City Put on 6-Year Plan, Fined for Spills : State Water Panel Sets Sewage Plant Timetable

Expressing disappointment with the City of San Diego for years of delays, state water officials on Monday enacted a six-year schedule for the city to begin planning and construction of a $1.5-billion sewage treatment plant.

The Regional Water Quality Control Board’s action is the first taken by an outside public agency to help force the city into planning for the plant, which will be the city’s largest public works project ever undertaken.

The board also backed down from imposing as much as $800,000 in fines for a 20.8-million-gallon sewage spill in March from a Sorrento Valley pump station into Los Penasquitos Lagoon and the ocean. Rather than assess a $312,000 fine for the spill, as recommended by its staff, the board opted to make the city pay $50,000 toward lagoon cleanup projects.

The board also fined the city $152,000 for missing a construction deadline at the pump station.

Plant Schedule

For city officials, the hardest pill to swallow on Monday was the board’s schedule for the sewage treatment plant, which will provide secondary treatment to sewage. The city now uses a system called advanced primary treatment.

The city has successfully avoided building the plant for years, arguing that the partially treated sewage it pipes two miles out into the ocean off Point Loma poses no environmental threat. The arguments were so persuasive that federal regulators decided in 1981 to grant the city a temporary exemption from the federal Clean Water Act, which requires construction of the plant.

But San Diego’s time ran out late last year when the Environmental Protection Agency declined to renew the exemption, and the City Council voted in February to proceed with the public works project.

That vote meant the city had to begin the planning process from scratch, and a 22-member task force was appointed to advise the water department and the City Council on how to proceed--a process that will require millions of dollars and extensive public participation.

Task force chairman E. Miles Harvey, a lawyer, urged the regional board Monday not to adopt the six-year schedule.

Harvey pleaded for more time because the citizens’ group is only now beginning to grapple with the huge task, and he asked the board to defer any timetable until after the city hires a project manager and consultant for the project. The city has estimated it will cost $10 million for a consultant to help plan and design the facility.

“We feel the heat,” Harvey said.

Board members, however, openly expressed their impatience with the city, adding that the timetable was needed to force the city into action.

“We are not going to back away from our role and duty,” chairwoman Mary Jane Forster said.

Board member John V. Foley said he believes the ordered schedule is “generous.”

“I think this will help your consultant,” Foley said. “Boy, he’s going to have to be God. He’s gotta be God to get this job done.”

The schedule, which can be amended, calls for the city to show evidence by September that it is planning for the treatment plant.

By September, 1988, the city’s consultant for the job must submit a preliminary environmental impact report, and the city must begin acquiring the land for the plant by February, 1991. A construction schedule must be submitted in February, 1993.

Fines Against City

In other action Monday, the water board assessed $202,000 in fines against the city for problems with Pump Station 64, the Sorrento Valley facility.

The board could have assessed up to $800,000 in fines, but board members said they were willing to forgo harsher sanctions because the city was making a good-faith effort to repair a damaged forced main at the station and install a second main by February. The city awarded a $4.6-million contract for the work in July.

While work on the force main was greeted with satisfaction by the board, it turned around and levied a $152,000 administrative penalty against the city for missing a May 31 deadline for installing larger pumps at Station 64.

The city was supposed to install four, 500-horsepower pumps at the station to increase the pumping capacity. But water officials warned the board that construction problems would require a delay until November for installation of the pumps.

Water department administrators said the current pump station floor was too weak to hold the larger, heavier pumps. So a second pump station had to be constructed to accommodate the equipment.

This meant the pumps couldn’t be put into operation until November--six months after the deadline. Although board members expressed sympathy with the city, they said administrative rules still required them to assess the fine.