EPA Will Study Border Sewage Project

Reps. Jim Bates (D-San Diego) and Bill Lowery (R-San Diego) said Monday that the Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to study a $33.5-million dual-pipe treatment project as a short-term solution to the Tijuana sewage problem.

San Diego’s congressional delegation is scheduled to meet today in the Washington office of Sen. Alan Cranston (D-Calif.) to work toward reaching a consensus on whether the dual-pipe proposal is the best.

The legislators said the EPA and the Office of Management and Budget have agreed to have the Army Corps of Engineers begin design of the two-pipe system.

City of San Diego sewer users would probably pay $11 million for the system, and Congress has already allocated another $11 million for it. But another $11 million in federal Clean Water Act grants can be obtained only if the city applies for it by July 1. After that, the funds would be available only as a loan, and city officials say that would doom the project.

Mayor Maureen O’Connor and the local delegation are scheduled to testify before a congressional appropriations subcommittee next week to ask for the $11 million grant, Lowery said.

“Without a consensus by the delegation, that funding may not be included,” he said.

Lowery said continued unchecked flows of raw effluent from Tijuana--now about 12 million gallons a day--threaten “irreparable damage to the Tijuana estuary if something isn’t done.”

“This issue has been dragging for more than five years, and delay just continues the degradation of the Tijuana estuary and of San Diego beaches,” he said.

The two-pipe system would include a 110-inch pipe to carry Tijuana sewage back across the border and another to handle sewage generated in San Diego. The EPA last year identified the dual-pipe system as a cost-efficient alternative to a single, $35-million, 12-foot-diameter sewage conduit that became known as the “Big Pipe.” That project had Lowery’s backing last year.

O’Connor, another supporter of that plan, is now backing the dual-pipe system “as long as we can get the necessary funding . . . and as long as it has the capacity to handle the flow of sewage” from Mexico as well as San Diego, said mayoral spokesman Paul Downey.

The “Big Pipe” project drew strong criticism from South Bay residents and Bates, who have said it would be used to justify construction of a treatment plant in the South Bay. Bates has been one of the principal backers of the dual-pipe system and has worked closely with the EPA on the project.