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Working with the State Water Resources Control Board’s Office of Enforcement, the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board has reached a settlement agreement with Valley Ford property owner Stephen Kistler for water code violations and sediment discharges. Kistler will pay $579,700 for the water code violations as well as the recovery of agency staff costs for enforcement and prosecution of the case.
The case involves Kistler’s private property in the Salmon Creek watershed where rainwater catchment and gully stabilization on the property are needed to return instream flows and treat active sediment sources in the watershed area.
The case states that in April 2013 Kistler directed an employee to pump highly turbid water from a partially constructed pond into a second onsite pond on Kistler’s property on Bodega Highway in Valley Ford. Some 739,910 gallons of the turbid water subsequently overflowed from the second pond into a watercourse that drains to Salmon Creek.
Staff from the Regional Water Board, Department of Fish and Wildlife, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) responded to a California Emergency Management Agency spill report of the highly turbid water and backtracked it to the Kistler property ponds. Regional Water Board staff documented the discharge and its dissipation from April 11 to April 15 through the investigation was continued until April 29.
After a 30-day public comment period, the settlement order in this case was adopted on Nov. 2. The settlement requires Kistler to immediately pay $322,498 to the State Water Resources Control Board Cleanup and Abatement Account and allows for the remaining $257,202 in penalties to be suspended pending the successful completion of two Supplemental Environmental Projects.
The negotiated settlement in the Kistler case ultimately includes $570,000 for penalties and $10,000 in staff costs. The North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board investigators determined that the Kistler sediment discharges were violations of both the California Water Code and the federal Clean Water Act.
It is anticipated that the enforcement action will likely promote better land management practices by providing a concrete example of the potential liability associated with federal Clean Water Act and the California Water Code violations. For more information about the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board’s enforcement efforts, visit:
http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/northcoast/water_issues/programs/enforcement/.
