OJAI VALLEY : Reusing Effluent Costly, Report Says

Reusing waste water from the Ojai Valley Sanitary District treatment plant would be difficult, costly and could lead to higher rates for all customers, a consultant’s report says.

Boyle Engineering Corp. of Ventura issued the report to the district board after studying ways to dispose of nearly 2 million gallons of effluent now being released into the Ventura River each day.

The district has been ordered by the state to clean up the water from the treatment plant at 6363 N. Ventura Ave. before it is discharged into the river. The California Regional Water Quality Control Board has given the district until July, 1993, to comply or face fines of $10,000 a day and $10 a gallon.

Upgrading the treatment plant to meet the state requirement would cost at least $25 million and would increase disposal fees about $190 a year, about double the current rate, district General Manager Eric Oltmann said.

District officials hoped that reclaiming all of the effluent for agriculture or industry would either make it unnecessary to upgrade the treatment plant or would subsidize part of the upgrade cost, Oltmann said.

In fact, a reclamation system would have to be subsidized by customers, said James Kentosh, senior engineer at Boyle Engineering.

Constructing pipelines and reservoirs required for reclamation would cost millions of dollars and might not prevent the need for expensive work on the filtration system, he told the district’s board of directors this week.

To compete with other water sources, the district would have to sell its reclaimed water well below the cost of producing and delivering it, Kentosh said.

The board decided to continue studying options, including building an 8- to 10-mile pipeline into the Ojai Valley to sell reclaimed water for orchard and golf course irrigation.

Officials from Farmont Corp., who are hoping to build a golf course in Ojai Valley, said they would consider paying for part of the construction cost of a reclamation system, Oltmann said.