The years-long battle over the Morro Bay-Cayucos Sanitary District (MB/CSD) proposal to build a new wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) at its present location is over!
There will NOT be a new plant built to replace the present plant on the shores of Estero Bay, resulting in a momentous defeat for MB/CSD, which has been pushing for it blindly at least since 2008 with misinformation (a new plant at the present site would be cheapest without a shred of evidence), deception and misleading statements by staffs as well as most of the elected representatives. The most bizarre reason for rebuilding the existing plant was stated by mayor Bill Yates, who said, "The plant has always been where it is, so that's what it belongs."
The location of the plant came to a head last Tuesday (July 10) when Morro Bay City Manager Andrea Lueker emailed the Morro Bay City Council that "I have just gotten off the phone with Dan Carl of the California Coastal Commission (CCC staff) and he has relayed to me that the preliminary staff recommendation to the Coastal Commission will be for denial of the WWTP project (at the present plant site)," which the Commission rejected in January 2011. The denial is likely based primarily on hazard avoidance and secondarily public access, reclamation, and visuals."
By releasing this information, there is virtually no chance the CCC staff will reverse or modify its preliminary staff recommendation since it's commitment now is of record.
Lueker quoted Carl, a top staff member, as saying that the final, complete CCC staff report containing its final recommendations will probably be issued by July 20, but the CCC staff in recent weeks has said it could be around July 26.
She said denial of approval of a new plant at the present site is likely "based on primarily on hazard avoidance and secondarily public access, reclamation, and visuals." She did not make clear that she was quoting Carl, but it would appear so.
What she means is this:
1. "Primarily based on hazard avoidance." The old plant site is in a 100-year-food area and in a tsunami zone with predictions of rising sea levels over time. This risk is prohibited by the city's Local Coastal Plan (LCP), a CCC document designed for Morro Bay.
2. "Secondarily public access." It would be very surprising if Carl said this, because overshadowing the flood risks is the fact that the California Coastal Act, which guides all CCC actions, prohibits new structures in what the Act calls a public view area and gives top priority as well to visitor-serving uses. Rebuilding the old plant would violate state law, a crucial fact that MB/CSD has ignored for at least four plus years. It certainly isn't secondary to anything, as her email states.
Now, where will the new plant be built as required by the CCC staff and ultimately required by the Commission itself, which has scheduled a meeting sometime between August 8 and 10 on the WWTP in Santa Cruz to issue detailed requirements for the plant, which MB/CSD must follow — not staff, but the Commission itself, the ultimate authority.
The last CCC staff report cited two sites that the CCC staff has indicated are favorites for location of the new plant.
One is on the Righetti property located at the eastern City border just off Highway 41 or the old Chevron oil tanks property at the Morro Bay/Cayucos border just east of Highway 1.
Among the CCC staff's other top priorities is a new plant with the capacity to be able to produce large amounts of recycled water that could be processed for injection into the city's weak wells and begin to produce antiseptic water for use by the Morro Bay community, including drinking. This new source of water could save Morro Bay millions and, just as importantly, it would become a dependable source of water as the city's reliance on very costly state water is becoming more problematical. Some in state government are saying state water is due to be phased out over time because of mounting state water shortages, requiring local communities to develop their own local sources.
