Treated Waste Water Seen as Solution to Growing S.D. Problem

Struggling to find a new way to dispose of the region’s ever-increasing volume of sewage, a county supervisor went to Imperial County in 1978 with a plan San Diego officials thought was creative and workable.

The idea: to send San Diego sewage to the Imperial Valley, where it could be treated and used to irrigate the arid valley’s many farms.

But Imperial County farmers, who had all the fresh Colorado River water they could use at bargain prices, were not impressed. Then-County Supervisor Lucille Moore and her idea were sent packing almost before she got a chance to explain it.

Since then, San Diego’s sewage has become more plentiful and more of a problem.

Just last month, the San Diego City Council agreed to spend $1 billion to improve the aging Point Loma treatment plant so that it can treat sewage to a level that meets federal clean-water standards before it is dumped into the ocean. San Diego’s fresh water, meanwhile, has become more expensive and more in demand.

A More Ambitious Plan

Now Assemblyman Steve Peace, a Chula Vista Democrat who represents much of southern San Diego County and all of Imperial County, has proposed a plan similar to but more ambitious than the one Moore carried east in the late ‘70s. Peace’s plan includes the added twist of sending fresh Imperial County water west to San Diego.

The initial reception for Peace’s plan in Imperial County hasn’t been much better than the reaction Moore got almost a decade ago. But there are signs on both sides of the mountains that the idea may get more serious consideration this time around.

Peace believes San Diego’s treated water could be used for irrigation in Imperial County and to dilute the polluted New River, which flows from Mexico into the United States and has been called the world’s dirtiest river. The San Diego water would also wind its way into the Salton Sea, which would become too salty to support wildlife if fresh water now flowing into the sea was shipped instead to San Diego.

The Imperial Irrigation District is under court order to begin conserving water that now flows through its fields and its dirt-banked canals, and the district’s plan to sell that water to the Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Water District has stalled. San Diego County, Peace argues, could be the customer Imperial is looking for. By using treated sewage water for agriculture where feasible, Imperial could free up even more fresh water for sale to San Diego.

On the San Diego side, Peace says his water reclamation scheme, much like Moore’s, would provide an alternative to the current practice of treating San Diego sewage and then dumping it into the Pacific. Another part of the plan would address the chronic problem of Tijuana sewage polluting San Diego County rivers, lagoons and beaches. Finally, obtaining a guaranteed supply of fresh water from Imperial County would ensure that San Diego would not be left dry by metropolitan Los Angeles’ need for water in a drought.

Need to Cooperate

Imperial County officials, although angered that Peace unveiled his plan without consulting them first, agree that cooperation with San Diego is in their best interest.

“Naturally we look at San Diego in a positive way, because they’re kind of at the mercy of Metropolitan (Water District) at the bottom of the state,” said Gerald Moore, chairman of the Imperial Irrigation District board of directors. “We feel that maybe water’s worth a little more to San Diego than it is to Metropolitan.”

Moore and others in Imperial County also agree that treated water could be used on some crops, particularly cotton. But they question the economics of pumping the treated water over the mountains to the Imperial Valley.

Still, with San Diego County paying at least 20 times as much for its water as Imperial County does, more and more people in San Diego are beginning to envision a day in the near future when San Diego could give Imperial County cash and reclaimed water in exchange for fresh water and still come out ahead.

Some reclamation advocates, in fact, contend that the idea of trading treated sewage for fresh water is no more far-fetched than the city’s decision in February to expand the Point Loma plant so that it can treat sewage more thoroughly before dumping it in the ocean.

San Diego City Councilman Bill Cleator, the only councilman to vote against expanding the Point Loma plant, said it is foolish for water-poor San Diego to spend so much money to treat its sewage, only to throw it away.

“It just seems reasonable to me that if you’re throwing away 160 million gallons a day by pumping it into the ocean, if you could somehow take that water and use it for whatever--the sides of freeways, or pumping it into the water table or for industrial uses--I think that makes a lot more sense,” Cleator said, “than listening to the industrial giants who say the only way you can solve this problem is with proven technology.”

Looking Ahead

Another longtime reclamation advocate is Assemblyman Larry Stirling (R-San Diego), who as a city councilman several years ago was instrumental in garnering support for an experimental program through which San Diego has made strides in developing reclamation technology. Stirling, who has proposed banning sewage treatment in favor of reclamation for any Southern California agency importing more than half its water, believes San Diego should save its $1 billion and instead use it on perfecting and implementing the new technology.

