Local water district wants to upgrade some sewers

There’s an environmental crisis brewing in the Chino Water Basin, and the Monte Vista Water District wants to solve it before it gets worse.

The Monte Vista Water District in Montclair is planning to do something it’s never done in its 94-year history: get into the sewer business.

District officials want to connect approximately 1,500 septic tanks to sewer systems in the unincorporated territory within its jurisdiction, a 30-square mile area known as the Chino Water Basin. That area covers Montclair, Chino Hills, parts of Chino, and unincorporated areas near Pomona, Chino Hills, Chino, and Ontario.

“We’re a county water district, and we can provide sewer and wastewater treatment,” said Justin Scott-Coe, the water district’s general manager. “We have to get permission from the county before we can do it.”

Montclair and Chino provide sewer service in much of the area Monte Vista wants to upgrade and they will continue to do so. The tanks that Monte Vista is proposing to work with are scattered throughout its territory.

In March of 2020, several landowners within the district, along with San Bernardino County asked the district to help them get a better, more environmentally sound sewer service.

Although it has several hurdles to clear, the non-profit district – which serves about 12,500 business and residential customers – believes it can help.

Many septic tanks in the Chino Water Basin are polluting the groundwater supply with nitrates, a dangerous chemical. Much of that can be traced to agricultural runoff, which was rampant when Chino was mostly a dairy farming community.

“There are many potential benefits for providing sewer service in this area,” Scott-Coe said during a recent one-hour webinar sponsored by www.iebusinessdaily.com. “It will improve management of wastewater, and it’s much [better] to do that through a sewer system than it is through a septic tank system.”

“It also will remove pollution from the groundwater supply and will increase the possibility of getting a drought-proof water supply someday. It would be a great benefit for our service area, and it would clean up the groundwater, which would be a great public service.”

Septic tanks would be connected to sewer systems only when requested by the affected property or business owner.   Three years ago, the Inland Empire Utilities Agency, a regional wastewater treatment facility and wholesale water supplier in southwest San Bernardino County, completed a study on the feasibility of connecting the septic tanks to the sewer system.

The 39-page report concluded that there is a range of costs and benefits associated with converting septic tanks. Such a program must identify the septic systems that will “provide the highest benefit and/or serve the greatest need” for the lowest cost.

“Conversion to sewer is [done when] the property owner wants to convert, or when the property owner must convert due to septic system failure,” the report states.

Some parcels would require new sewers. Conversion costs are paid by the property owner, and sewer construction is paid for by the agency that provides wastewater service in the area where the sewer is located.

Any proposed project must comply with the local sewer master plan. How long the project will take to complete if it’s approved, and exactly what it will cost, is not yet known.

A lot must happen before Monte Vista can begin its work on its septic-to-sewer proposal.

First, the water district must get approval from San Bernardino County’s Local Agency Formation Commission.

Better known as LAFCO, the agency is set up by the state to establish borders and deal with regional planning issues. There are 58 of them statewide, one for each county.

The Inland Empire Utilities Agency must agree to take the recovered water and treat it, and the Monte Vista board of directors must give its approval.

Monte Vista officials hope to present a plan to its board members, which is made up of elected officials from within the water district’s jurisdiction, within several months.

“We’re working very hard on a proposal,” Scott-Coe said. “It’s a difficult process, and we’re moving as fast as we can.”

Upland and Ontario were among the first cities in the Inland Empire to have wastewater treatment facilities, and the territory covered by Monte Vista was among the first to use septic tanks as a way to treat sewage, said Bob Bowcock, water resource manager with Integrated Resource Management Inc., a water consulting business in Claremont.

Ideally, a septic tank stores sewage until the sewage is digested by natural bacteria. However, the tanks get old and can leak, which causes chemicals to seep into the ground that pollutes the natural groundwater supply.

That can cause multiple issues, including premature births and miscarriages, according to a Stanford University study released in May.

“San Bernardino County has a lot of septic tanks, and that’s a big problem,” Bowcock said during the webinar. “But it’s not just a problem here. It’s a problem all over the country.”

The Chino Water Basin must be cleaned up, for economic reasons if nothing else, according to Bowcock.

“It’s a well-managed water basin, and its value to the local economy is probably measured in billions of dollars,” Bowcock said. “Our phone is ringing off the hook with people wanting to know when this [septic-to-sewer] program is going to happen.”

San Bernardino County officials should not have to think long about whether to let Monte Vista carry out its proposal because the septic tank problem is exactly the kind of matter county governments are set up to deal with, said Jay Prag, professor of economics at the Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University.

“It’s an easy decision,” Prag said during the webinar. “The county would do something people need to be done. It would be nothing but winners, no losers. And I would hate to think of the consequences if something isn’t done.”