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Pleasanton adopts 2025 Sewer System Management Plan required by state regulators
Summary
The City Council unanimously approved the 2025 Sewer System Management Plan (SSMP), a state‑mandated document that sets inspection, maintenance and capital planning requirements for the city’s sewer collection system and establishes performance indicators and timelines for audits and annual reporting.
The Pleasanton City Council on June 17 adopted a resolution approving the city’s 2025 Sewer System Management Plan, a document aligned with the State Water Resources Control Board’s 2022 sanitary sewer regulations.
The SSMP adoption requires the city to maintain a schedule of inspections, emergency spill response procedures, a renewed capital improvement prioritization process and annual performance monitoring. The council approved the plan unanimously.
Why it matters: The 2022 state regulations moved many voluntary program items to mandatory requirements, tightened timelines for audits and annual reporting and created new enforcement tools for the state. The SSMP is now an enforceable element of state oversight: failure to implement required practices can result in fines or other enforcement actions.
What the plan says: City staff and Cauzi Consulting told the council the plan documents the city’s sewer system inventory — about 21,000 customers, roughly 253 miles of gravity mains, eight siphons, 11 pump stations and five miles of force mains — and sets a schedule for CCTV condition assessments, cleaning, and targeted capital projects. The SSMP calls for performance monitoring across multiple key performance indicators (KPIs) with ten‑year trend graphs submitted annually to the state; it also mandates a designated legally responsible official (LRO) to certify compliance and reporting.
Staff noted the city’s CCTV and condition‑assessment program has accelerated recently but still needs steady, ongoing funding to reach the target of camera inspection of the full collection network on a multi‑year cycle. Paul Cauzi of Cauzi Consulting said agencies that do not follow the new requirements can face significant enforcement penalties; he cited several out‑of‑state and California examples where agencies paid millions in consent decrees or fines after failing to implement required programs.
Next steps: Staff said it will submit the SSMP to the State Water Resources Control Board per the regulation schedule and will follow the council’s earlier direction on a resource evaluation and a 20‑year CIP prioritization to fund SSMP implementation and the upcoming sewer rate study.
