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minutesSouth Bay Irrigation District APRIL 19, 2004 The Board of Directors of South Bay Irrigation District held a regular meeting on Monday, April 19, 2004, at the Sweetwater Authority Administrative Office, 505 Garrett Avenue, Chula Vista, California. President Welsh called the meeting to order at 3:30 p.m. ROLL CALL Directors Present: Alkire, Doud, Pocklington, Reynolds, and Welsh. Directors Absent: None. Others Present: General Manager Bostad, Operations Manager Mark Rogers, Legal Counsel Peggy Strand, and Board Secretary Marisa Farpón-Friedman. Sweetwater Authority staff Michael Garrod, Paula Roberts and George Silva. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG OPPORTUNITY FOR PUBLIC COMMENT (Government Code Section (54954.3) PRESIDENT'S PRESENTATION ACTION AGENDA PRESENTATION BY JON JAMIESON, HISTORIAN President Welsh introduced John Jamieson to the board saying that she was his first pre-school teacher. Mr. Jamieson said his presentation would provide a brief history on wastewater and desalination in the South Bay area, water quality control and sewage systems prior to 1960, and desalination in San Diego, as well as present and future activities along those lines. He said that National City was originally part of the Rancho de la
Nación land grant that was given to General Santiago Ariello in the
1820's by the King of Spain. The rancho extended from the bay towards San
Miguel to about 3 miles north of the U.S. Mexican border and up to Pueblo
San Diego. Chula Vista was also part of the Rancho de la Nación and Rancho Del Rey. It was granted to Captain Santiago Arielo in 1820 and remained sparsely populated until about the 1880's. During this time, the Boston Land Company purchased 6,000 acres from the Arielo family to start somewhat of an agriculture community and they were selling 60-acre plots with 80-foot wide streets. The regulations at the time were a two-story type dwelling with 98 percent of the rest of the land being agricultural land. Many wealthy individuals from San Diego moved to Chula Vista because of the land sizes and planted citrus groves, oranges, lemons, etc. Water during this time was provided by wells, which the City used into the 1940's. The wells could not keep up with the agricultural growth and the water from the Sweetwater Dam kept Chula Vista's citrus growing well into the 60's and 70's. National City installed a sewer collection system in 1921, which was initially a small system connected only to the shorefront downtown area. The pipes discharged directly into the San Diego Bay, with no former treatment. In 1926, they installed a septic tank that was only used to provide settling of the solids but, in essence, raw sewage was still being discharged into the San Diego Bay. The population of National City in the 20's was eight to ten thousand people, and half of them were connected to this collection system. The bay still had the capacity to treat these wastes naturally and it was not a big problem as it would be today. This system stayed in place until the 1940's when San Diego had a major
pollution crisis with discharging raw sewage up to 14 million gallons a
day into San Diego Bay, and this was creating corrosion on the hulls of
the Navy ships at 32nd street. The Navy signed an agreement to fund the
first treatment plant for the City of San Diego located on Navy property
at 32nd Street. National City was also contributing to the pollution
because the farther south into the Bay, the less tidal flushing there is.
