Sewage Decision Spills Over Into Election Race

Politicians have long been accused of toiling in the gutter, but the race for county supervisor in North County has now moved to the sewers.

Oceanside City Councilman John MacDonald and Escondido lawyer Clyde Romney sparred Thursday over how much credit MacDonald should get for the City of Escondido’s decision to abandon efforts to lower its sewage treatment standards.

At the urging of Mayor Jim Rady, the Escondido City Council voted Wednesday night to withdraw its application for a waiver of waste water treatment standards, which would have allowed the city to discharge dirtier water through an ocean outfall off Cardiff beach.

Rady, who had insisted until Wednesday that there would be no environmental harm in lowering standards, said he changed his mind after discussing the issue with MacDonald, whose candidacy he supports.

“He, for the first time, caused me to reconsider my previous, almost adamant, position that we’re not doing anything wrong and we’re not screwing up the ocean, despite what the surfers and all those people with master’s degrees in esoteric subjects were saying,” Rady said in an interview Thursday. “Our scientists were saying the evidence was that we’re not polluting the ocean.

“But John’s thrust was that we don’t have to be polluting the ocean for there still to be the perception that we are,” Rady said. “That got me to thinking.”

MacDonald, speaking at a campaign forum in Oceanside, noted that the Escondido council had reversed its position on the issue, just as Oceanside had done in April. MacDonald took credit for persuading Rady to change his position.

“I was the catalyst,” MacDonald said in an interview after the forum. “I met with Jim Rady and explained to him that the perception that we were polluting the ocean was just as important as the reality when it comes to attracting people to use our beaches.”

But Romney, who said he discussed the issue with each of the Escondido council members, including Rady, pooh-poohed the notion that MacDonald was responsible for Rady’s change of heart. He said Rady’s switch was timed politically to give MacDonald’s campaign a boost.

“Mayor Rady did the right thing for the wrong reason,” Romney said. “He didn’t need assistance from John MacDonald or Clyde Romney” to reach his decision, Romney added.

Like Rady, both MacDonald and Romney have changed their positions on waste water treatment standards. MacDonald voted three years ago to seek a similar waiver for Oceanside but reversed himself and urged the council to withdraw the waiver request in April. During the primary election, Romney said he favored the lower treatment standards Escondido was seeking, but, after researching the issue, he, too, changed his stand.

Times staff writer Tom Gorman contributed to this report.