Synopsis: The California Coastal Commission staff has rejected the proposed Morro Bay-Cayucos wastewater treatment plant in a landmark report obtained exclusively by the Slo Coast Journal. Its recommended rejection of the project is expected to be supported by the commission at a March 11 meeting in Santa Cruz, sending the plan back to the Morro Bay City Council and Cayucos Sanitary District board for complete overhaul before the multi-million dollar sewage plant can be built after more than five years of delays.
The City of Morro Bay and Cayucos Sanitary District were told in 2008.
They were told again by the same California Coastal Commission staff last November.
The Morro Bay Planning Commission told them the same thing in no uncertain terms last December.
And, all along, many residents and environmental organizations over the past five years have been going to their meetings and telling them over and over.
Now, all those warnings have been borne out—big time.
A week ago in its final evaluation of the proposed plan for a new multi-million dollar Morro Bay-Cayucos wastewater treatment plant that has been in developmental stages since 2006, the Coastal Commission staff rejected the project in a report obtained exclusively by the Slo Coast Journal. That decisive report was no surprise—it was what seemed inevitable to everyone but the Morro Bay City Council, the Cayucos Sanitary District board and their staffs.
The only others who learned that the report was issued and posted on the Coastal Commission's website on Friday, February 18, were the council and the Cayucos board and their staffs. And they made no effort to inform the communities of Morro Bay and Cayucos, whose tax money and certain-to-rise sewer rates are at stake.
Asked why the city did not seek to tell Morro Bay residents about what seems to be the most significant development in the history of efforts to build a new plant, Morro Bay city attorney Rob Schultz said, "The city has various emergency notification policies and plans to notify the public on 'important matters.' However, a Coastal Commission Staff Report for a Consent Hearing in three weeks does not fall under any of our current policies."
But, unlike previous letters from the Coastal Commission staff in 2008 and last November casting serious doubt on the plan eventually submitted to the commission, the report on February 18 was a formal recommendation to the commission that the project should be denied as is. Such a recommendation carries enormous weight with the commission, which has final authority to send the plan back to the city for complete revision—as the staff report proposes—or let it go forward for further review and possible approval eventually.
That recommendation of denial is exactly what the City Planning Commission and many residents had all warned would happen if the project were submitted as developed by city consultants and approved by the City Council and its staff. And as everyone predicted, it was rejected by the commission staff after more than a dozen appeals of the project were submitted mostly by residents and environmental organizations.
The Los Osos sewer project went through the same experience of being rejected by the Coastal Commission, with the county having to start all over. The staff report on the Morro Bay-Cayucos project pointed this out. "The Applicant (Morro Bay) is encouraged to review the Commission's action with respect to San Luis Obispo's nearby Los Osos Wastewater Treatment Project (that was approved by the Commission last year) for general information regarding the parameters of an approvable WWTP project," the latest commission staff report said. Instead, some Morro Bay council members have made derogatory comments about not wanting Morro Bay's project to go through Los Osos' experience, which now is almost guaranteed.
Before the Coastal Commission report was issued on February 18, Morro Bay and Cayucos were preparing to hire a lobbyist to advise them of their chances of success in convincing the commission that the project should be approved, despite two previous commission staff reports casting serious doubt on that likelihood. Now, despite the new staff report recommending outright rejection, hiring of a lobbyist is still expected, Schultz said on February 24.
However, it is unclear that the hiring has been authorized appropriately by a clear resolution adopted by the City Council and Cayucos board.
The Coastal Commission staff's rejection of the proposed project almost certainly means the commission itself will do the same on March 11 at its meeting in Santa Cruz (starting at 9 a.m. at the Santa Cruz Board of Supervisors office, 701 Ocean Street, Santa Cruz. The Morro Bay-Cayucos wastewater treatment plant agenda item is expected to be considered before noon.)
Unless at least three members of the Coastal Commission ask for a hearing on the matter to challenge the staff's recommendation of denial, no public comment, including none from the city as applicant, will be allowed, and the project will be rejected and sent back to the city for complete revision as outlined by the staff report, the commission staff said. And whether there are three votes to request public comment will not be known until the meeting itself, the staff said.
If that happens, as expected, Morro Bay and Cayucos will have to start all over in planning the biggest capital improvement project in city history, which has already cost hundreds of thousands of dollars (city staff refused to provide an overall estimate) in taxpayer money that apparently has been all but completely wasted—if the Coastal Commission orders the sewer plant plan to be developed anew. The Coastal Commission has final authority over nearly all development along the California coast, and the only way Morro Bay and Cayucos could overturn its expected decision against the proposed project is to go to court, which seems highly unlikely.
