A state water quality control board has lodged millions of dollars in fines against two municipal treatment plants in Colusa County for violating wastewater discharge limits.

The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board issued the tentative administrative civil liability orders today against the Maxwell Public Utilities District and the Williams wastewater treatment plant.

Maxwell PUC faces about $1.6 million in penalties for violating effluent limits for ammonia, biochemical oxygen demand, chlorine residual, total suspended solids, total coliform organisms and turbidity from Jan. 1, 2000, to April 30, a state water board news release stated.

Williams faces $2.1 million in penalties for violating effluent limitations for ammonia, biochemical oxygen demand, pH, total coliform organisms, total suspended solids and turbidity from Jan. 1, 2000, to Dec. 31, 2007, the release states.

The state water code allows a publicly owned treatment works serving a small community with a financial hardship to complete a compliance project instead of paying the penalties.

Both cities fall into that category. Maxwell is spending more than $8 million to construct a new wastewater treatment plant to correct the violations.

Williams is spending more than $2.1 million to construct a new wastewater treatment plant.

The tentative orders allow violators to apply the penalty toward their compliance project as long as the project is operational by 2010.

The Regional Water board is asking for public comment by Aug. 27.

If the board receives new information, it could withdraw and modify the tentative orders or schedule the matters for a hearing at its October board meeting, the release states.

The water quality control board also issued an administrative civil liability complaint today against the state office in charge of publishing legislative bills and printing services for all state agencies.

The Office of State Publishing, part of the Department of General Services, is facing a $129,000 fine for violating effluent limitations for arsenic, cadmium, copper, flow, iron, lead, nickel, pH, selenium and temperature from Jan. 1, 2000, through March 31, a news release states.

The violations involve the agency's alleged "effluent limitations of contaminated groundwater into the American River at the north end of 7th Street in Sacramento," the release states.

The $129,000 is the statutory-mandated minimum amount for the violations.

The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board is in charge of preserving and enhancing water resource quality. The complaint against the publishing office may be discussed during the board's October meeting, the release states.

Ken Landau, spokesman for the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, said the numerous fines announced Wednesday represent a priority by the board to process backlogged water quality violations.

Many of the violations date back to a 2000 change in state law that required the boards to assess "standard minimum" fines for wastewater violations. This is why some of the fines also appear larger than similar penalties in recent years.

The board, in other words, is beginning to uncork a vast backlog of old penalties that come with large fines attached. And Landau said this will continue for several months until the backlog is eliminated.

While some violators have continued to rack up additional violations during the backlog period, the board has worked with them all along to correct the problems that caused the water quality violations.

"They were not ignored. We just had not processed the penalty," Landau said.

Under yet another change in state law in 2002, the board is allowed to let small violators pay off their fines by using the money instead to take corrective action, such as building a new sewage treatment plant, rather than paying the money to the state. This is the case for the fines assessed against the cities of Williams and Maxwell, Landau said, which were $2.1 million and $1.6 million, respectively.

"If we actually collected that kind of cash from a small community, it would be exceedingly difficult for them to build a wastewater treatment plant or something else to comply," he said.

Fines paid in cash to the state go into a cleanup fund that is tapped to clean up wastewater problems where a perpetrator can't be found immediately, such as an abandoned gold mine leaking mercury into a stream, or a methamphetamine lab laden with hazardous materials.

Call The Bee's Niesha Lofing, (916) 321-1270.