State officials on Thursday fined UC Davis $78,000 for pumping too much pollution into Putah Creek from its campus sewage treatment plant.
The fine is one of numerous penalties announced recently by the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, which is clearing dozens of backlogged violations from its books. On Thursday the agency also announced a $33,000 penalty against the Calaveras County city of San Andreas and a state prison facility in San Joaquin County – both for similar sewage treatment problems.
In the UC Davis case, the campus sewage treatment plant violated numerous pollution limits from Jan. 1, 2001, to March 31, 2008. Treated wastewater from the campus is discharged into Putah Creek. But on numerous occasions over that period, the effluent included too much aluminum, chlorine, copper, cyanide and coliform. Limits were also violated for salinity, sediment and acidity.
UC Davis spokesman Andy Fell said the violations were caused by storm events that overwhelmed the campus treatment plant, and by improper disposal procedures. These have been corrected by upgrading the plant and staff education.
"We work to be a good citizen and minimize our environmental impact," Fell said.
The campus also recently expanded its wastewater treatment capacity by 50 percent at a cost of $7 million.
Ken Landau, a water board spokesman, said many of the backlogged penalties date to 2000, when a change in state law required minimum penalties to be assessed for certain pollution violations. The state's nine regional water boards did not keep pace with the numerous fines that accumulated under the mandate, and only recently began to clear the backlog.
In most cases, Landau said, water quality regulators worked with violators for years to adopt new methods and technology to prevent additional violations. "They weren't necessarily ignored," he said. "We just had not processed the penalties."
Some small communities, like San Andreas, are allowed under state law to apply their fines toward new systems to prevent pollution in the future. The law recognizes some small agencies lack the resources to both pay a fine and clean up their operations. The city's multiple violations involved coliform and suspended solids entering the Calaveras River.
In the state prison case, the Deuel Vocational Institute near Tracy repeatedly pumped too much chlorine, dichloroethene, tetrachloroethene, trichlorethene, oil and grease into a tributary of Paradise Cut and Old River, both part of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.
Call The Bee's Matt Weiser, (916) 321-1264.
