Cleaning Up Sewage in San Mateo County

Baykeeper Victory to Prevent Sewage Spills to the Bay

Baykeeper has reached a successful settlement with the City of Burlingame to reduce sewage spills to the Bay. Burlingame has agreed to susbstantially improve its sewage infrastructure over the next ten years, including stopping all spills during normal storm events, spending tens of millions of dollars to make collection system improvements and undertaking a study to identify capacity problems and eliminate near-shore discharges. The City will also invest $250,000 to fund projects that will help restore the San Mateo County watershed.

Baykeeper has also filed suit to enforce the Clean Water Act against the Town of Hillsborough and the Burlingame Hills area of San Mateo County. Their poorly maintained and operated sewage systems are spilling sewage into creeks and the Bay, and they are contributing to the City of Burlingame's illegal sewage discharges into the Bay.

San Mateo County’s Sewage Problem

Burlingame’s 80-year-old sewer system frequently overflows, causing untreated sewage to flow into homes, creeks and the Bay. The city’s sewage treatment plant also regularly discharges wastewater into San Francisco Bay through a shallow water pipe located just north of Coyote Point.

Burlingame’s collection and treatment system serves over 30,000 residents and contains around 100 miles of sewer line in a 4.3 square mile service area and also accepts waste from the nearby communities of Burlingame Hills and Hillsborough. Despite the relatively small size of its sewer system, however, monitoring data show that the city’s sewage spill rate is more than 30 spills per 100 miles of sewer line. By comparison, the median for collection systems in California is only four spills per 100 miles. Baykeeper’s review of the city’s records also shows that the discharge pipe near Coyote Point illegally releases a significant amount of wastewater – more than a million gallons a year and sometimes as many as three million gallons a year since 2002.

Baykeeper’s recent investigations of sewage spills in the San Mateo Peninsula also uncovered information that upstream sewage collection systems – also known as satellite systems – are a significant source of pollution to the Bay. Both because of regular spills of raw sewage to area waters, and because of their contribution to wet weather flows that overflow sewage plants, satellites such as Burlingame Hills and Hillsborough are huge and largely uncontrolled dischargers. Our citizen enforcement action will bring about a comprehensive solution for the San Mateo Peninsula.

The Dangers of Sewage Spills and Overflows

Sewage spills and overflows cause serious health and environmental hazards.  Wastewater contains a multitude of chemical and toxic pollutants, including mercury, lead, cadmium, chromium and arsenic.  Untreated sewage in particular has high levels of pollutants because it includes industrial wastewater, which contains metals, ammonia, nitrate, chlorine and vinyl acetate.  Pathogens in untreated sewage can cause a variety of illnesses in humans.  Bay Area residents are exposed to these pathogens when swimming, wading, kayaking, windsailing or kiteboarding in the Bay, as well as when sewage backups occur in homes, streets, schools and businesses.

Sewage Spills and Overflows in the Bay Area

Spills of raw sewage, overflows of partially treated sewage during the rainy season, and wastewater from industrial plants continue to pose a significant water quality problem in the San Francisco Bay. The San Francisco Bay Area contains more than forty municipal wastewater treatment plants and hundreds of thousands of miles of sanitary sewer pipes. Unfortunately, many of these sanitary sewer systems are in poor condition, with failing pipes and inadequate treatment capacity. During the Bay Area’s rainy season, stormwater infiltrates sewer lines through cracks in the pipes or illegal connections with the storm sewer. This increased flow can overwhelm treatment plant capacity, causing hundreds of millions of gallons of untreated sewage to be discharged into the Bay. Sewage spills also occur when collection pipes become blocked by tree roots or clogged by oil and grease, both of which are more likely to occur in older and poorly maintained systems.