Morro Bay and Cayucos, partners in the ownership and operation of their wastewater treatment plant under a Joint Powers Agreement, proposed to the commission that a new plant be built almost adjacent to the old, existing plant at 160 Atascadero Road near Morro Bay High School on an oceanfront site facing Estero Bay. But the Coastal Commission staff report found that location to be out of the question, emphasizing that the city's own Local Coastal Plan (LCP) "explicitly prohibits all development in 100-year flood plains, (and) the City-approved project site is located in a 100-year floodplain and tsunami inundation zone directly adjacent to an eroding shoreline where the sea level is rising and in an area subject to known seismic hazards." The report seemed to say: the proposed site couldn't be worse.
Two other key reasons the project was rejected, the staff report said, was because (1) it failed to examine a range of alternative sites for the new plant in order to determine the one or ones that would best meet LCP requirements and (2) it lacks optional designs that would meet a range of the city's own requirements in its long-standing Coastal Commission-required LCP.
One major requirement of a new plant under the LCP, the report said, is to create the capacity to produce large amounts of disinfected, recycled water for infusion into city aquifers so that regenerated city wells could enable "the City to meet its water supply needs and ensure water supply is available for priority uses as required by the LCP, especially if/when State Water is restricted or unavailable." Not only might newly-productive city wells be able to reduce city reliance on expensive and uncertain supplies from the State Water Project, but they could result in lower water rates for city residents, if city wells once against became productive.
"This represents a missed opportunity," if a plant capable of producing maximum amounts of high-quality recycled water is not built, the report added.
"The City's approval (of the proposed plant project) is fundamentally flawed," the report said, "in that it lacks a thorough alternatives analysis that evaluates a broad range of alternatives, including fundamentally in terms of alternative appropriate sites, such as is required to be able to find a WWTP (wastewater treatment plant) project consistent with the LCP and the Coastal Act. Such alternative sites, especially if located further inland, have the potential to completely avoid the constraints of the subject site, and the potential to allow consideration of a WWTP project that can resolve other coastal resource issues associated with the City-approved project."
Those other coastal resource issues that must be addressed under the LCP and Coastal Act, the report said, include "hazard avoidance, public
viewshed protection, maximizing and optimizing public access and recreational opportunities, protection of archeological resources, and sustainable public infrastructure requirements."
The big question is: what happens now? If the commission concurs in its staff's report and sends the project back to Morro Bay and Cayucos for complete overhaul, the JPA partners will be forced to identify alternative sites either through a new Environmental Impact Report or other consultants. But will the JPA partners call for a new Request For Proposals (RFP) to develop optional new designs guided by LCP and Coastal Act requirements as outlined by Coastal Commission staff?
Or will Morro Bay and Cayucos seek to keep controversial Montgomery Watson Harza (MWH) as the design engineer, despite the fact MWH produced the rejected design—and the fact that its has been accused of serious professional misconduct elsewhere in the nation, which neither the Morro Bay City Council nor the Cayucos board have asked their staffs to investigate in order to ensure that MWH is trustworthy and merits its continued employment by the JPA partners.
In the latest development calling MWH's reputation into question, a lawsuit was filed two months ago by the city of Cape Coral, Florida, against MWH to obtain records involving whether MWH overcharged the city for work done under a $1 billion water and sewer project, which was halted two years ago after residents complained about assessment costs rising to $23,000 per property at one point.
Here are other or more detailed reasons cited by the Coastal Commission report for recommending rejection of the project:
—The proposed 35-foot-tall headquarters building of the project "would obstruct and degrade important public views . . . through increased structural height for the new WWTP." Such a structure would be "inconsistent with the LCP," which "requires the scenic and visual qualities of the coast to be protected and requires development to be sited and designed to protect views to and along the ocean and other coastal areas" and is "located in an LCP-designated sensitive view area between Highway One and Morro Rock."
—"Although the LCP requires that significant archaeological and historic resources be preserved to the greatest extent possible, including requiring avoidance of significant archaeological sites if possible, the City-approved project is located in close proximity to numerous documented archaeological sites and is located on top of a significant burial ground of the Salinan Tribe." Disturbing them is inconsistent with the LCP.
—While the "LCP and the Coastal Act require public recreational access opportunities to be maximized and oceanfront land to be protected for recreational use, the City-approved project would reduce the availability of scarce oceanfront land for potential public recreational purposes" and "could cause adverse impacts to nearby existing public recreational access opportunities due to both construction activities and operation of the new WWTP (e.g., through additional truck traffic and objectionable odors)," all of which are inconsistent with LCP and Coastal Act public recreational access requirements.
—"The City-approved project only includes a small amount of recycled water output (e.g., available for agricultural irrigation, urban landscaping, groundwater replenishment, etc.), and continues to propose to discharge (both tertiary and secondary treated effluent) via an ocean outfall when the LCP requires a more meaningful water reclamation program."
—The city "must also provide a complementary, updated water reclamation feasibility study that explores all potential demand for reclaimed water, including for agricultural irrigation inside and outside of the City limits." The "study must evaluate the feasibility of constructing infrastructure to accommodate such a water reclamation program, and it must evaluate the benefits of a water reclamation program, including potential benefits to stream habitats and water supply, potential revenue generation from providing such water to users and offsetting the need for purchased State Water credits, and the potential for elimination of the existing ocean outfall."
