State environmental officials will inspect the Christopher Ranch
site Friday to make sure the garlic producer has upgraded its
wastewater disposal system after a spill in February killed
thousands of fish in Uvas Creek, some of which have since been
identified as endangered species.
Gilroy – State environmental officials will inspect the Christopher Ranch site Friday to make sure the garlic producer has upgraded its wastewater disposal system after a spill in February killed thousands of fish in Uvas Creek, some of which have since been identified as endangered species.
Officials from various state agencies agree Bill Christopher has gone above and beyond what he was required to do by Aug. 1, but this doesn’t mean his company’s initial misdeed will go unpunished.
“Nobody’s decided what to do yet. We still have to confer with all the parties involved,” said Ken Rosenblatt, the Santa Clara County deputy district attorney in the environmental protection unit who is now awaiting reports from the state Department of Fish and Game and the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board before the pollution case can move forward.
“We’re still waiting on final damage assessment from our biological staff, and then it’s really in hands of the DA to finish up so we can handle it through the prosecution phase,” said Lt. John Nores, with the California Department of Fish and Game.
Rosenblatt declined to speculate on penalties or a time frame for the “high priority case,” but Mike Higgins, the engineer at the water board who will visit the site Friday, said even though “Christopher Ranch has done a good job complying” with officials, he still thinks fines are in order since he said negligence led to garlic wastewater flowing into the South Gilroy creek.
“I think they were negligent – and I think they would agree with me – to allow this water to go into the creek in the first place,” Higgins said, adding that whatever the DA decides will probably suffice.
Christopher said he has spent more than $100,000 to comply with the water board’s Aug. 1 deadline to install a backup wastewater pump system and provide a detailed blueprint of the ranch’s underground pipes. The latter required Christopher to hire a company to send aquatic cameras throughout aging skeletal system.
“We’ve gone above and beyond what we’ve been asked to do,” Christopher said. “We’re just waiting for the government to decide what to do now.”
The February spill happened when a still-unidentified party released the contents of a 50-gallon subterranean storm water tank into Uvas Creek. A culvert connects the tank with the creek, but storm water is never released into the waterway since it contains garlic and other vegetables that fall from delivery trucks. Instead, storm water from the tank flows to holding ponds for “controlled rotting” and is then spread safely into the ground as irrigation water.
Environmental officials said decomposing garlic created a toxic stew that killed not only fish, but algae, crawfish and virtually all other aquatic life, including endangered steelhead trout, along an eighth-of-a-mile stretch of the creek. The creek meanders through the city before winding through the fields of garlic and other row crops at Christopher Ranch, just north of state Route 25.
On top of the water board’s requirements, Christopher has sought to prevent future spills by cutting the chain connecting the tank’s release valve with the above-ground hand crank. He has also locked the crank and added it to a checklist of equipment inspected twice a day. Hence the “above and beyond.”
“When Christopher Ranch complies with its waste discharge requirement order and the storm water permit, and if they’ve done what they need to per our [Aug. 1 deadline], then the steelhead and other aquatic life in the creek should thereby be protected,” Higgins said in an e-mail, referring to the new disposal system requirements and Christopher’s responsibility to keep his grounds clean so storm water doesn’t acquire pernicious pollutants on its natural journey toward the creek.
“Ken Rosenblatt is sorting this out for the criminal case,” Higgins said. “Killing endangered species renders the violation substantially more serious, and penalties may therefore increase.”
Rosenblatt said he’s also talking with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration about the dozens of dead steelhead fish since the federal agency deals with endangered species within the Pajaro River Watershed basin, of which Uvas Creek is a part.
