Keller Beach has stunning views but forget building a home there

Andy Keating always had a fascination with water and exploring San Francisco Bay. The longtime Piedmont resident and his wife, Tammi, often explored the bay by kayak, paddling through the region’s different corners.

One day in 2021, the couple decided to paddle to Richmond, ending up at Keller Beach in Point Richmond.

“We looked up and there was a piece of undeveloped land that had no house on it,” Keating said.

They returned by car, driving around until they found a “For sale” sign. 

Though that property ended up being unavailable, Keating found a similar undeveloped parcel across the street.

“We were excited. The spot is looking out across the water, Golden Gate Bridge in the distance and some really pretty scenery. We were excited to find a piece of land where we could build a dream home.”

But unbeknownst to Keating, the couple’s dream home would turn into a nightmare situation with his plans to build stuck in project purgatory after a moratorium on new sewer connections was unanimously approved in early 2022 by the Richmond City Council. The ban on hook-ups  to the 66-year-old Keller Beach Sanitary Sewer (KBSS) line that runs underwater along the edge of the beach was to give the city time to figure out how to fix or replace the corroded at-capacity pipe.

Now, after spending money on a consultant, the city is essentially no further along in fixing the sewer than it was in 2022. The council on Feb. 18 voted to prolong the ban on new connections, extending the frustrations of Point Richmond residents and potential home builders like Keating who have spent thousands of dollars on designs with no end in sight.

It is still unclear how corroded the sewer line is and what the scope of the problem is, according to Richmondside’s review of public records. This unknown, officials say, is delaying insights into how much repairs might cost and how long they’ll take. 

Nearly two decades of Keller Beach sewer problems

Issues with the Keller Beach sewer line date back to the mid-2000s when San Francisco Baykeeper, a nonprofit organization that advocates for the health of San Francisco Bay and its watershed, sued the city and 19 other Bay Area municipalities in 2006 to address repeated raw sewage spills in the bay.

In 2018, the city and Baykeeper reached a settlement that required the city to determine the “best solution” regarding the replacement, relocation or rehabilitation of the Keller Beach line, which connects to about 290 residences along the shoreline, according to Richmond’s Department of Public Works

The problems came to light for some residents in 2020 when property owners seeking to build there found out from a consultant’s letter to the city that there were no new permits being issued, according to Norman Hantzsche, Point Richmond resident and civil wastewater engineer.

“It was not formally adopted as a moratorium,” he told Richmondside. “It was an understanding that the line was not taking new lateral connections.”

According to Hantzsche, the news of the unofficial moratorium on new connections came up during a Point Richmond Neighborhood Council meeting in late 2021, taking many residents by surprise.

Then, Hantzsche said, the confusion began. Since an official moratorium did not exist, inquiring residents got mixed messages from the city about the supposed ban on new connections.

“I called Tom Butt who was mayor at the time, and he didn’t know anything about it. He wrote to the public works director and the other departments. Everyone was getting different answers,” Hantzsche said. “They either said there was no moratorium or that it would just apply to the homes right near the shoreline which ended up not being correct. There was a lot of stuff happening and it was confusing.”

The city re-hired Santa Rosa-based Coastland engineering to review CCTV footage of select stretches of the line. The poor condition led the city council  to approve an emergency ordinance and moratorium in early 2022.

In that CCTV study, engineers found severe internal corrosion throughout the 5,392-foot concrete-encased cast iron pipe, with significant water pooling in sections even when upstream flow was blocked. Multiple segments of the line were discovered to be “choked full of sand,” according to the report, with some refilling within just two weeks after cleaning.

The assessment revealed a system plagued by maintenance challenges, as manholes are under water during high tides and cliffs and private property limit vehicle access. Twelve of 17 inspected segments showed moderate to severe “structural sagging.”

While no visible breaches were detected, CCTV inspectors concluded the pipeline has reached the end of its useful life, the assessment said, with engineers suggesting either inserting a cured-in-place pipe liner, which would address corrosion but not structural sagging, or completely replacing the system with a new alignment on land — a more expensive but “comprehensive” fix.

Coastland was then given a $475,000, one-year contract in July 2022 to examine the line and explore how to fix it.

