Campus planners are evaluating this summer the potential environmental impacts of placing a wastewater treatment plant near Old Davis Road in the south campus.
Campus planners are evaluating this summer the potential environmental impacts of placing a wastewater treatment plant near Old Davis Road in the south campus.
The $17 million plant would replace the 47-year-old one south of La Rue Road near Meyer Hall. Most of the cost will be covered by voter-approved general obligation bonds.
If plans move according to schedule, the public will be able to review the draft environmental impact report this fall and offer written or oral comments. A public hearing is planned for mid-November. Once the EIR is certified, campus officials hope to take the project to the UC regents in March for approval with a potential completion date in 1999.
The new plant is needed for several reasons, according to Sid England, campus environmental planner.
"One goal for the facility is to replace the existing outdated plant with a new, more efficient plant that will reliably meet our future wastewater treatment needs," he said.
The plant must not only meet existing stringent state and federal standards but provide for campus growth and water-quality regulation changes over the next three decades.
Water-quality regulations have changed dramatically since the existing plant was built to provide a trickling-filter process in 1949, England said. The plant was expanded with an additional treatment process in 1970.
The wastewater treatment facility collects campus sewage and separates the liquids from solids in the wastewater. The liquids are treated, disinfected and then discharged into Putah Creek near Old Davis Road on the south campus. The solids are dried and stored in sludge ponds near the California Regional Primate Research Center near Road 98 on the west campus.
As part of the environmental impact report, the campus will look at how well it is protecting water quality and aquatic life in Putah Creek, which receives the treated effluent as well as discharged water from the Aquaculture and Fisheries Program's Aquatic Center and Putah Creek Cold Water Facility, and storm water from throughout the campus during the rainy season.
"The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board is interested in our overall effect on creekwater quality because during the summertime when flows are low, our water can be the primary source," England said.
Using water-quality data collected from various campus sources, a modeling study will look at the cumulative impacts of campus water on the creek. Two professors from California State University, Sacramento, and University of Nevada, Reno, will independently review the modeling study.
Up until this January, the campus had proposed placing the new plant west of Highway 113 at the intersection of Garrod and Campbell roads.
But this winter, researchers from the land, air and water resources department voiced their concern that the plant would interfere with sophisticated long-term meteorological and climatological research conducted nearby.
The deadlines for commenting on the environmental impact report will be carried in Dateline this fall.
(Jan Conroy/UC Davis Editorial/Design graphic)