As populations grew, the more sewage that would be discharged into the
Bay, and the pollution became more evident. Chula Vista installed its first collection system in 1926, about five years after National City. This treatment system was used until 1948 when Chula Vista installed the new treatment plant at J Street. This was a trickling filter plant and the sewage went through primary sedimentation, aeration, and then a trickling filter before being discharged into the Bay. By 1961-62, the Regional Water Quality Control Board was coming down hard on various municipalities around the county because of pollution, and it forced other cities to comply with the new Metro Connecting Agencies agreement. During this time, the lack of title flushing that lower into the bay, and this plant discharging roughly four to five million gallons per day, was causing increased pollution along Chula Vista Shoreline. The Regional Water Quality Control Board issued a cease and desist letter to Chula Vista and forced the City to sign an agreement with the Metro System in May of 1962. This plant was taken out of service in 1963 when the metro system opened in Chula Vista and connected with the City of San Diego. Today, Chula Vista continues to connect with the City of San Diego and is the largest connecting agency in the Metro System of 14 connecting agencies. In 1961 the Montgomery Sanitation District was created to provide sewer service to the unincorporated areas of southern Chula Vista, Otay, and Castle Park. This district was a special county district to provide collection of the sewage from the dwellings in south Chula Vista and move over from the septic tank systems. The Montgomery Sanitation District had no treatment plant and connected directly to the Metro system. They signed an agreement in 1964 for a capacity of 4 million gallons per day. This district was in service until 1986 when the unincorporated Montgomery area was annexed to the City of Chula Vista. The City of Chula Vista absorbed not only the district but its capacity of Metro as well. The first wastewater treatment plant was the International Wastewater Treatment Plant, which was put into service in 1997 by the International Boundary Water Commission to serve sewage emanating north from Tijuana. The South Bay Water Reclamation Plant was put on line in May of 2002. The City of San Diego just signed an agreement with the Otay Water District to provide 7 million gallons of reclaimed water a day and the reservoir and pump station that will take this water up toward Otay Mesa just completed the design phase. It will start construction sometime later this year. The plant has the capacity to treat 15 million gallons per day and it has no solids processing on site. They have to be discharged back into the sewer system to be treated at Point Loma. There are three phases to the influent flow of the South Bay Plant. Mr. Jamieson talked about the South Bay Land Outfall and Ocean Outfall. This was a major capital improvement project that cost $350 million dollars bore mainly by the City of San Diego, with a portion of it funded by the International Boundary Water Commission. After about six years of construction, it was placed into operation in the year 2000. Regarding desalination, Mr. Jamieson said that seawater on average has about 35,000 parts per million of saline, and there are three major methods that can desalinate seawater. The oldest and most common method is by heating the saline water to the point of evaporation, the water vapor is collected and piped through a filter and treatment system, and the concentrated saltwater or brine, 150,000 parts per million, is discharged. Reverse osmosis is a more recent method of desalination that uses a series of tightly packed media filters to force seawater under high pressures to remove minerals, salts, and any type of suspended matter. Electrolysis is a secondary process. It is expensive and only used on a really small scale in applications such as laboratories. Mr. Jamieson stated that desalination has a very diverse history and has been around for thousands of years. It was an ancient method used by the Greek sailors in the fourth century BC to provide drinking water while they were out at sea. The Greeks also used it on land to provide drinking water to some of their more remote islands. They used a form of evaporation using big clay pans, allowing seawater to evaporate onto tarps, and collecting the water from the tarps. In 1869 the first patent for seawater desalination was awarded to the British and they built a plant on the Red Sea. This was the first large-scale use of desalination and they used the flash boiling evaporation. The first commercial operation using the flash boiling method was open on the island of Aruba in 1929 and continues to operate today. San Diego itself has a very diverse history with desalination. In the early 1960's the US Congress authorized public law 85-883 for the Department of Interior to construct five desalination plants at various locations around the United States to test the feasibility of seawater desalination. San Diego was chosen as the initial location and the Department of Interior along with the California Department of Water Resources provided the funding to construct and operate a desalination plant on Point Loma. This plant went into operation in March of 1962 and provided one million gallons a day of fresh water to the City of San Diego. It continued to operate until March of 1964 when it was relocated on an emergency basis to Guantanamo Bay due to the Cuban Missile Crisis. The plant was packaged up and shipped through the Panama Canal to Cuba. It continues to operate today providing up to 715,000 gallons of fresh water for the Navy base. The Department of