Cleaning Up Sewage in Burlingame

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On February 11, Baykeeper filed a lawsuit against the City of Burlingame to hold the city accountable for rampant sewage spills and the illegal use of a pipeline to a sensitive marsh area. Read the coverage in the San Francisco Chronicle. Download the lawsuit.

On October 22, Baykeeper notified the city of Burlingame and its wastewater treatment plant of its intent to sue over the City’s sewage spills and illegal discharges into the Bay. Burlingame’s 80-year-old sewer system frequently overflows, causing untreated sewage to flow into homes, creeks and the Bay. The city’s sewage treatment plant also regularly discharges wastewater into San Francisco Bay through a shallow water pipe located just north of Coyote Point.  Baykeeper is working to force the city to end these violations of the Clean Water Act.

Burlingame’s Sewage Problem
Burlingame’s collection and treatment system serves over 30,000 residents and contains around 100 miles of sewer line in a 4.3 square mile service area and also accepts waste from the nearby communities of Burlingame Hills and Hillsborough.  Despite the relatively small size of its sewer system, however, monitoring data show that the city’s sewage spill rate is more than 30 spills per 100 miles of sewer line.  By comparison, the median for collection systems in California is only four spills per 100 miles.  Baykeeper’s review of the city’s records also shows that the discharge pipe near Coyote Point illegally releases a significant amount of wastewater – more than a million gallons a year and sometimes as many as three million gallons a year since 2002.

The Dangers of Sewage Spills and Overflows
Sewage spills and overflows cause serious health and environmental hazards.  Wastewater contains a multitude of chemical and toxic pollutants, including mercury, lead, cadmium, chromium and arsenic.  Untreated sewage in particular has high levels of pollutants because it includes industrial wastewater, which contains metals, ammonia, nitrate, chlorine and vinyl acetate.  Pathogens in untreated sewage can cause a variety of illnesses in humans.  Bay Area residents are exposed to these pathogens when swimming, wading, kayaking, windsailing or kiteboarding in the Bay, as well as when sewage backups occur in homes, streets, schools and businesses.

Sewage Spills and Overflows in the Bay Area
Spills of raw sewage, overflows of partially treated sewage during the rainy season, and wastewater from industrial plants continue to pose a significant water quality problem in the San Francisco Bay.  The San Francisco Bay Area contains more than forty municipal wastewater treatment plants and hundreds of thousands of miles of sanitary sewer pipes.  Unfortunately, many of these sanitary sewer systems are in poor condition, with failing pipes and inadequate treatment capacity.  During the Bay Area’s rainy season, stormwater infiltrates sewer lines through cracks in the pipes or illegal connections with the storm sewer.  This increased flow can overwhelm treatment plant capacity, causing hundreds of millions of gallons of untreated sewage to be discharged into the Bay.  Sewage spills also occur when collection pipes become blocked by tree roots or clogged by oil and grease, both of which are more likely to occur in older and poorly maintained systems. 

Baykeeper's Bay Area Sewage Campaign Successes
In 2006, Baykeeper successfully settled a similar lawsuit against the City of Richmond which resulted in a commitment to $20 million in system improvements over five years.   Several years earlier, Baykeeper sued the City of Vallejo, winning the promise or capital improvements of a similar magnitude.  Baykeeper is engaged in oversight of that consent decree to ensure the upgrades are made on schedule.  A 2005 suit against the East Bay Municipal District  over their failure to comply with federal sewage treatment standards resulted in a Blue Ribbon Panel dedicated to getting to the root of overflows from crumbling municipal infrastructure in cities throughout the East Bay. Baykeeper is committed to keeping raw sewage out of the San Francisco Bay.