Coast Guard looking at options for its sewage

The Coast Guard has developed a list of possible alternatives for developing a cost-effective, environmentally sound destination for sewage generated by its housing complex in Point Reyes Station.

For 23 years waste from the housing complex has been trucked twice a day to a treatment plant at the Coast Guard training center in Two Rock at a cost of roughly $100,000 annually.

Waste can't be easily disposed of on the housing site because of North Marin Water District's wells on Coast Guard land.

The possibility of constructing a sewer system to serve both the Coast Guard and Point Reyes Station's downtown has been repeatedly rejected by townspeople.

However, a near-closure of the Two Rock facility plus the continuing cost of trucking has prompted the Coast Guard to explore various options. The Coast Guard could:

• Stay with the status quo and continue to truck sewage to Two Rock one or two times a day. Under this option, the complex's holding tanks would be replaced.

• Truck sewage to a municipal treatment plant like the City of Petaluma's or the Sonoma Valley County Service District plant. This option would be used only if the Two Rock facility is shut down in the future.

• Build a secondary treatment plant at the Point Reyes Station complex and truck the partially treated sewage to Two Rock or a municipal site for disposal.

• Construct a tertiary treatment plant at the Coast Guard housing complex in Point Reyes Station and dispose the fully treated sewage water in one of various ways. The water could be piped to nearby ranches for pasture irrigation, pumped to West Marin School to water its ballfield, hauled to the Coast Guard's radio receiver site on Point Reyes and then delivered to ranchers on the peninsula for irrigation, sprayed on Coast Guard property for landscaping, or dumped into Lagunitas/Papermill Creek.

• Work with "the community of Point Reyes Station" to build a treatment plant that would process sewage generated by some town residents and the Coast Guard housing complex. Under this option, the plant would be built, owned, and operated by North Marin Water District and partially financed by the Coast Guard.

• Create a joint septic system with a senior housing project proposed for the corner of Highway 1 and the Point Reyes-Petaluma Road. The water district's wells have blocked similar plans in the past.

Coast Guard Commander David Glenn last week said he would like to find a solution that disposes sewage on Coast Guard property, but he'd settle for the option that involves installing a large septic system at the proposed site for the senior housing complex.

"We think it's far enough away [from the water district's wells], but that's dependent on the water district telling us that," said Commander Glenn.

In any case, he said, spending an estimated $100,000 a year trucking sewage to Two Rock, even though the Coast Guard has been doing that for two decades, is simply too expensive.

David Sox, project manager for the Coast Guard, stressed that the options include everything with even remote possibilities and that many of the listed options will soon be cast aside.

Sox said town residents will be included in the discussions every step of the way and that the first public meeting will be held in the middle of December.