There’s an old adage, “Out with the old, and in with the new.”
Morro Bay and Cayucos have already done “in with the new,” and now it’s time to think about — “out with the old,” sewer plant that is.
The City of Morro Bay is seeking bids for the decommissioning and demolition of the old, jointly-owned sewer treatment plant on Atascadero Road.
Now that both Morro Bay and the Cayucos Sanitary District have each finished building new treatment plants, and ceased to be partners in the old one, attention turns now to the future of what many believe is a prime piece of beach front real estate.
“The Consultant,” reads a request for proposals out now, “shall be responsible for preparing an effective, clear, and concise proposal.” The deadline for bids is 5 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 27. The winning bidder will not only prepare plans for decommissioning and demolition, but would also oversee the work, which would presumably be done by yet another contractor.
The old plant is a traditional two-tier treatment facility that was built in the early 1980s. It ran for many years under a special discharge permit from the Regional Water Quality Control Board.
That 301h “waiver” as it is called, allowed the plant to discharge a mix of primary and secondary treated wastewater into the ocean about a half mile offshore and a mile or so north of Morro Rock.
The waiver protected the plant from the standards in the Clean Water Act, namely that any wastewater discharged into any body of water — lake, river, creek and ocean — to first be fully treated to at least a secondary level.
The plant usually met these standards except for times when flow to the plant outpaced the plant’s ability to treat it all to secondary levels, just a handful of days every year.
When the plant was first built it was sized to do this, but the towns have grown considerably since 1984 and on busy weekends — 4th of July in particular — when both towns are filled with tourists, the flows can be too high for full secondary treatment. The old plant has no storage capacity that would have allowed it to even out the flows and fully treat the sewage.
Also, the plant was at the point where they couldn’t get replacement parts and often had to have parts custom manufactured by a machine shop.
The waiver was targeted by the water board in the early 2000s, and the two partner agencies were first asked then ordered to bring the plant up to full secondary treatment, all the time, in accordance with the Clean Water Act.
The 301(h) waiver here was one of just two remaining in the RWQCB’s jurisdiction, the other was in Goleta (San Diego had one as well).
The two first approached the issue together working on an upgrade to the existing plant, adding enough capacity to meet the upgrade order.
But FEMA pointed out that the old plant was in the flood plain of Morro Creek and any new facility had to be raised out of it. The second iteration included some 8-feet of fill to raise the new parts up and out of the flood plain. That wasn’t going to fly with regulators and forced them to look into a complete replacement of the old plant.
But that change in direction brought into play the City’s planning documents, including the water master plan, which places recycling of wastewater as the No. 1 priority for the City.
So the two started work on a full replacement plant that would have been located right next door to the old plant on Atascadero Road,
Both agencies approved the new plant plan but some 14 different appeals were filed with the Coastal Commission, which took the opportunity to take over the project and apply so-called coastal hazard avoidance, into the mix.
The Commission insisted the project be moved away from the coast to avoid potential hazards — mainly tsunamis zones and sea level rise — as part of the agency’s policies to address climate change.
The issue reopened the rift that Morro Bay and the Sanitary District had battled for years, as they haggled over costs. The split had always been 60-40 with the CSD paying the smaller piece. But even that was in some dispute as the District tried to say costs should be split according to flow rates.
Cayucos over the years has had a significant number of its housing units converted into vacation homes and vacation rentals, which sit empty for much of the time.
The new project eventually led to Cayucos pulling out and pursuing a plant of its own, which they eventually built on Toro Creek Road, making use of the old Chevron Marine Terminal’s undersea loading pipes for a discharge system. That plant, which cost about $24 million was finished and went online years before Morro Bay’s project. But it still discharges the wastewater into the ocean, which isn’t what the CSD wanted to do. They would eventually like to pipe that water over a hill and discharge it into Whale Rock Reservoir, where the town’s drinking water comes from.
Morro Bay chose, after a couple of years of haggling, to build on ranchlands above the terminus of South Bay Boulevard, some $3.5 miles from the old treatment plant.
That necessitated an array of conveyance pipes be laid and two brand new lift stations added to the City’s collection system. It also cost over $175 million.
Today, the old plant sits largely unused, however, the City still uses the old offshore discharge line to dispose of its triple treated and micro-filtered effluent, and will continue with that until it completes the next phase of the project — building a system to recycle the wastewater.
The City borrowed money from the State (revolving loan fund) to help pay for the new plant; and recycling that water played a huge part in the selling of the project to the State and Federal Government, which also loaned about $65 million to the project.
That recycling system is also being worked on now by the City’s consultant.
There is some question over what the City can do with the Atascadero Road property, which is across the street from the beach.
Because the Coastal Commission denied the project over “coastal hazards,” that Sword of Damocles still hangs over the site, as whatever is eventually built there will have to deal with those issues. Moving the City’s plant cost an additional $100 million plus interest.
Demolition of the old plant and the disposition of the property is one of the few lasting issues the Sanitary District and City have between them.
The two sides have been occasionally meeting but the City Council and CSD Board haven’t met in person in nearly a decade.
City staff has been asked repeatedly by Estero Bay News for an update of these talks but has said there was nothing yet to report.
It should be noted that the request for bids lists only the City of Morro Bay as the one seeking the bids, but names the site as “the jointly-owned Morro Bay-Cayucos Wastewater Treatment Plant.”
With the issuance of a request for bids, it would appear they have reached a point where they can start to address the matter.
