The California Coastal Commission staff is scheduled to meet with representatives of the Morro Bay City Council and the Cayucos Sanitary District board on Monday, June 11, in what could be an historic event in the history of the Morro Bay-Cayucos wastewater treatment plant.
After four or more years of delays in development of a plan for a new wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), it seems likely the Coastal Commission staff, which has ultimate authority under the Coastal Act and the city's Local Coastal Plan (LCP) to determine what kind of a plant should be built and where, will tell the Morro Bay and Cayucos (MB/CSD) staffs what they will have to do in submitting a permit to build a new plant that the Commission will approve. The issue seems to have come to a head because the Commission staff is planning to bring the plant permit before the Commission at its August 8-10 meeting in Santa Cruz.
So preparations for that meeting must be made in the two months left, and time is needed for Morro Bay and Cayucos to prepare the documents that the Commission staff believes will comply with the law and be considered by the Commission.
The seemingly last shot of Morro Bay and Cayucos to convince the Commission staff that the two communities should be allowed to "upgrade" the old existing sewer plant rather than build a new one somewhere else — an upgrade the Commission staff for four years has made clear is prohibited — appears to have been finally rejected by that staff, which is not surprising but very significant. That is among the key findings that the staff is expected to tell Morro Bay and Cayucos on June 11.
Susan Craig, the lead Commission staff member handling the WWTP, said she has asked MB/CSD to review the many reports her staff has submitted to the MB/CSD staffs over the last two years in order to identify locations for a site where recycled water from a new plant could be injected into stream aquifers, which then could be drawn upon to provide potable and disinfected water for use for irrigation within Morro Bay, for irrigation by farms east of Morro Bay, and even for household water supplies. Her citing that need strongly indicates that the capacity of a new plant to produce substantial amounts of recycled water is a key — if not the key — to what is going to be required of a new plant by the Coastal Commission under recommendations of its staff. It would provide a more reliable supply of water for Morro Bay residents, who now have to depend on state water, which is not only more costly but may not be available sometime soon.
Despite what the Commission staff has informed MB/CSD about what the Coastal Act and the LCP require in terms of the capacity of a new plant and its location, MB/CSD have continued to advocate an upgrade of the existing sewage plant in Morro Bay, in spite of legal prohibitions against that upgrade. Morro Bay Council members Bill Yates, Carla Borchard, Nancy Johnson, and George Leage have claimed — without any evidence — the upgrade would be cheapest to develop.
