Waste Water Discharge at Bay Affirmed

A permit allowing the discharge of millions of gallons of reclaimed water daily into Upper Newport Bay was readopted Friday by the Santa Ana Regional Water Quality Control Board as environmentalists vowed to continue fighting the controversial plan.

Those supporting the project were pleased by the board’s 5 to 1 vote favoring the plan, which is still subject to review by a Superior Court judge. Irvine Ranch Water District’s proposal is to pump highly treated municipal waste water into the fragile estuary, considered one of the most important environmental habitats in Southern California.

“We strongly believe it’s a great program. We really do. It’s one of those win-win situations,” said Ken Thompson, the district’s director of water quality. The project could actually enhance the quality of the bay’s water by reducing by 15 tons a year the amount of nitrogen flowing into the bay from San Diego Creek, district officials say.

But critics disagree, contending that reclaimed water would promote algae growth and harm the ecologically fragile estuary that is home to rare birds and fish and is also a popular haven for bicyclists and joggers.

Those supporting the reclaimed-water plan have no regard for the bay’s recreational value, said Bob Caustin, director of Defend the Bay, which opposes the plan.

“To them, it’s a sewer outfall, and I’m not going to stop fighting,” Caustin said. “We’re going to appeal it, and we have a better case than we did last time.”

The group will take its case to the state Water Resources Control Board, just as it did after the original permit approval in 1996, Caustin said. In that case, the state board stood by the regional board’s decision to move forward with the bay discharge.

The water district has said its plan could save money as it enhances the bay.

In winter months, up to 5 million gallons daily of highly treated sewage water would be flushed through a system of duck ponds leading to San Diego Creek and Upper Newport Bay. During the summer, the district would divert more than 3 million gallons of water daily from the creek through the ponds, removing nitrates so as to reduce the amount going into the bay during the warmer months when algae growth prospers.

Defend the Bay, an environmentalist group founded to oppose the discharge, won a victory against the project when Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert E. Thomas agreed with their complaint that the district did not sufficiently prove that the reclaimed water would not harm the bay.

Thomas’s ruling forced the board to reconsider the issue.

With Friday’s vote, the board reaffirmed its earlier vote after the district provided more information about how the bay could be improved by the program. A key factor in the debate is a state policy barring new discharges of municipal waste water into estuaries unless they can be shown to enhance the area.

The evidence supports the finding that the water district’s plan “would result in a decrease, albeit a small one, in the nitrogen content in the bay,” according to a staff report to the board.

Supporters of Defend the Bay continued to question the validity of that research at Friday’s meeting in Corona.

In a related issue, the board adopted standards known as “total maximum daily loads” for the amount of nutrients and sediments that can enter the bay and San Diego Creek.