“It went through pretty quickly and without much fanfare because people believed that was the right thing to do,” Hantzche said about the first moratorium, though he said there were questions on how competitive the contract process was with Coastland.

“The (former) public works director (Joe Leach) made a case that, since, you know, they’ve reviewed it (the CCTV footage), they’re the only ones that really should be doing the next step,” Hantzche said.

During a Feb. 18 city council presentation that touched on the history of the sewer line, Richmond’s Water Resources Division Manager Mary Phelps said that the city had hoped a solution would have been identified by early 2023.

“(The moratorium) was issued with the intent to give us (city staff) enough time to review the technical report that was issued to the city council (from the CCTV) and what options were available,” she said.

But in 2023 Coastland’s public outreach efforts in Point Richmond rankled community members. Residents said they were surprised when the company began digging up areas along the shoreline.

Multiple sources who spoke with Richmondside described a subsequent 2023 community meeting with Coastland’s outreach person as “volatile,” with Phelps confirming that sentiment to the council in February.

“At that point, it did not go well,” Phelps said.

One reason for that, Hantzche recalled, was residents being initially told by Coastland and the city that a number of solutions, which included either repairing, rehabilitating or relocating the line, were on the table. Coastland, however, was set on moving the line to dry ground, under the street.

“The consultant started off (at the 2023 meeting), and she basically did an alternatives analysis to justify why they were just studying the moving of the pipeline into the street when, in fact, that wasn’t their scope,” he said. “She made the statement that this alternative was a slam dunk and that really set people off.”

Richmond’s Department of Public Works Director Daniel Chavarria, who was hired in late fall 2022, pointed to the disorganization 2023 meeting as the catalyst for why the public soured on Coastland.

Coastland did not respond to Richmondside’s request for an interview about the project, but the public works department said the firm wasn’t paid the entirety of its contract.

“There was really a disaster because there was no agenda,” Chavarria said, adding that the company did not communicate that its work was in the feasibility stage and not close to construction.

Ultimately, the city hired mitigation firm Kearns and West to try to repair the damaged relationship between Coastland and the neighborhood — though Phelps said that firm’s contract expired sometime in 2024 and is being reevaluated.

By March 2024, however, after the city opened up bids to conduct a peer review of Coastland’s work, the company ended its contract with the city,  citing concerns about the difficulty of working with the neighborhood as well as changes to the company’s ownership.

City staff turnover, city council changes made situation worse, officials says

During the latter part of 2022, the Richmond Public Works Department went through a number of staffing changes. Leach, who had led the department since April 2021, stepped down in September 2022, and Charvarria was hired, along with deputy director Robert Armijo.

Chavarria and Armijo met with Richmondside at City Hall recently to talk about what happened and how the city plans to address the Keller Beach sewer issue.

Chavarria said the situation was a perfect storm of a lack of institutional knowledge for himself and new staff combined with a change in how council members were serving their constituents after the city council switched to a district-based system.

Additionally, Richmond’s Public Works Department was significantly understaffed, Chavarria said.

“I came here on Halloween of 2022 and I asked, ‘Who are our engineers?’ and they pointed to our intern. That was the only engineer in the team,” he said, adding that he has since hired almost 60 people.

Chavarria believes that staffing issues are partially to blame for the sewer project flopping the way it did.

“The city has consultants (like Coastland) but consultants need direction. Not because they don’t know what they’re doing but because when the city is presented options and no one responds, the projects don’t move,” he said. “This is the big reason why I think things got to that point.”

Situations like the stalled repair of the Keller Beach sewer line are why Chavarria has made it a point, he said, to retain staff.

The department is trying to get a grasp on 88 capital improvement projects — many of which have spanned years — something that both Chavarria and Armijo say is unheard of for a city Richmond’s size.

“It’s an enormous program not because we are great but because there was such a backlog (of projects),” Chavarria said. “We have all these great ideas but an idea is not a project. Making a project means you have a budget, resources and time. All these great ideas, unfortunately, in this scenario are not new to the city but things are starting to stabilize.”

