SAN LUIS OBISPO -- The supervisor of the sewage treatment plant at California Men's Colony has been charged with unlawfully discharging inadequately treated sewage into Chorro Creek, a tributary to the Morro Bay Estuary.
Michael Valverde has also been charged with falsifying mandatory water pollution monitoring reports to regulators.
Valverde pleaded not guilty during his arraigment Monday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on 14 felony counts stemming from violations of the federal Clean Water Act.
The charges carry a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 per count, according to U.S. Attorney William Carter.
Trial is scheduled to begin Dec. 24.
Carter declined Monday to say whether additional charges are pending against other CMC employees. "I can't comment on that right now," he said.
Valverde, a 14-year prison employee, continued to work at the sewage plant during a two-month federal investigation, according to CMC spokesman Dick Fenske.
After Valverde was notified by mail of the charges against him, he was reassigned to do special projects in the prison's business services area, Fenske said.
Valverde's Santa Ana attorney, James Riddet, was unavailable Monday for comment.
According to prosecutor Carter, the indictment alleges that in May 1996, Valverde allowed the discharge of partially treated sewage and chlorine wastes into Chorro Creek in excess of operating permit limits. In addition, Valverde allegedly failed to report those discharge violations to the Central Coast Region of the California Regional Water Quality Control Board, as required by law.
The indictment further alleges that in June 1996, Valverde knowingly submitted a report to the board that contained false statements about the sampling and laboratory analysis of wastewater discharged into Chorro Creek during May 1996.
Brad Hagemann, a senior engineer with the regional water board, said it's impossible to know whether the violations posed a public health threat because the reports were allegedly falsified.
Inspections conducted at the prison plant in May and June indicated serious record-keeping and environmental violations. Samples of effluent taken at the time showed the wastewater's coliform and chlorine residual levels were higher than allowed by law.
However, CMC reports falsely indicated the levels met legal safety standards.
The inspections also found improper lab practices, some lab data missing and that daily lab records were sometimes arbitrarily filled in after the fact or days later.
"The possibility for a health risk is there, but to have someone say I drank water and got sick on a particular day, we wouldn't be able to make that kind of correlation," Hagemann said.
"Folks downstream, however, should have been concerned -- anyone in the Chorro Valley who uses that water should have been concerned," he said.
"We were concerned enough to take action."
Hagemann said he couldn't speculate on what a supervisor would have to gain by willfully violating federal environmental laws. "This one is puzzling."
The water board issues permits to agencies operating area sewage treatment plants. Some daily testing is required to ensure plants meet environmental safety standards.
The water board doesn't have enough money and manpower to do the required testing and sampling of wastewater effluent, so agencies, for the most part, do their own monitoring.
"We rely on the operators' integrity," said Hagemann. "And that's not going to change as a result of this. It's pretty uncommon for something to go to this level."
CMC's plant treats sewage from the prison, Cuesta College, the county Office of Education, the county Emergency Operations Center and Camp San Luis Obispo.
Treated effluent is discharged directly into Chorro Creek, which feeds into Morro Bay.
Bill Boucher, Morro Bay's public works director, has said if bacteria from raw sewage did get into the creek, it wouldn't seriously impact residents' drinking water. The city's wells are far enough downstream from CMC that potential problems are naturally diluted. And the city has its own treatment process.
The CMC case is the first investigated by a new multiagency task force created in the wake of massive Unocal oil leaks beneath the sand of Guadalupe and Avila Beach.
The Santa Barbara County-San Luis Obispo County Regional Environmental Task Force is one of several teams throughout the state that target violators of environmental laws.
State and federal agencies involved include the U.S. Attorney's Office, the FBI, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, health and fire agencies and all branches of the military.
"We learned with Unocal that larger environmental problems requiring investigations or prosecution might involve only one or two agencies," said U.S. Attorney Carter, who was instrumental in creating the task force.
"By combining resources, we're able to investigate much quicker, and hopefully address those issues a little better."
Published Oct. 29, 1996 © San Luis Obispo County Telegram-Tribune