City Will Miss Key Deadline to Install New Sewage Pumps

A miscalculation by the city Water Utilities Department means San Diego will miss a crucial deadline and have to pay $8 million more than expected to fix a sewage pump station that has repeatedly failed, dumping millions of gallons of raw sewage into Los Penasquitos Lagoon.

The complication also means that the department in December must ask the California Regional Water Quality Board--and possibly the City Council--to set aside threats of a moratorium on sewer hook-ups in fast-growing northern San Diego if deadlines to fix the pump station can’t be met.

Water officials told a City Council committee Wednesday that they will not be able to install four new 500-horsepower pumps at the Sorrento Valley station by May 31, as originally planned. Instead, the pumps will be installed by Nov. 15, 1987--5 1/2 months late.

The pumps were ordered to replace four existing 200-horsepower pumps on line now at Pump Station 64, which moves raw sewage to the Point Loma treatment plant from a 100-square-mile area that includes the burgeoning neighborhoods of Scripps Ranch, Sorrento Valley, North City West, Mira Mesa, Sabre Springs and Rancho Penasquitos, as well as the cities of Del Mar and Poway.

Installation of the larger pumps is a major improvement to the station and would help ease the burden, city officials have said.

But the new pumps are too big and too heavy for the existing station building, said Jim Mueller, senior engineer for the water department.

To house the new pumps, the department must now construct an $8-million building adjacent to the existing station just to house the new pumps. The unexpected cost will be paid out of the department’s reserve funds.

“When we were looking at the quickest way of expanding capacity, we thought we could just exchange the 200s with the 500s,” said Mueller. “But when the engineer looked into doing that, he found we would have some severe problems.

“We just didn’t realize it up front,” said Mueller. The need to construct the 3,000-square-foot building means the pumps can’t be installed until November, 1987.

Because of the delay, the department could run afoul of the water quality board.

The board in July fined the city $11,391 for past spills from Station 64. It threatened to impose a ban on further sewer hook-ups--which could bring construction in the booming area to a halt--in the event of future spills or the city missed 49 self-imposed deadlines for projects to upgrade the facility.

Yvonne Rehg, spokeswoman for the water department, said Thursday the department hopes to avert a moratorium, which is likely to disrupt development in some of the city’s fastest-growing neighborhoods, by asking for an extension in the pump deadline from the water board at its meeting in December.

“This isn’t a last-minute notification that we’re late,” she said. “It’s advance notification that we would like to extend the deadline . . . before construction is even begun because we feel a change in the engineering of the project will result in a better plant.”

There have been no spills from Station 64 into the lagoon since the facility’s environmental record became an issue this summer, Rehg said.

In addition, she said, the Water Utilities Department has successfully met 20 of the 49 self-imposed deadlines for improvements.

So far, the department has put in temporary back-up electricity for the pumps, and work is proceeding as scheduled for the Dec. 1 installation of a large retention pipe that would catch and hold up to 333,000 gallons of raw sewage should another malfunction occur at the station, Mueller said.

The City Council in July also passed provisions for a sewer hook-up moratorium, which would be triggered by a spill or a missed deadline.

An aide to Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer, who represents northern San Diego and pushed for the conditional ban, said Wolfsheimer will be asking the city attorney if and when the council’s own sewer hook-up moratorium would kick in because of the pump installation problem.

“We’re going to ask for clarification,” said Joann Johnson, the aide. “By that, what I’m saying is does it go into effect now that we know? Does it go into effect when the regional quality board says ‘Too bad’ or ‘You got our sympathy?’ That’s not clear.”

Since 1979, Station 64 has backed up and spilled millions of gallons of sewage into Los Penasquitos Lagoon on 58 occasions. Staff members to the water quality board have argued the mishaps indicate the station can’t handle the increasing flow of sewage.

City water officials, however, say the most recent spills have been caused by a series of unrelated malfunctions.