Sick of Sewage
in Richmond, CA
It was an early weekday morning in San Francisco when the pollution hotline
rang in Baykeeper’s bustling office. The caller, a distraught resident
of the City of Richmond, reported raw sewage flooding her front lawn and
causing an unbearable stench in her home.
My initial surprise transformed into anger as I learned more about the
extent of broken sewage pipes and the city’s inaction. As Baykeeper
attorneys and volunteers delved into the City of Richmond’s records,
we found evidence of close to 1,000 raw sewage spills since 2000, ranging
in size from 10,000 gallons to more than 17 million gallons. The city was
churning sewage into Richmond homes, streets and creeks. The city had also
knowingly and illegally dumped more than 20 million gallons of raw sewage
directly into San Francisco Bay from overflow pipes. Our research further
suggested that the city had been seriously underreporting the extent of
the problems.
Richmond residents are some of the poorest in the bay area, facing social,
economic and environmental injustices on many fronts. They pay some of
the highest residential wastewater service rates in the region. Yet the
city waws allowing raw sewage to literally flow down the streets and threaten
the health of thousands of people.
THE COMMUNITY PAYS A HEAVY PRICE
Spills from the sewage collection system, as well as raw sewage overflows
from the city’s pipes, have been devastating to the Richmond community.
With the assistance of the West County Toxics Coalition, we reached out
to the Richmond community residents and discovered that in many neighborhoods
sewage backups had become a normal part of daily life, with spills reaching
playgrounds and school yards and damaging homes and businesses. One elderly
resident was forced out of her home for almost a year after a main sewage
line backup completely flooded her home of 30 years. During the 2005 and
2006 fiscal years alone, the city paid out more than $1 million in claims
that resulted from property damage due to sewer backups.
Every sewage spill puts Richmond residents at risk of infection from a
host of disease-causing viruses, bacteria and other pathogens. Many of
these spills reach local creeks and the bay, impacting Richmond’s
numerous shoreline beaches, parks and marinas, which attract fishermen,
boaters and swimmers – all of whom count on clean and safe water.
The city’s sewage also contains harmful toxins from nearby industrial
operations. Under the Clean Water Act, most industrial waste water is directed
into the sanitary sewer system through collection pipes. So when raw sewage
spills, it often results in the direct discharge of industrial effluent
(including waste from metal plating facilities, photo labs, printing companies,
dry cleaners and other small manufacturers). These toxic chemicals and
metals harm fish and wildlife and often become concentrated in large animals
(like humans) at the top of the food chain.
THE ROOT CAUSE OF RICHMOND’S SEWAGE PROBLEM
Like many cities throughout California and the country, the City of Richmond
has allowed its wastewater infrastructure to deteriorate to the point where
spills are commonplace. The Richmond sewage collection system was designed
and created more than 100 years ago. Consequently, the old clay pipes have
deteriorated, causing significant breaks and cracks to develop throughout
the system.
There are two main seasons in California’s mild Mediterranean climate:
rainy and dry. The rainy season runs from October to March, during which
frequent downpours inundate our urban landscapes. In Richmond these rains
are supposed to enter storm drain systems that lead to San Francisco Bay
and other natural bodies of water. However, the cracks and breaks in Richmond’s
crumbling sewer pipes allow large amounts of this rainwater to enter the
sewage collection system. This high volume overwhelms the pipes, causing
backups and spills throughout the system. But Richmond’s spill problem
is not limited to the wet season. The infrastructure is so leaky that spills
are also common in the dry season. Dry weather spills arise from improper
connections hooked to the sewage system and pipe clogs created by tree
roots and grease from restaurants.
Proper maintenance of the pipes could help prevent clogs and breaks. In
many locations older pipes must be replaced entirely by newer ones made
of durable materials such as iron or concrete. The City of Richmond, however,
has failed to prioritize such maintenance and replacement, and thus the
crumbling sewage infrastructure is failing.
THE PUSH FOR SOLUTIONS
Over the years Baykeeper has found that litigation – or sometimes
just the threat of it – can bring public awareness and scrutiny to
serious environmental health problems, motivating public officials to take
action. After months of extensive discussions with Richmond’s attorneys
and the discovery that funds earmarked for sewer system repairs since 1999
had never been used, Baykeeper filed suit in spring 2006. To prosecute
this case Baykeeper turned to a talented team of attorneys, including Daniel
Cooper, Layne Friedrich and Mike Chappel of Lawyers for Clean Water and
Chris Sproul and Jodene Isaacs of Environmental Advocates.
Economically strapped communities such as Richmond deal with many severe
social problems such as poverty and crime. More mundane topics, like water
infrastructure, take a back seat. Baykeeper decided to bring Richmond’s
sewage spill problem to the forefront of public attention as a critical
health and quality of life issue that was largely being ignored. The issue
was timely given that the city was in the process of adding over 3,000
housing units to the waterfront without a clear plan or investment to handle
the additional wastewater flows.
Even city officials acknowledged that the litigation and the press coverage
the case brought was helpful in calling needed attention to the problem.
Richmond’s new city manager told a reporter that the city had no
excuse for not fixing the sewage collection system a top priority because
money had been earmarked for the work. A Richmond City Council member piled
on, telling local papers, “Unfortunately, Baykeeper is mostly right,
and despite significant surges of progress, the city has more typically
followed the [usual] way of foot-dragging delays, excuses.”
Baykeeper aims to win a number of improvements that are enforceable in
federal court. We are seeking a moratorium on all new connections into
the system until the city fixes the problems with the existing pipes and
infrastructure. Baykeeper is also looking for Richmond to prioritize, maintain,
repair and replace existing pipes on a strict time schedule to rehabilitate
the decrepit sewer collection system. In addition, we are asking the city
to adopt an inspection and repair ordinance that would require homeowners
to maintain and repair their individual connections to the system. Baykeeper
will also secure a meaningful citywide program to provide financial assistance
for low-income residents to make these individual repairs.
A DECADE-LONG CAMPAIGN ACROSS CALIFORNIA
Baykeeper was founded in 1989 to protect the entire watershed of the San
Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary, the largest and most biologically productive
estuary on the Pacific Coast of the Americas. The first Waterkeeper program
on the West Coast, Baykeeper identified municipal sewage spills as a significant
water quality problem early on. We launched a public advocacy campaign
by suing the City of Vallejo in 1996 for spilling 35 million gallons of
raw sewage annually into sensitive marshlands at the mouth of the Napa
River.
Baykeeper’s success in forcing Vallejo to overhaul its sewage treatment
system encouraged other Waterkeeper programs in California to address sewage
spills in their communities, including enormous sewage control problems
in Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego. In the last 10 years California
Waterkeepers have stopped hundreds of millions of gallons of sewage from
reaching local neighborhoods and waterways. Together, the California Waterkeeper
programs have succeeded in improving living conditions for Californians
by forcing public agencies to prioritize the maintenance and upkeep of
crumbling infrastructure throughout California.
