SEWAGE FACILITIES AND TROUBLE SPOTS

1. Oceanside Treatment Plants

Oceanside’s two plants--one on the coast, one in the San Luis Rey Valley--provide secondary treatment to 10.2 million gallons a day for the city of 102,000 residents. Discharge is through a 15-mile-long ocean outfall shared by the Fallbrook Public Utility District.

2. Encina Treatment Plant

Serving a population of 180,000 in parts of San Marcos, Vista, Carlsbad, Encinitas and unincorporated areas, the plant provides advanced primary treatment to 17.5 million gallons of sewage daily. Discharge is through a 1.5-mile-long ocean outfall. Encina obtained an EPA waiver from secondary treatment requirements, but four of the six agencies that share the plant have approved upgrading to secondary, for which it is already equipped. One agency is opposed.

3. San Elijo Treatment Plant

The plant, which serves Cardiff, Olivenhain and Solana Beach, has a capacity of 2.7 million gallons but will be expanded when treatment is upgraded from advanced primary to secondary. Efforts to obtain a waiver from secondary treatment standards was recently abandoned. The plant’s ocean outfall, also used by the City of Escondido, carries the effluent 1.5 miles out to sea.

4. Los Penasquitos Lagoon

A scenic state preserve encompassing more than 600 acres, the lagoon has borne the brunt of the chronic failures at Pump Station 64. Biologists say the effects of the spills on fish and plant life will not be fully known for months, when algae formed by nutrients in sewage dies off and depletes the lagoon’s oxygen supply. Nearby residents noticed a decline in birds following a March 5 spill and worry that the sewage carries toxic wastes from Sorrento Valley industries into the lagoon.

5. Mission Bay

It’s the largest aquatic park in the world, but all or portions of Mission Bay have been quarantined because of sewage spills 27% of the time since 1980, according to state water quality officials. Until recently, some 78 storm drains poured street runoff, which includes gasoline, oil, fertilizer, etc., directly into the bay from an 80-square-mile drainage basin. Now an interceptor system collects much of that, but an aged network of concrete pipes and manholes in Pacific Beach and Mission Beach continues to fail, spilling raw sewage. Since 1979, the city has spent $5.7 million on concrete pipe replacement around the bay; another $16.5 million will be spent in the next six years.

6. Point Loma Treatment Plant

Completed in 1963, the plant provides advanced primary treatment to about 180 million gallons of sewage a day from 16 agencies, including San Diego, Del Mar, La Mesa, El Cajon, National City, Imperial Beach, Poway and Coronado. After treatment, sewage is discharged deep at sea through a 2-mile-long ocean outfall. The City Council has decided to spend $1.5 billion to upgrade its sewage treatment, requiring improvements at Point Loma and construction of a new plant.

7. Tijuana River

The City of San Diego has its problems, but state water quality officials say their prime worry is the river of raw sewage that flows across the border from Mexico, causing quarantines on U.S. beaches as far north as Coronado. The sewage, which is much higher in concentration and is believed to contain a greater volume of toxics and industrial wastes than San Diego’s discharge, comes from direct dumping into the Tijuana River and from breaks in the city’s collection pipes.

8. Escondido Treatment Plant

Serving the City of Escondido and Rancho Bernardo, the plant provides secondary treatment to 13.5 million gallons of waste water a day. The effluent is then piped to Cardiff where it is discharged through the San Elijo ocean outfall. The city received an EPA waiver from secondary treatment but gave it up in October because of public opposition.

9. Pump Station 64

Perhaps the most vivid symbol of San Diego’s sewage woes, this pumping station serves the burgeoning North City area and has spilled 60 times since 1979. City officials concede that mismanagement allowed mechanical problems to persist and take full blame for spills like the one on March 5 that poured 21 million gallons of raw sewage into Los Penasquitos Lagoon. The city already has paid $341,000 in fines to state regulators for such spills.

10. Santee Wastewater Reclamation Project

In 1977, a joint powers agreement brought 10 agencies together to look at new technologies in waste water reclamation. In an artificial wetlands project, plants were grown in a shallow trench to host bacteria that cleanse raw sewage, producing water of higher quality than secondary treated effluent. A newer experiment mixes sewage with clay and other materials to produce clean water and sludge that can be used to make concrete bricks for construction.

11. Fiesta Island

One official calls it a disaster waiting to happen: San Diego dries the byproduct of its sewage--called sludge--in 30, 6-foot-deep beds that cover a large chunk of Fiesta Island. The practice has been going on since 1963, despite warnings from the state Coastal Commission. Now, plans are under way to move the sludge beds to Miramar Naval Air Station at a cost of $27 million. In October, a leaky berm caused a sludge spill that prompted a bay quarantine.

12. Aquaculture

Once billed as a possible answer to expensive secondary sewage treatment, the city’s experimental aquaculture project in Mission Valley now holds limited promise for San Diego. While the use of water hyacinth plants to treat sewage is invitingly simple, problems with odors and mosquitoes mean that the technology is impractical on a large scale and in urban areas. More than $600,000 in city money will be spent on the venture.

13. Brown Field

Barred from dumping large amounts of sludge at the Otay Landfill, city workers last year illegally dumped the sewage byproduct at Brown Field. State regulators accused the city of dumping as much as 171,135 cubic yards of sludge here over 143 days and threatened a fine of $643,706. No fine was issued and the city is now paying $2 million for the transportation of a huge sludge stockpile to landfills in San Bernardino and Riverside counties.