Growth in Delta Called Threat to Water

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. —  Growth along the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta could drive up the cost of drinking water while reducing its quality for residents from the East Bay to San Diego, some water officials say.

State and local officials are trying to agree on how to save California’s largest source of drinking water, which supplies 22 million people. The fight has focused on how to ensure that water supplies are divided fairly among farmers, cities and aquatic wildlife.

With much of the development around pumping stations, a coalition of 12 municipal water suppliers is pressing the California Regional Water Quality Control Board to impose stricter treatment standards on new waste-water dischargers. And if the federal government tightens standards further, water suppliers could see huge costs for treating water.

“The more stringent standards ultimately will have consumer costs,” said Al Donner, a spokesman for the Contra Costa Water District, which has already spent $40 million to switch from a chlorine to an ozone disinfectant.

The DeltaKeeper environmental group is alarmed by the rapid growth, which it says threatens to overwhelm the delta’s fragile ecosystem. The group has said it will sue unless the federal Environmental Protection Agency assesses the sources of pollution and develops a plan to set waste discharge limits at levels that would improve water quality.

The group also believes that “the state needs to put a moratorium on new development until we can apportion these [contaminant] loads and begin ratcheting them down,” said Bill Jennings, a member of the group.

But Greg Vaughn, a senior engineer with the state Regional Water Quality Control Board, said that although federal law requires that assessment, the state lacks the funds to do it.

Cities planning to expand waste water discharges include Brentwood, Discovery Bay, Sacramento, Isleton and Tracy, according to the Delta Protection Commission, a regional land use planning agency.