Interior and the City of San Diego and Department of Water Resources decided to keep the facility in the San Diego region but they wanted to move it to the South Bay Power Plant where they could utilize the steam generators to provide the necessary energy source for the flash boiling evaporation process. This plant was put into service in 1967 and provided up to three and one-half million gallons per day of potable water. About one million gallons a day were actually supplied to the City of San Diego through the California American Water System. They had a pipeline from this plant to the Highland Reservoir where it was fed into the City of San Diego system in the San Ysidro area. It was in operation until 1972 when it was mothballed and then totally dismantled. During this time, the cost of desalinated water to the City of San Diego was $65 an acre-foot. The desalination facility at the South Bay Plant had an agreement to expand the plant and continually provide water to the City of San Diego at a price of $45 an acre-foot. At that time there was no water crisis and there was still plenty of water. It was mothballed for emergency uses and then dismantled completely. The Federal Electric Commission of Mexico constructed two desalination facilities in Rosarito and they were placed into service in 1969. They utilized the steam from the Rosarito Power Plant and provided up to 7.5 million gallons of fresh water to the Rosarito area. In 1969 this plant was one of the largest desalination plants in the world. In the 1980's it broke down due to lack of maintenance and infrastructure. In 1991-92, an emergency desalination plant was installed in Santa Barbara because their main reservoirs had dried up during the major drought. This plant had the capacity to produce 3,125 acre- feet per year or about 2.7 million gallons per day, and it was extremely expensive to operate. An acre-foot of water in 1992 was $1,100. The plant is still in operation for emergency uses. There have been numerous proposals through the years, namely in the Los Angeles area, for large-scale desalination projects. One was in Long Beach in the early 1960's at Sunset Beach just south of Long Beach. In the late 60's and early 70's when nuclear power was at it s pinnacle, there was much talk about having combined nuclear power/ desalination facilities, and the concept was highly supported by Metropolitan Water District. It would have produced 150 million gallons per day of desalinated water, and it would have been located on a man-made island off Huntington Beach. The reason that it failed was that the costs increased dramatically from an initial $125 million in 1974 to $4.5 billion. Some current operations of desalination facilities worldwide are mainly in the desert areas. Tampa Florida has a 25 million gallon per day, and Israel will open up this year the largest in the world at 72 million gallons. One of the potential problems of desalination is that it is an energy-intensive process, whether it uses steam or electricity. The desalination plant in Santa Barbara uses enough energy to qualify for its own substation using 89 megawatts of power when in operation. This increases the costs to $1,100 per acre-foot. Some agencies look at power plants to utilize the steam. The plant in Carlsbad was going to use electricity by locating it right next to the power plant so they did not have to invest in the transmission infrastructure. Other costs associated with desalination would be the cost of equipment. Another big issue is brine disposal. Brine disposal is classified as industrial waste and requires numerous permits. There has been some talk about a plant in the South Bay area next to the South Bay Power Plant. If that plant were to be placed in operation, the best option right now would be to run a line to the South Bay ocean outfall which discharges into the land outfall. There have been some suggestions to put the brine into the sewer, which is not a possibility because it is an industrial waste. The City dealt with this issue with Sony Corporation in Rancho Bernardo. They were discharging their brine with some form of pretreatment into the sewer system. The Rancho Bernardo area, although owned by the City of San Diego, has its sewage pumped into the City of Escondido's Hale Avenue Resource Recovery Facility by contract. They were starting to fail the requirements on the salts and it was affecting the operations for their reclaimed water system. So the City worked with Sony on providing a solution by disposing of the brine through a pipeline from Sony into the sewer where it could be treated at Point Loma. This would be a viable option for the South Bay. Another option done by some cities on a small scale is to concentrate the brine into an actual salt and let the water evaporate and end up with a bucket of salt after one month. That becomes environmental waste and must be disposed of as a hazardous waste. There are many regulatory and environmental issues along those lines. He thinks that South Bay is in a good position for a desalination plant. He does not know if the original fresh water pipeline is still in place from the desalination plant in the 60's and just plugged up, but it could be utilized and convert it into a brine return line. His statement was he does not understand being against desalination. A short session of questions and answers followed. ITEMS TO BE ADDED, WITHDRAWN OR REORDERED TO THE AGENDA Counsel Strand announced the need to take immediate action on an issue that came to the attention of the board after the posting of the agenda. Director Pocklington made a motion, seconded by Director Doud, that the Governing board add the discussion of AB 2279, Land Ownership Requirement for Irrigation District,.as Item 5.B. The motion carried. APPROVAL OF MINUTES Director Alkire made a motion, seconded by Director Pocklington, that the Board approve the minutes of the regular meeting of March 15, 2004. The motion carried. APPROVAL OF DEMANDS AND WARRANTS Director Pocklington made a motion, seconded by Director Doud, that warrant numbers 10105 through 10112 be approved. The motion carried. APPROVAL OF DIRECTORS' ATTENDANCE AT MEETINGS & FUTURE AGENDA ITEMS A. Director Pocklington made a motion, seconded by Director Doud, that
