City Staff Opposes Upgrading Quality of Sewage Treatment

At a time when public pressure has forced smaller towns to abandon plans to cut sewage treatment, the San Diego city manager is recommending that the city continue its fight to avoid upgrading the quality of the 170 million gallons of waste it dumps in the ocean daily.

In a report that the City Council will consider next week, Assistant City Manager John Fowler suggests that the city pump its treated waste water farther out to sea, instead of upgrading the Point Loma sewage treatment plant to meet federal clean water standards.

Fowler contends that a 1 1/2-mile extension of the pipe that dumps treated waste water into the Pacific Ocean would reduce pollution in the kelp beds off Point Loma while saving the city most of the $1 billion he estimates it would cost to upgrade the plant.

“The . . . issue before the City Council and the public is not just an environmental one but also is one of economics,” reads an analysis attached to Fowler’s report. “How much protection of the ocean can the citizens of San Diego afford?”

Fowler’s report comes as coastal communities in San Diego and Orange counties have dropped their bids for similar waivers from the federal standards. Under public pressure, Escondido and Oceanside both agreed recently to treat their sewage at secondary levels.

On Tuesday, the manager’s position received mixed reviews.

“I think it’s ludicrous what he’s saying,” said Richard MacManus, president of Clean Ocean Action, the North County group that has fought waivers there. “Of course it’s going to have an effect: You have waves and currents that will bring that sewage to the same spot.

“They’re basically marking time, to save money. It’s the very same thing that was attempted over and over again in other jurisdictions, and over and over they found that eventually they had to pay the cost of upgrading.”

But Craig Barilotti, a marine biologist with Kelco, the San Diego-based kelp firm, said his company supports Fowler’s plan. He said upgrading Point Loma to so-called secondary treatment would have a “negligible impact” on the amount of wastes settling on the ocean floor.

“Secondary treatment is somewhat better,” Barilotti said, comparing it to the so-called advanced primary levels currently achieved. “But when you look at the price tag that goes with it, we just don’t feel the slight environmental benefits are worth the cost.”

Furthermore, Barilotti argued, spending money to upgrade a large coastal plant reduces the chances for waste water reclamation. It would be preferable, he said, to spend the money on decentralized community plants capable of recycling waste water for irrigation.

With secondary sewage treatment, about 85% of suspended solids are removed--as opposed to 60% and 75% respectively with primary and advanced primary treatment. Secondary treatment also further reduces the concentrations of organic material and acidity in the waste.

Under the federal Clean Water Act, cities that discharge waste water must provide secondary--as opposed to primary or advanced primary--treatment. But amendments to the law permit ocean dischargers to apply for waivers if they meet comparable state rules.

San Diego, which discharges 170 million gallons of waste water a day through its 2 1/2-mile outfall, applied for a waiver in 1979. It argued that 18 years of monitoring showed it was meeting state Ocean Plan standards and not affecting the kelp beds or recreation in the area.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency tentatively approved the waiver in 1981. But before final approval, the state revised its ocean plan. Among other things, it extended the public health standards for public bathing beaches to kelp beds.

On outer edges of the beds, tests showed San Diego was violating the new standards.

So in September, the EPA reversed its tentative approval, citing the bacteriological standards due to take effect in 1988. EPA also found that the Point Loma discharge interferes with bottom-dwelling organisms near the outfall.

Now the City Council has scheduled a public hearing at 9 a.m. Tuesday to discuss whether to reapply for the waiver.

In his report, Fowler stresses what he says would be the $1-billion cost to the Metropolitan Sewer System for converting to secondary treatment. He says customers “could experience as much as a 200% rate increase.”

Furthermore, he contends that conversion to secondary treatment would reduce the plant’s capacity and require a new treatment plant in the South Bay. That would demand acquisition of land and would affect homeowners and the environment, he says.

In the paper attached to Fowler’s report, the city Water Utilities Department argues that the ocean outfall issue is unrelated to the city’s long-running record of sewage spills. It states: “It is important to point out that conversion to secondary sewage treatment at Point Loma will not address the sewage spill problem.”

On Tuesday, MacManus charged that the manager’s office was attempting simply to “placate” two special interests--the kelp growers and the scuba divers who swim in the kelp beds. He said Fowler’s plan is no solution, simply a proposal to move the problem farther out to sea.

“I really don’t think that they’re registering the pulse of public opinion,” MacManus said. “I think they’ll be doing what will save them money.”

Barilotti noted, however, that the North County cases are not directly comparable to San Diego’s. Because the plants there had already upgraded to secondary and were asking permission to go back to advanced primary, those cities were not facing a large added expense.

“The economics are very different for North County and here,” he said.

In mid-October, in the midst of an energetic political campaign, Escondido dropped its request to switch from secondary to advanced primary treatment. In June, county officials dropped their bid for a waiver for the San Elijo plant in Cardiff. In April, Oceanside abandoned its plan to reduce treatment of 11 million gallons of sewage a day.

The metropolitan San Diego system, however, is the largest by far, serving 1.5 million people in San Diego and 15 other cities and sewer districts.