SITE INFORMATION AND CORRESPONDENCE CASE 2

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0 0 r Mr.Pat Mitchell - 2 - 13 March 2001 California Natural Products • The second reason that California Natural Products requested a delay is that it recently hired an attorney to defend itself"against the findings being made in the tentative WDRs". Again, the tentative WDRs were distributed on 4 December 2001. California Natural Products did not hire an attorney until 27 February 2001. The fact that California Natural Products waited almost three months to hire an attorney is not a reason to postpone the Board hearing. • Finally, the 7 March 2000 letter states that California Natural Products has spent approximately$1.4 million dollars over the last twelve months to improve the wastewater treatment system. While we commend you for taking the initiative to treat the waste to a higher quality, you are still operating your system in violation of your current WDRs. WDRs No. 98-223, adopted in December 1998, state that your wastewater will be sprinkler-applied to a 30 acre land application area which is planted with alfalfa. The WDRs state that the five northern acres are reserved for a warehouse, and imply that once it is built, wastewater will be applied to 25 acres. The WDRs also contain a Discharge Specification stating that the maximum daily discharge shall not exceed 160,000 gpd. The prohibitions and limitations in WDRs No. 98-223 were written with the understanding that the above volume of wastewater would be applied to land in the above described manner. However, California Natural Products has since made significant changes to its wastewater system. The land application area has decreased to 17.6 acres,wastewater is applied via flood irrigation, and a crop is not grown. In addition, the daily discharge ranges from 250,000 to 350,000 gpd. California Natural Products should not have made such significant changes in the volume of its waste and type of disposal until after the Board had considered new WDRs addressing these changes. As demonstrated by the content of the recent tentative WDRs, staff believe that these significant changes have the potential to impact water quality and allow continuing nuisance conditions and are therefore not feasible. It is up to California Natural Products to demonstrate that the decrease in land application area, coupled with an increase in flow,will not impact the underlying groundwater or create nuisance conditions. That demonstration has not yet been made. While the above reasons are not sufficient to delay the Board hearing, staff have agreed to a continuance in order that California Natural Products may collect more technical data to determine the appropriate loading rates for the wastewater, develop a better understanding of groundwater conditions, and provide information as to how it proposes to manage its wastewater. Required Technical Reports Pursuant to Section 13267 of the California Water Code, California Natural Products shall submit the following reports by the specified due dates. Failure to comply may result in an enforcement action or a fine of up to $1,000 per report,per day late. 1. By 13 April 2001, California Natural Products shall submit a Well Survey Report prepared by a California Licensed Land Surveyor or Engineer. The well survey shall include all groundwater monitoring wells located at the facility, land application area, and landscaped area. The survey shall be sufficient to allow calculation of the groundwater elevation in all wells to an accuracy of at least