Courtland Project: Background

In Courtland Sacramento Area Sewer District, SASD owns and maintains the sewer pipes that collect wastewater from the community and currently convey it to the Courtland wastewater treatment plant. This plant was built in the 1970s for the previous sanitation districts that served this community.

In the past few years, the challenges facing the Courtland wastewater system reached a critical point, as its outdated treatment plant has not been able to keep up with increasingly stringent new rules governing its operations.

To comply with these regulations, SASD undertook both short-term treatment plant improvements and long-term master planning efforts. The short-term measures were quickly implemented to address specific concerns raised by regional water quality authorities. The long-term master plan, meanwhile, required more serious study to identify and assess alternatives to the current treatment facilities.

In late 2003 and early 2004, SASD held public meetings in Courtland to explain all the issues, discuss what had already been done to comply with regulatory requirements, and present future treatment alternatives. The alternatives presented for public input included:

• Upgrading the treatment facility
• Piping the community's wastewater flows to the Sacramento Regional Wastewater Treatment Plant (SRWTP) in Elk Grove

Weighing the Benefits

During feasibility analysis of the options, it became clear that regulatory requirements would necessitate upgrading the existing plant to a higher (and expensive) level of treatment, called "tertiary" treatment, if discharging of treated wastewater was to continue at the current location. This meant that the first option would not prove to be cost effective.

Piping the community wastewater flows to SRWTP, on the other hand, offered significant cost and community benefits:

• High treatment level: The regional treatment facility uses leading-edge technology, ensuring that treated wastewater meets strict regulatory standards.
• Less expensive: Of the options considered, connecting to SRWTP was the most cost effective. While constructing new pipelines will require a significant initial investment by SASD, maintaining the existing Courtland plant would require even more substantial outlays, both for the initial upgrades and continual operating costs.

With the environmental analysis and design phases completed, the Courtland Sewer Project is currently in the construction phase, which started in July 2007 and is scheduled for completion in late summer 2008.