, and we’re considering every alternative people are proposing.”

The real problem, she said, is that the city’s sewage system is being asked to meet standards that were not in effect when the plant was built and for which it was not designed. The region’s water quality control board, however, has little sympathy for that explanation and says its standards are not to blame.

The city has narrowed its present options from 36 to four, but two of these--injecting the waste water into local geysers or simply allowing it to seep into riverfront property--may be burdened with insoluble economic and health problems.

Pipe to the Ocean

A third idea, running a pipe to the ocean and dumping the waste water there, is bitterly opposed by the same people upset with the current system. Other, smaller cities such as Sebastopol also oppose this idea, as do University of California scientists studying Sonoma County’s pristine coast.

The last option is to use waste water to create a new, artificial marsh that would feed into San Francisco Bay. This has received the tentative approval of the Sierra Club but state regulators of water quality are skeptical.

Whichever option is chosen would be used only in winter. Waste water created during the summer is used to irrigate crops fed to local dairy herds. Farmers are paid to use the waste water, but do not need it during the rainy winters.

Dolan said she expects that it will be at least April before the Santa Rosa City Council can pick one or two preferred alternatives--and thereby touch off “inevitable” lawsuits. Between the legal fights, design, engineering, fund raising and construction, Dolan said, a new disposal system is not likely to be running until 1992 at the earliest.

In the meantime, distressed river residents worry that Santa Rosa will continue to grow, sewage volume will continue to rise and releases into the river will just plain continue.

‘Just Not the Same’

“Old-time residents--people who have spent their whole lives here, or a good part of it--look at the river now and it’s just not the same to them anymore,” Hechtman said. “Santa Rosa can say that it is cleaner than before, but that’s hard to believe when it is murky and green and they see there are soap suds floating on it.”

It is particularly disheartening to business owners who have bounced back from last year’s devastating flood and are starting to see a return of the family trade that had been displaced by hippies and homosexuals in the 1970s.

“It is a real touchy subject with businessmen,” said Barbara Hoffman of Russian River Region Inc., a tourism board. “It is with me, too. I was born and raised here and I hate to see what they’re doing to the river.”

She played down tourists’ concerns, saying that waste water is not introduced into the river during the summer.

Locals Still Worry

Still, locals worry that the river will not draw back many tourists until Santa Rosa puts its waste water elsewhere.

“It’s important that the river be perceived as clean by people who come here to swim and fish and boat,” said Guerneville resident Brenda Adelman, chairwoman of the River Citizens Sewer Committee. “We can’t stress enough how many people rely on it (the river) for their livelihood.

“But who wants to swim in a river that somebody else uses to dump their effluent?”