County Says It’s Time to Hook Up to Sewer

IMG_4889 By Neil Farrell

The Los Osos sewer project is set to finish up in just a few days and next week, residents are going to have get serious about hooking up to the system over the next 12 months or so.

According to a publication put out by County Engineering, the new treatment plant out behind the cemetery off LOVR will be ready to start taking sewage as of March 28.

The County has cut the town into three pieces, called “Phases” and expects people to move forward quickly, giving 6-month windows to have the work completed in each area.

The areas of Cuesta-by-the-Sea, Vista de Oro, and Redfield Woods (Woodland-Highland) neighborhoIMG_4892 ods, the Downtown shopping district, the neighborhood off Bayview Heights Drive, and the Morro Shores, Sunny Oaks and Daisy Hill MHPs are included in Phase 1. The period for hooking up in those areas IMG_4898is March-September.

The County scheduled a “Phase 1 Connection Area Workshop” Tuesday, March 22 at the Los Osos Middle School, in three sessions starting at 4:30 p.m., 6 and 7:30.

Phase 2 includes most of the numbered streets and Phase 3 includes Baywood Park and other outlying areas. Workshops for those two are expected to be held in June and September respectively, times, dates and locations TBA (see: www.slocounty.ca.gov/PW/LOWWP for complete information).

Phase 2 properties hook up from June to December and Phase 3 September to next March 2017.

The county will be sending every property owner a “connection notice” that will have the workshop information for their neighborhoods.

The County has also screened and put together a list of contractors that folks might pick from to do the work, which the County says could range from less than $2,500 to $10,000 or more, with an estimated average of $3,000, depending on what must be done to hook up to the system.IMG_4895

The County list has some 99 firms — from Action Rooter to Ziebarth Construction — who have expressed interest in the jobs and already been vetted by the County for a State contractor’s license and experience.

The hook-up jobs alone could collectively cost $25 million, this added on to an overall project cost of some $183 million.

The County said contractors will design the projects and obtain the necessary permits, arrange inspections and more. Or property owners could do the job themselves.

Some homes will have to use so-called “grinder pumps” to move their sewage uphill to a sewer main in the street. The County should have already informed property owners who will have to do this, though there is the possibility of having downhill neighbors behind a home grant an easement for a sewer line to run through their property and down into the sewer in the next block over. But such agreements are private matters. There are also several other requirements to the project.

All septic tanks must be “decommissioned” and added costs could come depending on what one does with their tank. The cheapest thing would be to pump it dry, fill the tank with sand or gravel and leave it in place.

But the County, prompted by the Central Coast Green Building Council, is promoting its reuse as a catch basin for rain runoff. The idea is to plumb your rain gutters to collect and pour the rain down into the septic tank. When it fills, the water would spill over into a home’s leach field, just as septage did, and recharge the groundwater.

The contractors are supposed to do this decommissioning as part of a hook-up job.

And each and every home must be retrofitted with water-saving fixtures. The County is still offering a rebate program to offset the costs for such items as low-flow toilets, showerheads and faucet aerators, new water heaters, and even washers and dryers. Amounts of the rebates vary on the fixture and how much water it saves. Information on this is also available on the County’s project website (see: https://conservelososos.org).

Though they won’t know the actual costs until the project is completed and the books closed, the County’s latest cost estimates are $1,080 a year for the wastewater assessments and about $900 a year for “service charges” coming to a total of $1,980 a year attached to property taxes (paid quarterly), which divides out to some $165 a month paid for some 30 years.

Naturally, the service charges are split in two — $450 as a fixed fee and approximately $450 as a variable fee based on an estimate of water use, essentially 1-cent per gallon. And these will be attached to the property taxes as well. As a benefit assessment district, no one has to start paying the fees until they are hooked up to the system and receiving the benefits.

This does not include the costs of a previous assessment the community agreed to when the CSD was trying to build a project, nor the monthly cost covering operations and maintenance.

And if you fret over how to pay for all this, the County has something for that too.

“Several types of financial assistance are available to help pay for sewer lateral connections, service charges, and wastewater assessments,” reads the County’s latest newsletter. “Property owners earning below 80% of the median household income [$61,700 a year for a household of four] may qualify.”

To see about this, the project office is located at 2025 10th St., and open from 10 a.m. to noon Tuesdays and Thursdays. Call (805) 788-2752, or email to: [email protected] for assistance.