Santa Rosa to pay $105,000 to settle suit targeting water treatment system

Santa Rosa has agreed to spend $105,000 to settle a lawsuit targeting the city’s sprawling wastewater collection and treatment system over numerous alleged leaks and spills of treated wastewater and sewage.

California River Watch, a Sebastopol-based environmental group that specializes in suing government agencies and others for alleged violations of the federal Clean Water Act, based its latest case on reports the city filed itself with the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.

The city, which admitted no wrongdoing in the settlement, will pay $70,000 in attorneys fees to River Watch and $35,000 to Sonoma Youth Ecology Corps for creek cleanup work. The City Council signed off on the settlement last week.

The spills involved were minor, but the city agreed to settle the case in part because the Clean Water Act gave it very little legal maneuvering room, said Molly Dillon, assistant city attorney.

“We don’t really have any defenses under the law as it is written,” she said.

Clean Water Act suits provide for citizens - or in this case a group that claims to be acting on their behalf - to be able to recoup attorneys fees if they prevail in court. The city’s settlement, in essence, acknowledged that possibility.

The May 2015 suit originally alleged thousands of violations of the city’s wastewater permit over a five-year period. But most shown to be unfounded, said David Guhin, who was director of Santa Rosa Water during the period covered by the suit.

For example, the city is required to report whenever irrigation systems using highly treated wastewater overspray or leak, but those are not permit violations, Guhin said. Even in cases where a small amount of recycled water does reach the Laguna de Santa Rosa, the environmental impact is “negligible,” he said.

Some of the spills highlighted by the case cannot be dismissed as minor, however. In July 2013, the city reported that damage to irrigation lines sent 17,000 gallons of recycled water into Santa Rosa Creek and 18,000 gallons into Irwin Creek. Recycled water has been cleaned to a high degree, but it has higher-than-normal nutrient levels that can harm aquatic environments.

In 2012, a sewer spill caused 12,970 gallons to pour into Sierra Park Creek near Summerfield Road, and two years later 15,482 gallons of sewage fouled Nagasawa Creek, according to the suit. River Watch contends the city underestimates the volume of such spills.

Over the five years, there were 15 confirmed sewer overflows, and in those cases the city acted quickly, dispatching pumper trucks to remove the material and biologists to oversee mitigation efforts, Guhin said.

“We work really hard to protect the system and the environment in everything we do,” he said.

He noted that last year there were just two sewer overflows, and that the city spends $12 million per year updating the city’s 600 miles of sewer pipe.

Other settlement terms include requiring additional environmental testing for when spills reach surface waters, and annual calculations for how much water from the city’s vast storage pond might be percolating into the Laguna de Santa Rosa.

It’s the fifth time the group, founded by attorney Jack Silver, has sued the city in the past 20 years, Dillon said. The group is barred from suing the city for the next seven years under the terms of the settlement.

The website for the group, which used to be known as Northern California River Watch, lists 17 other active lawsuits or actions around the state, including cases pending against cities from Fort Bragg to Beverly Hills, as well as grape growers including Gallo Vineyards and a medical facility in Palm Springs.