Like Cleator, Stirling believes the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the giant engineering firms that design and build sewage plants are unwilling to push for reclamation because they have too much invested in today’s methods.

“There doesn’t seem to be any environmental leadership in the city that looks ahead anymore,” Stirling, who left the council in 1980, said. “This is a crossroads. They’re either going to make a major current-technology investment which puts us back 100 years or they’re going to make a commitment to water reclamation. To me, it’s a billion-dollar blunder to build a current-technology treatment plant.”

Similar sentiments can be heard from county government, where Supervisors Brian Bilbray, whose South County district suffers the ill effects of sewage flowing across the international border from Tijuana, and Susan Golding, who has long pushed the idea of water independence for San Diego, have been working to update Moore’s plan and pursue other reclamation schemes.

The two supervisors on Friday released a proposal through which the county would work with six cities on a regional water reclamation project aimed at eliminating San Diego’s dependence on imported water, which now constitutes 90% of the county’s water needs.

“I think it’s time to have a visionary look at what we ought to be doing,” Golding, who also sits on the San Diego County Water Authority, said. “With prices of reclaimed water and potable water changing, there’s going to come a time when the two meet, and the use of reclaimed water is going to be a viable alternative. It’s going to be economical.”

Reclamation Network

Imperial County might be more receptive to using San Diego’s reclaimed water if San Diego first uses all that it can, Bilbray said. Another possible market for the water is Mexico, he said.

“Imperial County should be just one of the recipients of a reclamation network,” Bilbray said. “Every major water user in San Diego County--every golf course, every cemetery, every major rural park--should be integrated into the system.”

But the county proposal will probably be stymied without the cooperation of the city, which runs the region’s largest sewage treatment facility. Bilbray described the city’s current strategy as “hell-bent for Armageddon when it comes to sewage treatment.”

“I just believe right now the City of San Diego has done every wrong thing they could do,” Bilbray said. “If I was calling the shots, I definitely would not be doing it the way they have. It’s a centralized system that’s going to be antiquated before its half-done.”

City officials, for their part, say the February decision by the council was only the first step in a project that will evolve over the next decade. Sufficient time exists for a thorough study of water reclamation and how that process should be included in the expanded Point Loma plant, Assistant City Manager John Fowler said.

“We are just about to embark on a major study effort that will last over the next two to three years to ascertain how best to accommodate the shift . . . ,” Fowler said. “That effort will consider and review all the various alternatives.”

Although the county’s updated water-swap plan has not been made public, the water-quality biologist who designed it described the plan as similar to the one Peace released March 6.

Both plans envision a way to treat San Diego and Tijuana sewage before sending it out into a network of reclamation ponds, where it would be purified before being reused. Both anticipate using hydroelectric power to run the pumps that take the treated water over the mountains to Imperial County. And both plans call for using the San Diego water as part of a solution to the environmental problems plaguing the New River and Salton Sea.

Shipping Differences

The key difference between the two is in the way they would ship fresh water from Imperial County to San Diego.

Peace would build a pipeline from the Imperial Valley to Morena Reservoir. From there, the water could feed into the San Diego County Water Authority’s water supply system. The county’s plan calls for Imperial County to route the water through the Metropolitan Water District’s existing system.

Interviews with Imperial County officials indicate that San Diego County’s plan would be more palatable there than Peace’s proposal because it calls for a more advanced treatment of waste water before it is sent east, and does not require construction of a second pipeline for sending Colorado River water to the coast.

Imperial County officials are reluctant to approve a second pipeline because they believe that, in a drought, their more powerful coastal neighbors would take every gallon that can be shipped west.

“I’m realistic enough to know that, when the crunch comes, which is inevitable, they are going to take what they can get,” Imperial Irrigation District Board Member John Benson said. “That’s just the way it’s going to be. So there’s no reason to build a bigger pipeline.”

But Peace, who has introduced legislation seeking a state study of the idea, downplays the importance of the details in the project he has proposed.

“This is not a plan that’s going to be looked at and determined over a period of months,” he said. “This is the kind of thing dealt with over decades, not months. . . . I’m not wedded to a specific plan. If it makes sense to San Diego and to Imperial County and we’re in control of our destiny, then I’m for it.”