Why did Morro Bay officials select the site of the water recycling plant?
Source: Why did Morro Bay officials select the site of the water recycling plant? Have you wondered why the Morro Bay City Council in California chose the South Bay Boulevard site for the Water Reclamation Facility? Why this site when it did not provide any public benefit that other sites didn’t offer? The council members knew that it added at least $26,000,000 to the lowest cost option and that it required digging up Quintana Road. And they knew it would mean decades of pumping all of Morro Bay’s raw sewage almost three miles inland and uphill. In 2017, the city council convened a peer review panel of wastewater professionals who informed council members that the best way to reduce project costs was to not use the South Bay Boulevard site. The panel said that “the biggest contributor to cost at the South Bay Boulevard site is the site itself. Pipeline and earthwork costs there are very high.” But why this site when the entire project site is designated by San Luis Obispo County as a Geologic Study Area (GSA)? According to the county’s Estero Area Plan and land use ordinance GSA means that the ground is subject to high landslide risk. The Geologic Hazard Map in the project Environment Impact Report (EIR) also shows that the whole project site is designated a “landslide risk”. The city’s own geotechnical report describes the soil at the project site as including “… landslide deposits …” and as “…commonly associated with … slope instability and landsliding,” And — especially in light of these known hazardous conditions — why this site when it is on the bank of a stream that flows directly within about a mile into the Morro Bay National Estuary? Stormwater carrying soil from a landslide could cause catastrophic harms to the estuary. Then there are the facts that there is [...]