Phillip Rosenthal, president of the Point Richmond Neighborhood Council, said that residents are not expecting Chavarria and the new public works staff to cure the city’s project woes in one year but he also believes that the responsibility falls on other city staff members that have been a part of the city for years.

“We all understand, there’s a million projects and everyone’s fighting (for) their projects,” Rosenthal said. “But if this is such a disaster that the whole world has to stop, then this should have been up to the city manager (Shasa Curl) and (Community Development Director) Lina Velasco to help to prioritize.”

The current moratorium only applies to new developments that require a new sewer connection — not ADUs or other projects that connect to an existing line.

Are sewage holding tanks in store for Keller Beach sewer line?

Rosenthal described the area’s sewage system as twisted with lateral connections from the homes on the shore often intertwining with other utilities and neighbors’ connections.

“In the old neighborhoods in the hills, the sewage system is all spaghetti,” Rosenthal said. “Our neighbor two doors down, her sewage line goes into our backyard.”

Rosenthal said the complicated connections are as old as the neighborhood.

“At the time, in 1915 (when homes were being built prior to the Keller Beach line’s construction), who knows how that deal was made?” Rosenthal said, about the layout of the sewer lines — specifically referring to his backyard. “Who knows what the city required or if it was a deal between the owners of the properties at the time.”

The complicated system, Chavarria said, made collecting data via a feasibility study absolutely necessary to figure out a solution.

According to Chavarria, Coastland had already determined that the best recourse was to relocate it to land. That’s because multiple agencies will have to sign off on the proposed remedy of “lining” the pipe with a layer to avoid leaks.

“That (option) has its challenges. The main one is that you need to go through upwards of nine different agencies to get environmental permits,” he said. “From their (Coastland’s) perspective, you’re never going to get this. It’s going to cost a lot of money and time and there’s a high percentage you’ll get a ‘no.’ ”

Because Coastland left before turning in a completed report, Chavarria said the city has to hire another consultant to start from scratch.

Armijo said that Coastland turned in its data but that typically a new consultant would want to gather its own information.

Residents told Richmondside that, although a CCTV analysis was done, the full extent of the problem is unknown.

Rosenthal thinks focusing on relocating the line onshore is “burning down the house to make toast.”

“The community is saying, ‘First things first, let’s find out what the problem is. Let’s find out if this is broken.’ Now, does that require maybe sending undersea divers? Maybe. This is not sending a man to the moon,” Rosenthal said. 

One potential short-term solution, that some engineering-savvy residents such as Hantzsche suggested in 2023, is installing sewage holding tanks for property owners who wish to build. Such tanks can be put underground, but they require being regularly emptied. Currently, the city is working to figure out tank standards, and Chavarria said it’s likely tanks could be an option by 2026.

Rosenthal questioned who would pay for the holding tanks.

“That’s kind of what we’re afraid of. We don’t know who’s going to pay for this or where the money is going to come from now,” Rosenthal said. “It’s certainly not fair for a taxpayer to have to spend tens of thousands of dollars or more to install a new sewage system because the city has not kept up theirs.”

The public works department believes that the Keller Beach sewage line will be added to the capital improvement program project list.

“The pipeline will not be built within two years,” Armijo said. “It’s a protracted process. You don’t just go out with an idea and build that. Planning and design have to happen and that can oftentimes take longer than the actual construction.”

“In my opinion it will not be less than five years,” Chavarria added. “But it could be up to 10 years. It’s a big project.”

Both Rosenthal and Hantzsche said they believe possibly rerouting current lateral connections off of the Keller Beach line would be a cost-effective way to free up capacity, but Chavarria contends that there still needs to be an analysis and that  regardless of how many connections exist the seawater will continue to corrode the pipe.

“Having it there is a risk,” Chavarria said, adding that although Point Richmond neighbors are concerned with fixing the issue, there needs to be a broad view of what is beneficial for the city as a whole. “We can’t ignore it.”

Even with all the delays and uncertainty, Keating said he is cautiously optimistic about eventually building and living in his dream home in Point Richmond. Currently, the couple live in Austin, Texas, where they care for his elderly parents. 

“If and when we build up this lot we will be able to retire,” Keating said. “There’s a lot invested in that idea to build a house. We love the bay. It calls to us.”