Santa Paula Is Losing Water Plant Operator

The operator of Santa Paula’s 65-year-old wastewater treatment plant has decided not to renew its contract with the city because of concerns the aging facility can’t meet state water cleanliness standards.

Operations Management International of Englewood, Colo., which also operates Fillmore’s wastewater plant, notified Santa Paula officials last week that it would terminate its agreement with the city by May 3. It has offered to continue operating the plant after that date until a new operator is in place, provided new terms can be negotiated.

Susan Mays, a spokeswoman for Operations Management, said the company decided to reject a contract renewal agreement it negotiated last summer with Santa Paula after regulators in December imposed new limits on the levels of nitrogen and chlorides that may be released into the Santa Clara River.

“Operating the plant puts us at risk for fines and civil penalties,” Mays said. “The plant is not, without some capital improvement, able to meet its discharge requirements.... We do not want to be held accountable for that known risk.”

The company signed a five-year renewal of its contract with Fillmore in 2003 and intends to continue serving that city of nearly 15,000. Fillmore has spent nearly $2 million updating its 45-year-old treatment plant.

“From our perspective, they have basically thrown up their hands and said they no longer want to deal with us in Santa Paula,” City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz said of the Colorado firm. He is due to report to the City Council on March 15 on alternatives for future plant operations.

Those options include using city workers to run the facility, hiring another private contractor or again employing the Ventura Regional Sanitation District, which operated the facilities in Santa Paula and Fillmore from 1980 to 1998.

Ken Rock, director of wastewater for the sanitation district, said chlorides were an issue when the district first took over the Santa Paula plant 24 years ago because of the naturally occurring salt in the area’s groundwater and softeners used to treat that city’s hard water. To properly remove all salt, a plant would need expensive reverse-osmosis equipment, he said.

“The plant could do a better job than it has on removing conventional contaminants, but removal of nitrates and chloride will be difficult,” Rock said. “They’re in a tough spot.”

The Santa Paula plant, which uses the old-style, open-air method for breaking down waste with bacteria, was not designed to tackle nitrates and it cannot keep chlorides within acceptable limits, Mays said.

At stake are state minimum fines of $3,000 for each day the plant violates the terms of its discharge permit. Before it persuaded the Regional Water Quality Control Board in October to ease some provisions of its permit, Santa Paula faced up to $5 million in fines .

Santa Paula leaders pleaded with state water officials to waive the fines, or at least let the money instead go to construct a modern treatment plant for the rural town of 30,000. Santa Paula and Fillmore intend to jointly build a $63-million sewage plant to serve both cities that could open as early as 2007.