Council adopts buyback program
for brine discharging water softeners
July 01, 2015
By Peggy Kelly
Santa Paula News
The city is hoping homeowners will respond to a new Public Works Department program, buying back polluting brine-discharging water softener units using $150,000 in wastewater enterprise funds.
The City Council approved the program at the June 22 meeting although details are still being finalized.
Interim Public Works Director Brian Yanez told the council “We’ve been tasked to do this project since probably 2002,” by the state regional water quality control board.
A study was completed in 2005 that identified approximately 1,250 households with water softener units that use salt and in 2006 the council adopted the ban.
Yanez said if the program successfully targeted all those households the cost to the city would be approximately $3.1 million, but still far less than the cost of what the city would have to do to remove salts from water.
“We want to make sure the public knows it is illegal to have one of these in your home,” which Yanez said would be a focus of an awareness campaign.
Companies that manufacture salt-using water softeners — which discharges brine as part of the process — are aware that such units are banned in Santa Paula and most units “are probably purchased and installed by the homeowner...”
A goal is to “keep the program as simple as possible,” by offering an initial $500 buyback for illegal water softeners that the homeowner can disconnect themselves or have professionally done.
Yanez said there would be an inspection process including confirming that such a unit is indeed hooked up — fees will be waived for all inspections — and “We’ll need to do a little education on how they can proceed,” in taking part in the program.
The second part of the program will offer those that turn in their salt-using softeners more money for switching methods to take the hard edge off Santa Paula’s water.
Yanez said the city will pick up the tab for up to $300 to “sign up for a different method...we’re willing to pay for one to five months, we’re not sure of the magic number,” for a water softener service that does not rely on salt.
The City of Fillmore has had such a program for three years and 89 illegal brine-discharging water softener units have been collected.
Yanez said he is hoping the city will collect 50 such units this fiscal year from homeowners willing to take part in the program, a number that he projected would rise each subsequent year.
The more illegal units that are disabled the more the city would move towards a state set goal of discharges containing chlorides; the state’s target is 110 mg/L (milligrams per liter) of chloride and Santa Paula is now 142 mg/L.
“We all know we have a chloride problem,” Yanez said. “It is going to take some man-time but these (water softener systems) are unlawful to own in our community. We do want to get rid of them to provide better quality water that we’re taking into our water recycling facility.”
According to the staff report it is estimated that 250 SRWA’s produce 28 mg/L of chlorides, and if the city removed 150 illegal units over the three-year period it would potentially lower the chlorides by 17 mg/L.
Vice Mayor Martin Hernandez noted that the initial $150,000 program would provide the funds to replace about 188 illegal units and provide the additional $300 incentive to change services.
And he noted, “If the creek don’t rise,” more replacement softening units would bring the city even closer to the goal and could eliminate the need for a separate — and multi-million dollar — plant to remove chlorides from the water.
Councilwoman Ginger Gherardi said she has an alternate water softening service that costs approximately $40 a month, a cost that not all households could carry.
Nevertheless, “I hope you’re able to put together a very succinct and clear process so the public knows what they have to do,” to remove and/or replace their brine softening system.
Mayor John Procter said it is also important to “make clear it’s an amnesty program” with no sanctions placed on those that are using the banned softeners.
Yanez said outreach would make such issues clear including the free permit process; some Santa Paulans he noted “are fine with the water” and have never used any system for softening.
