The City builds and operates and/or contracts for public sewers and wastewater facilities, collectively known as the City’s wastewater system, which serves homes, industries and commercial establishments. The following policies apply to wastewater discharges within the City’s boundaries and to other discharges that are tributary to the City’s wastewater facilities.

Generally, wastewater originating within the City’s boundaries will be removed by the City’s wastewater system, unless the wastewater will: (1) damage structures, (2) create nuisances (such as odors, etc.), (3) endanger public health, (4) impose unreasonable collection, treatment or disposal costs on the City, (5) interfere with wastewater treatment processes, (6) fail to meet quality requirements set by regulatory government agencies or interagency agreements, or (7) detrimentally affect the local environment.

The City, in its General Plan adopted in July 1989, has endorsed the concept of wastewater renovation and reuse in order to conserve water, to provide an alternate source of water supply and to reduce the overall costs of wastewater treatment and disposal. The renovation of wastewater through secondary and/or tertiary wastewater treatment processes will necessitate the imposition of stringent quality requirements on industrial wastewater discharges.

To comply with the Federal Water Pollution Control Act and the Federal Clean Water Act and to permit the City to meet increasingly higher standards, provisions are made in this title for the regulation of industrial wastewater discharges. This title establishes quantity and quality limitations on industrial wastewater discharges. Provisions are also made for cost recovery from industrial wastewater dischargers where the discharges impose inequitable collection, treatment or disposal costs on the City.

The City does prefer and encourage industrial wastewater dischargers to reach beyond simple compliance with limitations set upon their discharges, and to incorporate recovery and reuse provisions into their procedures to the maximum extent feasible. Optimum use of the City’s wastewater facilities may require that certain industrial wastewaters be discharged during periods of low flow in the City’s wastewater system. (Ord. 2466 § 7, 1991).