TREASURE ISLAND WWTP

Treasure Island's plant stands alone on EPA's priority list

Of the thousands of permitted dischargers tracked across the San Francisco Peninsula and Bay watershed this period, exactly one has landed on EPA's list of Significant Non-Compliance: the Treasure Island Wastewater Treatment Plant, which discharges directly into San Francisco Bay. That designation is EPA's own threshold for regulatory priority, reserved for violations judged serious enough in scale or duration to demand attention. The specific effluent parameters behind the listing weren't detailed in this pass, so the exact magnitude of the exceedance isn't clear, but standing alone on that list is itself the signal worth noting. The plant's troubles fit its known condition. It's aging, seismically vulnerable, and prone to combined-sewer-overflow risk whenever heavy rain overwhelms its capacity, which is precisely why it's now mid-construction on a $369 million federally financed rebuild. Water-quality gauges near Pier 17 and off Alcatraz's northeast shore currently read within normal late-summer ranges for temperature and dissolved oxygen, but with only three readings logged in the past month at each station, that record is far too sparse to say anything meaningful about conditions right at the outfall itself. Baykeeper tracks Bay pollution discharges and is a useful point of reference for anyone following this facility's compliance record as the rebuild moves forward.