By Donna Beth Weilenman
Staff Reporter

The San Francisco Bay Region of the California Regional Water Quality Control Board will meet Wednesday in Oakland to hear highlights of its enforcement program, including two fines involving Benicia and one involving Valero, made during the 2009-10 fiscal year.

Brian Thompson, senior engineering geologist and enforcement coordinator, said his summary of enforcement actions will include a $39,000 fine assessed to the city of Benicia for effluent limits violations at its water treatment plant, a $3,000 penalty their reports, she said. “They were rectified immediately,” she said.

The wastewater treatment plant’s fine was assessed because of a malfunction at that plant, which also was corrected quickly.

“If you make a mistake, they fine you. It’s not like if you make a mistake, you get to fix it and move on. They fine you,” Tomasik said. “Our staff comes in and does an awesome job. There have been no problems since then.”

Others in Solano County which were assessed penalties were Fairfield’s North Bay Regional Water Treatment Plant, $9,000 for effluent limit violation; RMC Cemex in Fairfield, $5,075 for late submittal of an annual report; Fairvac A.T. Wrecking, in Fairfield, $4,725 for late submittal of an annual report, and Fleming Hill Water Treatment Plant, in Vallejo, $3,000 for violating effluent limits.

Among other items on the agenda, the board will hear Peggy Olofson, project director, describe the San Francisco Estuary invasive Spartina project.

The project is a cooperative effort among local, state and federal organizations to eliminate introduced species of Spartina, or cordgrass, to the California coastline.

Cordgrasses are aggressive plants that could threaten the structure and biological makeup of tidal marshes, mudflats and creeks.

They are native to salt marshes on both sides of the Atlantic, although some are on the North American Pacific coast and in freshwater habitats.

They may have arrived along the West Coast in the late 1800s, when oyster transplants were packed in cordgrass, Olofson’s research has shown.

While in some Eastern states, planting of cordgrass is encouraged to stabilize marsh mud and sand dunes, on the West Coast, Spartina can crowd out native species and covers the mudflat environment needed by invertebrates, which reduces that food source for birds that consume those animals.

The plants have been the subject of a 10-year eradication battle in Washington State.

In other matters, the board will honor accomplishments in pollution prevention in the Bay Area, reissue permits for Calistoga’s Dunaweal Wastewater Treatment Plant and the St. Helena Wastewater Treatment and Reclamation Plant; the recission of a permit to Kobe Precision, Inc., in Hayward.

The panel will meet in closed session to discuss personnel, litigation and whether a decision can be made on a case involving an adjudicatory hearing’s evidence.

The meeting starts at 9 a.m. Wednesday, Sept. 8, at the Elihu M. Harris Building, 1515 Clay St., Oakland.

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