EPA Calls for Sewage Plant Improvements : Agency Cites High Ocean Bacteria Level Caused by Point Loma Facility Outfall

The federal Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday that it intended to require the City of San Diego to upgrade its sewage treatment plant at Point Loma to ensure state and federal clean water standards are met.

The decision could eventually force the city to construct a new sewage treatment facility and triple the average household’s sewer bill, according to one city official.

Since the early 1970s, the city has sought a waiver from the EPA that would have allowed it to operate the sewage treatment plant without making substantial improvements or build a new plant that treated sewage more thoroughly.

Five years ago, the EPA granted a tentative waiver that would have allowed the operation of the present plant.

But EPA spokesman Terry Wilson said the agency has reversed itself and rejected the city’s request for a waiver from the federal Clean Water Act because sewage now discharged into the ocean from the Point Loma facility is a major contributor to high levels of bacteria in kelp beds. The levels now exceed state and federal limits, he said.

Armand Campillo, city water utilities director, said he was disappointed by the agency’s action, but was not surprised. “They were dropping hints like six months ago that (their ruling) would very likely be a negative one,” he said.

But William Mueller, attorney for People for a Clean Ocean, an Encinitas-based environmentalist group that has opposed other local cities’ attempts to win similar waivers, praised the EPA’s action.

“If the city wants to be known as San Diego by the sewer,” it should have gotten the waiver, Mueller said. “But it would have destroyed their beaches.”

Campillo said he would seek permission from the City Council to appeal the EPA’s decision and submit another waiver application. Under EPA rules, a city or county has 45 days to notify the agency whether it plans to appeal.

“At this time I don’t know what our game plan will be,” Campillo said.

Campillo said if the EPA ruling becomes final, the city could be forced to build a so-called secondary treatment plant. Secondary sewage plants remove 10% more solids from waste and are more efficient in reducing bacteria levels than the plant now in operation at Point Loma.

However, Campillo said a secondary plant would cost at least $775 million, and raise the average household monthly sewage bill to $28 from $8 a month.

Campillo added that the city does not have enough land at Point Loma to construct such a plant next to the existing plant. Converting the present plant into a secondary plant is not feasible because the latter could only process about 40 million gallons of waste a day. By comparison, the existing plant can handle 240 million gallons--the amount of waste the city expects to have to have to handle by the year 2000.

A second, less costly alternative, Campillo said, would be to extend the current 2 1/2-mile pipeline that carries sewage outfall from Point Loma out to sea another two miles. The extension would cost $85 million to $100 million, he said.

Campillo said the decision by the EPA was based on changes made in 1983 to the California Ocean Plan, which extended the areas where bacteria-level standards were established to include kelp beds. Previously, the standards were confined to areas where people swam, but were extended to the beds to protect scuba divers.

A private firm hired by the city, Lowery and Associates, is nearing completion on a study to determine the health effects to scuba divers who harvest kelp off the coast, Campillo said. Although the study has not yet been completed, preliminary data supports the city’s contention that bacteria levels pose no danger to the health of the divers or the kelp, Campillo said.

“I guess our simple point is that no one yet is using the ocean to drink from, and the environment is not being hurt,” Campillo said.