news story / By Japhet Weeks

Not on my land!

“I told them that it would be a cold day in the nether regions when that would happen,” he said. In hindsight, he admits he could have handled things differently. “I should have gone over and reasonably listened to everything they had to say,” he said. “But I don’t think anything they could have said would have convinced me that their sewage proposal proposition was anything but detrimental to our property and our drinking water and our property values.”

In the past, Rio Dell’s sewage system hasn’t exactly inspired confidence. The city is presently discharging treated effluent into percolation ponds along the Eel River. But the Regional Water Quality Control Board has said that must stop. It issued a cease and desist order that gives Rio Dell until 2009 to find another way to get rid of its liquid waste.

Now the city has published a draft of its options for dealing with the problem. In a document dated this month, the Eureka engineering firm Winzler & Kelly analyzes four alternatives for Rio Dell sewage disposal. The most favorable plan, according to the report, is to purchase or lease up to 250 acres of agricultural land near Metropolitan Road. That plan would involve reuse of wastewater through irrigation, application of biosolids (the sludge left over after wastewater is treated) and the construction of a storage pond on the former site of the Eel River Sawmills, a brownfield located across the highway.

That’s the plan that has Metropolitan Road concerned. But James Hale, Rio Dell Public Works Director, feels the Potters’ fears are unfounded. “We have really clean sewage,” he said on Monday. “I wish that these people [the land owners] would come in and talk to me because I’m a genuine person and I could alleviate some of their fears.”

Hale said Rio Dell would like to build a tertiary water treatment system, which means that the treated wastewater would be clean enough to drink. But that, Hale admitted, is a very-best-case scenario. The city’s environmental impact report proposes wastewater cleaned up to a standard known as “Disinfected Secondary-23,” which is not drinkable and can’t be used to irrigate areas with unrestricted access, like public parks.

According to California Certified Organic Farmers, one of the oldest and biggest organic certifying bodies in the state of California, Disinfected Secondary-23 recycled water also can’t be used on organic dairy farms they certify, which could prove problematic for the organic dairyman who leases pasture in the area.

But John Short, at the Regional Water Board in Santa Rosa, said Monday that “Most of the recycled water in California is of this level [Disinfected Secondary-23].” He also said there are many misconceptions about the quality of treated wastewater and the application of biosolids to agricultural lands.

Which begs the question: Are the Potters exaggerating a bit about the environmental impact of treated wastewater and its byproducts? After all, doesn’t using recycled water help alleviate California’s drought? And don’t they sell fertilizers made with biosolids at nurseries all around the country?

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