City Council Votes 5-Week Ban on New Sewer Connections

The San Diego City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved a five-week ban on sewer connections leading from some of the city’s fastest-growing areas to an undependable sewage pump station in Sorrento Valley.

The moratorium, which will last until July 29, prohibits city departments from issuing building and sewer connection permits for the Sorrento Valley, North City West, Scripps Ranch, Mira Mesa and Rancho Penasquitos areas--part of the 100-square-mile service area of Pump Station 64.

Council members chose the July 29 deadline because it is one day after city water department administrators have to submit to the regional Water Quality Control Board an emergency plan to upgrade Pump Station 64, which has spilled raw sewage 58 times since 1979 into Los Penasquitos Lagoon and sometimes onto beaches in the Torrey Pines area.

Those spills prompted Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer to ask her colleagues for the moratorium.

Staging a version of a filibuster, she persisted in her crusade during long discussions Monday and Tuesday by appealing to her colleagues to halt the sewage hook-ups because of potential threats to public health.

Wolfsheimer, who had warned that raw sewage spills could lead to disease outbreaks such as cholera epidemics, said Tuesday that waiting to do something about the problems at Station 64 would mean “we could wake up in 10 years and not be looking at America’s Finest City. We could be looking at America’s Finest Third World City.”

Eventually, all the council members agreed. After they questioned water department officials about plans to fix the pump station, Councilmen Mike Gotch and Uvaldo Martinez said they didn’t have the information or assurances necessary to approve any more hook-ups until late July, when the emergency plan is to be submitted to the water quality board.

But council members indicated that they fully intend to lift the moratorium at that time, since they expect that the emergency plan for Station 64 will satisfy state pollution officials.

“I hope that this gesture . . . made by this council will be viewed in a positive light,” said acting Mayor Ed Struiksma, addressing a water quality board engineer seated in the audience. He called the moratorium an “extraordinary commitment.”

The effects of the moratorium were uncertain Tuesday, since developers who already have their building and sewer hook-up permits will be allowed to proceed with construction.

Struiksma said he thought the moratorium would delay building plans for “50 to 100” dwelling units in all the areas affected. But one building official, who asked not be identified, said: “I think you’ve just shut down 65% of the city in building. That’s just a guess. That’s a pretty active area.”

Because of the high stakes involved in Tuesday’s vote, representatives of the building industry seemed ready to fight the moratorium. But during a lunch break, they emerged from hallway huddles with reluctant acceptance of the temporary ban.

“To hold the construction industry hostage to mechanical (pump) failure is a very inappropriate way to deal with the problem,” Mike Madigan, vice president of Pardee Construction, said after the council’s vote.

In a symbolic gesture, Madigan asked the council to postpone until August a request by his company on Tuesday’s agenda for approval of a final plan for a large office, commercial and high-density residential development in North City West.

Likewise, an attorney representing Carmel Mountain Ranch agreed Tuesday to postpone council approval of the final develoment plans for a 17-lot industrial park south of Rancho Bernardo. Attorney Jim Dawe said his client would waive any objections to a delay until July 29 for the project, which he said would not be sending sewage to Station 64 for at least a year.

The moratorium is the latest twist in the complicated saga of Station 64, which is at 10749 Roselle St.

The station has 12 pumps, ranging in power from 200 horsepower to 500 horsepower, and its job is to take the sewage collected from the North City area and pump it up a 300-foot hill and toward the Point Loma waste water treatement plant.

A series of problems, including a lack of capacity, has caused spills of millions of gallons of raw sewage into the lagoon.

State officials contend that the pump station is still too small to take in the peak sewage load during winter storms; city water officials, however, maintain that mechancial and electrical miscues--not the lack of capacity--are responsible for the spill record that one water pollution engineer has called “abysmal.”

Last week, the water quality board issued a “cease and desist” order against further spills and ordered the city to come back at its July 29 hearing with an emergency plan to fix the station within three to six months. The water board decided not to impose a hook-up ban and has deferred until its July meeting a decision on whether to fine the city $650,000 for past spills.

Armand V. Campillo, the city’s Water Utilities Department director, told the council he didn’t think a moratorium was necessary.

“I think the council is reasonably concerned and a bit fed up with the excuses that we’ve been giving them on the sewage spills and wants to see the problem solved once and forever,” Campillo said.

Struiksma said he and the other council members will hold City Manager Sylvester Murray responsible for drafting the emergency upgrade plan and completing all the remedial work on time.

“It’s going to be the first priority on my agenda,” Murray said outside the council chamber.