In the highly popular and heavily-visited Wawona area of Yosemite National Park, the Park Service has faced the declining condition of the Wawona Wastewater Treatment facility and an associated need to revise how to manage wastewater from the Wawona Campground and the South Fork Picnic Area.
That may not sound very exciting or interesting to people who love Yosemite, but keeping sewage overflows out of the river or keeping sewage effluent from contaminating wetlands truly matters.
After a length public planning process in which CSERC and other interests participated, on March 6 th Park Superintendent Mike Reynolds formally approved the preferred alternative (Alternative 2) that will allow rehabilitation of the overall Wawona Wastewater Treatment System.
One of the positive aspects of the new facilities and the connected system of effluent treatment and subsurface disposal trenches is the permanent change away from discharging any tertiary-treated effluent into the South Fork Merced River. In the past, such discharges were allowed under certain contingency conditions. Now, with a different set of permit requirements and the implementation of the new project, the Park Service will expand the land area of the golf course area where irrigated spray effluent is applied or where subsurface disposal trenches will be utilized.
In addition, Wawona Campground will be connected to the central sewage treatment at the Treatment Plant. Septic systems at the campground will be decommissioned. A vault toilet at the South Fork Picnic Area will eventually be replaced with a flushing-toilet restroom. And a suite of post-project restoration actions will be aimed at returning the entire project area to a naturalized condition.
CSERC supported the need to rehabilitate the critically important wastewater treatment system and to ensure that on-land effluent disposal eliminates any future need for discharging treated effluent into the South Fork Merced River. As now planned, construction work on this important project is slated to begin this fall (2019).