the Governing Board approve per diem for Director Alkire's attendance at
the Mayor's State of the City address at the National City Chamber of
Commerce on March 17, 2004. The motion carried. President Welsh announced that Mr. Tony Inocentes was present to speak on the subject. Mr. Inocentes addressed the Board and provided background on AB 2279 introduced by Mr. Dymally. Originally the amendment was written omitting the landowner requirement of the Irrigation Code that in order to be appointed or elected to an Irrigation District, you must be a landowner. He said that this is a voter rights issue and there are millions of voters in California who are disenfranchised because of the language that currently exists in the Irrigation Code. Many Irrigation Districts provide little or no agriculture water and that requirement is one that he feels should be removed. ACWA is under the position that there are areas in central California where they still serve an abundance of agriculture water to their constituents and so the law should stay in place. He is hopeful that this Board is in unanimous agreement with the Helix board in saying that the laws should have been changed several years ago. He asked the Board to oppose the bill because the Districts are being targeted. The nominations are coming up in July, and this is a voter rights issue and an unconstitutional requirement that needs to be put to rest. He restated that he needs the Board's support. Director Pocklington made a motion, seconded by Director Alkire, that the Governing Board form a Committee with the Chair, Vice Chair, and General Manager to review this issue. The motion carried. CONSIDERATION OF SCHOLARSHIP AWARD AS RECOMMENDED BY SWEETWATER AUTHORITY COMMUNICATIONS COMMITTEE Director Reynolds made a motion, seconded by Director Pocklington, that the Governing Board approve awarding the $1,000 Scholarship to Kristen Booth, a Hilltop High School senior The motion carried. UPDATE ON THE 2003-2004 BUDGET AS OF MARCH 31, 2004 Director Pocklington stated that SBID did extremely well considering that last year its deficit was $26,000, and it looks like this year it will be $15,000. Interest rates should start coming back and he thinks we will do better next year. His concern is that SBID assets may go below the $1 million mark. If that happens, perhaps then we should make some decisions to cut back per diem. He thinks that we have made tremendous progress so far and he thinks that we just need to hold the course. REPORT OF TREASURER Ms. Avery said that Local Agency Investment Fund rates are still at 1.45 percent. REPORT OF LAFCO SPECIAL DISTRICTS REGULAR MEMBER Director Pocklington said that the Commission met on April 5th and they discussed the recommended budget for 2004/2005 and approved it. The only significant change was an increase of $20,000 over last year's budget due to the increased costs in retirements, workers compensation, flexible benefit credits, etc. They also discussed the fire service. He said there is going to be a symposium on the Fire Protection Emergency Medical Service on Friday, April 30th at the LAFCO headquarters, which he will not be able to attend as he will be out of town. REPORT OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY WATER AUTHORITY REPRESENTATIVE Director Pocklington referred to the letter sent to Joseph Canciamilla, Assemblyman of the 11th District, regarding the voting issue at the CWA, signed by officials of the City of Carlsbad, Helix Water District, City of Oceanside, Padre Dam Water District, Ramona Water District, City of Escondido, City of National City, Otay Water District, City of Poway, City of San Diego, and South Bay Irrigation District. He also commented that the Tier II rates would cost an extra $220,000 to Sweetwater Authority. The Tier II charge of $1,716,000 was allocated proportionately to the member agencies that exceeded their individual Tier I limit. The CWA will pay $449,000 for the filling of the Olivenhain dam. Sweetwater Authority's bill will be $263,000, which will be offset by the funds that the Authority received from MWD and from CWA. DIRECTORS' COMMENTS Director Reynolds thanked John Jamieson for his presentation. He said he went to Carlsbad a week or so ago and listened to a talk and visited the pilot plant. They are targeting $800 per acre-foot as their cost and hoping to get MWD's $250 subsidy. However, anybody that takes it outside of the area that their pipeline serves would have to pay some wheeling charges to CWA. This has not been determined yet. Director Pocklington said that the board meeting for CWA is on Thursday. He discussed briefly the Adopt a Position to Oppose SB 1251, a Morrow bill. MWD has asked the CWA to oppose it. SB 1251 is dealing with bodily contact with the water that will be allowed in the Diamond Valley Reservoir if specific conditions are met. He said that he does not think this is wanted by MWD, himself, or others. He said that would be an item discussed on Thursday. Director Welsh also thanked Mr. Jamieson. CLOSED SESSION There was none. ADJOURNMENT With no further business before the Board, President Welsh adjourned the meeting at 4:56 p.m., to the hour of 3:30 p.m., on May 17, 2004.
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