The San Mateo County Times has an editorial today extolling the deal that John and Clarence Arata made with the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST).

We applaud POST’s mission, admire the agreement they reached with the Aratas and urge those among    us who have the means to help this worthy group prosper in its goal to keep our open lands open.

We’re fortunate to have neighbors like the Aratas and allies like POST who see the Coastside as something worth preserving, and not as a collection of unexploited opportunities.  The County Times’s excellent article on the Aratas was a rare bit attention for the coast by the Bayside media. And it’s great to see them put their editorial columns behind the preservation of open space on this side of the hill.

Monday’s storm resulted in four overflows in four locations in the Sewer Authority Midcoastside (SAM) system. SAM provides sewer service from Half Moon Bay to Montara. Locations of the overflows, with links to maps:

• Montara at the Date/Harte pump
• Mirada and Magellan in Miramar
• Surfer’s Beach
• Controlled overflow at the Montara Storage Facility

"Last year’s rain was a 10 to 20 year event," said SAM board member Scott Boyd, speaking of the deluge that resulted in a well-publicized overflow last year.  "This year was bigger."  And the overflow was worse as well.

According to Jack Foley, manager of SAM, because rain flushed the sytem before the overflow and because of the amount of water involved, the sewage overflow was diluted ten to twenty times. And, of course, the continuing rains flushed it further.

The rain on Monday was tremendous.  With 4.7 inches falling in Montara in less than 24 hours, more then 5 in Pacifica and more than 3 in Half Moon Bay. One inch fell in Montara between 5 and 7am, and 0.6 inches in just half an hour.

The result of all this water was to "max out the system" according to Scott Boyd. This, despite the half-million gallon storage facility that was added recently.  The challenge for the system is that there are multiple points where water is collected and moved on in the system and each of these is a potential bottleneck.

Optimizing the system requires complex modeling, which has been ongoing at SAM. In addition to SAM’s continuing review of their system in light of recent events and their plans for additional storage to accomodate flooding, the authority is under review by the Environmental Protection Agency for last year’s overflow. This review could well result in additional federal requirements on the system.

Events of this nature were considered extreme, but it’s beginning to look like extreme events are the norm.

The letup in the rain over the last 24 hours has allowed SAM to empty its system of all the extra water. This is good news. Another big storm is expected to dump more rain on the Coastside starting Wednesday

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has assumed leadership of a new audit of Coastside sewer services. And the new EPA standards could have a significant financial impact on the Coastside, including the city of Half Moon Bay, Granda Sanitary District, and Montara Water and Sanitary District.

HMB Mayor Mike Ferreira and Council member Sid McCausland raised this issue at the November 16th meeting of the Half Moon Bay City Council.

Ferreira expressed his concern that a portion of the EPA mandate could call for major capital improvements to increase the ability of the system to accommodate major storms or to provide drinking-water-quality treatment of the sewer plant effluent.  Given the Coastside’s economic base, he doubted that the Coastside has the financial capacity to undertake some of the major capital improvements that could wind up being proposed by the EPA.

The audit report, which is expected sometime after the first of the year, is likely to recommend that the Coastside sewer agencies get tough with homeowners whose sewer lines from the house to the street are in need of repair.  The audit is also likely to call for actions to strengthen the cooperative management of Coastside sewers, standardize procedures for responding to emergencies and strengthen programs for maintaining the sewers.

But the EPA could also insist on expensive infrastructure improvements.

The biggest shock to homeowners could well be an EPA requirement that Montara Water and Sanitary District, the Granada Sanitary District and Half Moon Bay develop rigid inspection procedures and enforcement programs for those sewer lines from run from caostside homes to the street.  EPA wants to stop rain water and ground water from seeping into the sewer system and to keep flushes from leaking out.  During storms, many Coastside sewer spills are the result of too much storm runoff and ground water infiltrating broken and poorly aligned sewer lines and, thereby, overwhelming the capacity of the collection system.

"That’s a huge source of the inflow we experience," says Scott Boyd, president of the Montara Water and Sanitary District and one of the District’s two representatives to the Sewer Authority Midcoastside.

The biggest shock to the sewer agencies is likely to be EPA’s announcement that they have moved the goal posts.  Under EPA’s new mandate, major fines can be imposed for sewer spills that previously were not even required to be reported.  For decades the Regional Water Quality Control Board set the standard for Coastside sewer discharges and spills.  The current standards require the reporting of all spills that may enter environmentally sensitive areas as well as spills greater than a certain number of gallons.

In general sewer agencies were expected to limit the number of reportable spills to ten per hundred miles of sewer lines per year.  Under the EPA, it appears that the limit will be reduced to four spills of any size.  The EPA’s new standards are expected to essentially make every spill an offense that may trigger a fine.

"What we hope is that the EPA will require us to do what we already know we need to do," said Boyd. "But, with the EPA, it doesn’t really matter what we want."

McCausland noted that the Sewer Authority Midcoast (SAM) and its three member agencies welcome the opportunity to strengthen their management of Coastside sewer system, but that the resources to make improvements are limited.  He noted that under the current governor, all property taxes have been diverted away from the Montara and Granada districts on the assumption that those sewer special districts can replace the lost property tax revenues by raising the fees charged to their users.

"SAM’s directors and our member agencies are looking forward to cooperating with the EPA on improving our management of all of our midcoast sewers," McCausland noted.  "Every one of us and our agencies are dedicated to enhancing the quality of our Coastside environment.  We just have to make certain that everyone understands that the lemon has already been squeezed by many forces that have been in play ever since the passage of Proposition 13.  I simply don’t know where the money would come from to pay EPA’s potential fines or build an EPA mandated pipe dream."