Surprise! Power Plant Ranked No. 1 as Site for New Sewage Facility

by Jack Mccurdy

In a surprise development, the Morro Bay Power Plant site has been selected as the top choice to locate a new water reclamation facility (WRF), previously known as a wastewater treatment plant, by a consultant hired recently to assist the City in planning for development of the new facility.

Among the seven sites studied by the John F. Rickenbach consultants, "the power plant site received the highest overall score, and the main reason is its substantially lower cost than any other site," their report, titled New Water Reclamation Facility Project, said. "If cost were not a factor, the site would rank a close second behind Morro Valley and receive a similar score as Chorro Valley." (City of Morro Bay)

The Morro Valley site is located just north of Highway 41 a few miles east of the city, and the Chorro Valley site is located along the north side of Highway 1 at South Bay Boulevard.

Unexpectedly, use of the California Men's Colony's wastewater treatment facility ranked last on the list, even though the idea of sharing the Men's Colony facility received a lot of tentative praise by Morro Bay staff members. But that was before the Rickenbach study.

Whether the consultants contacted Dynegy, the owner and operator of the power plant, to make sure the plant site might be available for a WRF was not made clear in the report. But it seems doubtful that the plant property would have been recommended as a WRF site without some kind of assurance of access to the site by the owner. The power plant is not expected to keep operating much longer, and perhaps that figured into the issue. It must stop using "once-through cooling" of water from the Morro Bay National Estuary by 2015, which would force the plant to close unless other means of cooling its generators were found.

The report ranked the seven possible WRF sites this way: power plant, Morro Valley, Chorro Valley, Giannini property (south of Morro Creek), Chevron (just east of the Morro Bay-Cayucos border), Panorama (bordering north Morro Bay), CMC (California Men's Colony off Highway 1 near Cuesta Community College).

Broadly speaking, the report said, the new WRF is intended to accomplish these goals:

Production of tertiary, disinfected wastewater in accordance with the Title 22 requirements for unrestricted urban irrigation, a design to produce reclaimed wastewater for potential users that could include public and private landscape areas, agriculture or groundwater recharge, onside composting, energy recovery, ability to treat contaminants of emerging concern in the future.

The Rickenbach consultants are expected to present their final recommendations on sites in December to the City Council.

The City has asked for feedback from residents about the report and its recommendations by Nov. 30. The form for submitting comments is at City of Morro Bay.