—The project "represents a significant public investment that has the potential to provide substantial benefits to the community and to coastal resources, both by improving the quality of wastewater effluent and by providing an opportunity for a new supply of reclaimed water in a community where the existing water supply is not sustainable and water shortages are frequent."
—The project "is sited in a topographic depression that is subject to flooding near the mouth of Morro Creek, a watercourse that drains a 24-square-mile watershed."
—The city's plan "did not include up-to-date information about the risks to the project due to shoreline erosion, including due to global climate change and sea level rise. The EIR (Environmental Impact Report) that the City certified for the project assumed a maximum of 23 inches of sea level rise by 2100 and concluded that because the site would be higher than 16 feet above current mean sea level, the project would not be at risk from the impacts of sea level rise. However . . . when considering approximately 4.5 feet of sea level rise by 2100, which is much closer to currently accepted estimates, one study found the site would be inundated by storm surge."
—The city "determined that the new WWTP would not increase demand for recreational resources, the way that new commercial or residential development might draw a larger demand for local parks, for example." Therefore, "the project would not cause any impacts on recreational resources at all, and thus recreational access issues weren't identified nor resolved" in the city's plan. However, this "ignores . . . policies and objectives for this prime shoreline location, including those requiring oceanfront land to be protected and prioritized for recreational use" and "does not explain how the project would comply with policies requiring that public recreational access opportunities be maximized" and that "lower cost public recreational access facilities . . . be protected, encouraged, and where feasible, provided."
—The city "considered the WWTP to be a coastal dependent development because it is connected to an ocean outfall" when "In fact, current technology may allow for the elimination of the ocean outfall altogether, as shown by the recently approved wastewater plant in nearby Los Osos or for use of the ocean outfall (if it is proven necessary) by a plant that is located further inland."
In conclusion, the staff report said the city will have to provide the information required by the report, such as alternative sites, alternative designs to enable the production of large amounts of recycled water and protection of public views and access to recreational areas, before the Commission "will . . . be in a position to evaluate the proposed project" to determine if it is consistent with LCP and Coastal Act requirements. In other words, the application will be considered no further until all that information is provided to the staff and the Commission. That essentially requires starting all over.
The report said 11 appeals of the city's application to build a new plant were evaluated, mostly from residents, the Santa Lucia chapter of the Sierra Club, the San Luis Bay chapter of the Surfrider Foundation, two members of the Coastal Commission—Mary K. Shallenberger of Clements, who is a designated public member, and Mark W. Stone, a member of the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors and the remaining designated Central Coast representative. Mary Ann Reiss, Pismo Beach City Council member, was a Central Coast representative and had been appointed by former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger last December just before he left office in a much-criticized process and was removed by Governor Jerry Brown, who is preparing to appoint a substitute.
The grounds for the 11 appeals were that the project fails to conform to policies of the LCP and the Coastal Act. The "main issues raised by those appeals are related to hazards, public access and recreation, visual resources, sustainable use of public resources, and archaeological resources," the staff report said.
The large majority of the issues raised by the appeals were found to be "substantial" by the Coastal Commission staff, which means they are required to be considered and resolved before the project can go forward. The commission must decide on March 11 whether they, in fact, are substantial. (The appeals begin on Page 143)
If the Coastal Commission on March 11 decides to accept public comments, only those who have made public comments or sent emails or letters to the City Council or Cayucos board on the issue in the past will be allowed to speak, along with the city as applicant. Other residents may send comments through letters to the commission in advance of the meeting. They should be sent to the Coastal Commission Staff, 725 Front Street, Suite 300, Santa Cruz, CA 95060-4508. For information on sending emails with comments, call the office at (831) 427-4863 or send letters by FAX at (831) 427-4877.
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Local Coastal Programs (LCPs) are basic planning tools used by local governments to guide development in the coastal zone, in partnership with the Coastal Commission. LCPs contain the ground rules for future development and protection of coastal resources in the 75 coastal cities and counties. The LCPs specify appropriate location, type, and scale of new or changed uses of land and water. Each LCP includes a land use plan and measures to implement the plan (such as zoning ordinances). Prepared by local government, these programs govern decisions that determine the short- and long-term conservation and use of coastal resources. While each LCP reflects unique characteristics of individual local coastal communities, regional and statewide interests and concerns must also be addressed in conformity with Coastal Act goals and policies. Following adoption by a City Council or county board of supervisors, an LCP is submitted to the Coastal Commission for review for consistency with Coastal Act requirements.
After an LCP has been finally approved, the Commission's coastal-permitting authority over most new development is transferred to the local government, which applies the requirements of the LCP in reviewing proposed new developments. The Commission retains permanent coastal permit jurisdiction over development proposed on tidelands, submerged lands, and public trust lands, and the Commission also acts on appeals from certain local government coastal permit decisions. The Commission reviews and approves any amendments to previously certified LCPs.
