When you flush your waste down the drain it doesn’t just “disappear”; it eventually finds its way to the Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTW), otherwise known as the wastewater treatment plant.
Before your waste can be released as effluent into the Santa Ynez River, it must be treated to remove harmful substances. The treatment process for these wastes begins at the source.
At your home, it starts by wiping the grease out of your pans before you wash them; another way is to stop using self-regenerating water softeners that flush the salts down the drain. These salts are bad for the POTW treatment system, so only use the new ones that have the waste salt used in the process taken away by the vendor.
For businesses, the treatment process begins with a more sophisticated “pretreatment system,” usually a grease trap for food facilities, garages, car washes, and some sort of salt removal system for industries and businesses that use large soft water systems.
The Lompoc POTW and every other plant like it in the United States operates using a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit issued by the Environmental Protection Agency. These permits contain conditions, which the operator—in this case the city of Lompoc—must comply with.
The EPA conducts routine audits to assure compliance. This is where the actions of three Lompoc City Council members (Jim Mosby, Dirk Starbuck and Victor Vega) and a utility commissioner (John Linn) created compliance problems for the wastewater utility.
On June 28, 2019, the city of Lompoc received an inspection report from the EPA concerning an April inspection of its wastewater discharge permit; seven violations were noted. While some were technical, there were also some violations aimed at the current political attitude toward regulatory compliance.
What caused the EPA auditors the greatest concern was the actions elected officials and appointees took to circumvent pretreatment regulations. The EPA noted that the city had “violated its monthly average oil and grease limits in June 2018 and March 2017,” and that “the City Council has not been supportive of the Municipal Code requiring grease traps.”
Councilman Dirk Starbuck noted that the EPA report cited grease limit violations that occurred long before fast-food restaurants were required to install grease traps. But the fact is that in 1981, the EPA required that “each POTW must establish specific local limits for industrial users to guard against interference with the operation of the municipal treatment works.”
In other words, the city’s requirement for grease traps at the source evolved from federal laws that have been in place for at least 38 years.
In October 2018, the city sent a standard food establishment survey form to all businesses, including a bakery owner; the bakery ignored it, and the city staff visited the site. On July 19, 2019, the city inspected the businesses sewer line and “determined it is coated with grease”; so, clearly a trap was needed. The utility director ordered him to install a grease trap.
The owner refused and appealed the order. He also “informed staff that individuals had stopped by his location and told him he didn’t have to put in a grease trap.” Who these people were, or what qualifications they had to make these statements, wasn’t discussed in the staff report.
The other serious EPA finding was that a kidney dialysis center had been operating an on-site self-regenerating water softener contrary to Lompoc municipal code. The treatment center discharges high concentrations of sodium, chloride, and total dissolved solids that violate the city’s local pretreatment limits. The utility director ordered corrective action, but the operator appealed.
Three rogue Lompoc councilmen and an unqualified utility commissioner tried to tell professionals how to operate the wastewater system.
Utility Commissioner Linn tried to establish himself as an expert on wastewater pretreatment and represented violators at the Feb. 5, 2019, council hearing. Armed with information he acquired from the internet and a list of local businesses he created, he challenged both city and EPA requirements for grease traps and salt discharges.
None of the council members have any technical knowledge about wastewater treatment or POTW permits, and the city attorney advised them that “your decisions (to support the appellant) could cause a cumulative violation of the city’s NPDES permit.” Translated this meant that substantial punitive fines could be assessed by the EPA.
Of course, as has become their normal practice, the council majority simply ignored the professional staff and their attorney’s warning. On June 18, 2019, the crew led by Councilman Jim Mosby heard and granted the dialysis center’s appeal. The council also granted the grease trap variances.
The EPA audit report noted that “the City Council has not been supportive of the Municipal Code requiring grease traps.” Councilman Starbuck criticized the staff for “not being council friendly” during the inspection.
I have been an industry representative during numerous audits/inspections by outside regulatory agencies during my working life, and the focus is to measure compliance with regulatory requirements and how supportive the management team, in this case the City Council, is of the professional staff efforts to comply with permit conditions. This is what’s lacking in Lompoc.
The final EPA report arrived in late September; it ordered that the enforcement authority for POTW permit conditions is in the hands of the Utilities Director (the highest ranking local technical expert), to the exclusion of all other parties (mayor, council members, city manager, etc.).
Three rogue councilmen and an unqualified utility commissioner have no business weighing in on POTW waivers. People who would cause embarrassment to the city and bring critical regulatory attention and/or potential fines have no place in policy-making positions.
Ron Fink writes to the Sun from Lompoc. Send your thoughts, comments, and opinionated letters to letters@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 8-15, 2020.