Merced’s not using water efficiently, hurting the environment and wallets, lawsuit claims
A group that says Merced is inefficiently using water in a way that will hurt the environment and raise residents’ water fees has filed a lawsuit against the city.
The Merced Citizens for Responsible Planning recently named the city, City Council and state water officials in the suit, which says Merced has not evaluated how it could recycle wastewater and reduce its use of unreliable surface water.
The city was required to look at the option of recycling wastewater, but didn’t before adopting the 2015 Urban Water Management Plan, according to Richard Harriman, the attorney representing the citizens group. Recycling wastewater could reduce the water the city pulls from the Merced River by nearly one-third.
“The city just said we’re not going to look at using recycled water at all in the city of Merced,” Harriman said. “We told the City Council that it was incomplete and they didn’t decide to change it.”
Officials from the city of Merced did not return requests for comment by Wednesday’s deadline.
Cutting the amount of water pulled from rivers, Harriman argues, is important because climate change has already affected how much snow falls and stays in the Sierras, what has traditionally acted as a source of water in the dry season.
The city also relies too heavily on its massive Wastewater Treatment Plant, he said. Southwest of the Merced Regional Airport, the facility on Gurr Road sits on about 40 acres and cleans an average of 8 million gallons of water a day.
It has the capacity to process 12 million gallons, which would be enough to handle a population of about 120,000. The city’s master plan predicts that the population will reach 169,000 in 2030.
Upgrades to the plant could bring the price tag to over $93 million, according to estimates from 2014. The most recent upgrade of the facility was completed in 2012, and cost $60 million.
Harriman argues Merced shouldn’t be building the largely expensive plants paid for by taxpayers, but rather smaller tertiary plants to recycle water. He notes that much of Merced’s growth is expected in the northwestern part of town, stretching toward UC Merced. That puts the bulk of the growth farther and farther from the treatment plant on Gurr Road.
“UC Merced’s interests are not being served by the city of Merced,” Harriman said.
The citizens group says the smaller tertiary plants can be paid for by development, the way development pays for local firefighting expenses, and avoid bonds supported by taxpayers. The bonds are paid off over a long period of time and drive up water fees for residents across the city, Harriman said.
“What’s ironic and really sad is that the city of Merced has in its knowledge base the model that could be used,” he said.