City of San Diego Must Explain to State : Sludge Dumping, Sewage Spills May Draw Fine

In complaints filed Friday against the City of San Diego, state water officials proposed fining the city nearly $1.3 million for four years’ worth of illegal sewage-sludge disposal and seven years of overflows of untreated sewage.

The complaints, made by the Regional Water Quality Control Board, accuse the city of illegally dumping 171,135 cubic yards of sludge at Brown Field and of allowing raw sewage to spill from a Sorrento Valley pump station on 58 occasions since 1979.

The complaints proposed penalties of $646,800 for the overflows from Pump Station 64 and $643,706 for the Brown Field dumping. The latter figure represents the amount that the water officials figure the city saved by not dumping the sludge in a licensed landfill.

However, the proposed fines may be modified by the board after a June 16 public hearing on the complaints. At that hearing, the city will have the opportunity to defend itself and argue for a reduction in the penalties, which have been recommended by the board’s staff.

Neither Assistant City Manager John Lockwood nor Water Utilities Department Director Armand Campillo could be reached late Friday for comment. However, city officials have argued previously that the overflows and dumping are beyond their control and have blamed the state for problems with sludge disposal.

“We do not plan or schedule water main breaks, sewage backups, sewage overflows and spills, power outages or mechanical failures,” Lockwood wrote in a recent report defending the city. “But they do occur.”

He argued that the city has been working to correct the problems and said, “To penalize us in spite of these efforts seems a bit nonconstructive.”

The sewage overflow complaint stems from frequent spills at Pump Station 64, which pumps raw sewage from rapidly expanding northern sections of the city to the Point Loma sewage treatment plant. The spills, which have totaled many millions of gallons, recently prompted a temporary quarantine of Penasquitos Lagoon.

David Barker, a regional board engineer, said Friday that the board staff traced some of the spills to the absence of a backup power source, the absence of an operational backup pump, and difficulties in accommodating peak flows during rainstorms.

“We’re not quite sure why all these overflows were occurring,” Barker said. “We took the position that the station is a critical component in the city’s collection system and therefore should have been designed in a manner such that overflows should not occur.”

The board’s staff also proposed last month a ban on new sewer hookups in the area served by the station. The board is expected to vote June 16 on a proposed cease and desist order that would include either the moratorium or simply a demand that the city fix the problems as quickly as possible.

The sludge disposal complaint stems from allegations that sludge from the city’s Fiesta Island sludge-storage site was transported and illegally dumped on city-owned land at Brown Field. The board alleges that the city hauled 6,942 truckloads there over 143 days.

According to Barker, the dumping violated the city’s waste discharge permit, which requires that sludge go to an authorized disposal site. Such a site would have monitoring wells to insure against ground water contamination, as well as equipment to catch runoff.

“In choosing not to dispose at Otay annex (the county landfill), the city realized economic savings of $643,706,” Barker said. “I think the logic there was the regional board was basing (the penalty) on the economic savings that the city realized by illicitly discharging.”

City officials have contended in the past that they had an oral agreement with the state that required no permit to dump at Brown Field. They also say they had no choice because the county landfill accepts only a small amount of sludge.