“The project raises important questions concerning whether it is appropriate to maintain the in an area that is increasingly vulnerable to flooding and other coastal hazards,” Tamara Gedik, program analyst at the California Coastal Commission, said during Thursday’s meeting. Rising sea levels will only exacerbate existing flood hazards, especially in the low-lying Arcata Bay area. Local coastal experts expect Humboldt Bay’s shoreline to rise by as much as three feet in the next 40 years. These upgrades will keep the facility up and running in the short term, but what about long-term planning strategies? Now, with the Coastal Commission’s blessing and a Coastal Development Permit secured, the city can finally move forward with Phase 1 of the improvement project, including the construction of a new electrical and ultraviolet disinfection system that will replace the facility’s aging chlorination filtration system, upgrades to pump stations, installation of new electrical infrastructure throughout the facility and construction of a new outfall. The city has been working to repair the issues and comply with the board’s discharge requirements in recent years. As a result, the Regional Water Quality Control Board has issued several violations to the city for failing to comply with state-mandated discharge requirements. Despite ongoing efforts to keep the aging infrastructure up and running, parts of it are failing. The Arcata Wastewater Treatment Facility – the part of the Arcata Marsh that theoretically makes the city’s sewage and wastewater nontoxic enough to pump into nearby wetlands – is getting pretty old. The California Coastal Commission has given the City of Arcata the green light to move forward with much-needed improvements to the city’s aging Wastewater Treatment Facility.

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