EPA Talks Tough to City on Sewage

Scientists and administrators for the Environmental Protection Agency, offering their first public response to growing criticism of a multibillion-dollar sewage treatment project required by the federal government, said Tuesday that the city has no legal or technical grounds to avoid compliance with the Clean Water Act.

Citing high levels of bacteria in the kelp forest off Point Loma, where sewage is discharged, and changes in the number of bottom-dwelling organisms sensitive to pollution, EPA officials encouraged the city to adopt tougher federal sewage-treatment standards.

They contended that winning an exemption now would be even more difficult than it was when the city withdrew its application for a waiver 2 1/2 years ago because Mayor Maureen O’Connor advised the council to comply with the law.

“There is no legal opportunity for pursuing a waiver right now, and the only way you could get that is (through) congressional action,” Harry Seraydarian, director of the EPA’s West Coast Water Management Division, told a special meeting of the city’s Metropolitan Sewer Task Force.

He said the city would meet “tremendous resistance” from Congress if it tried to win an exemption now.

But Scripps Institution of Oceanography scientists, who have added to criticism of the project by saying the city’s current treatment system does no harm to the ocean, dismissed virtually all of the EPA’s scientific claims as specious.

“I have no evidence that coliforms (bacteria) on the outside of the kelp forest are causing any health problems,” even to researchers who dive there hundreds of times each year, said Mia Tegner, a Scripps marine biologist who studies the region.

Other scientists said EPA fears about viruses and toxic metals in sewage are unfounded.

“We don’t have any evidence of any kind that secondary treatment will do us any good,” said Roger Revelle, Scripps’ director emeritus. “We don’t get rid of the bacteria. We don’t get rid of the viruses. We don’t get rid of the toxic metals, if there are any toxic metals.”

The high-stakes debate was staged at the request of the task force, which is trying to decide whether to advise the council to seek federal exemption from the requirement for secondary treatment at the Point Loma plant, which dumps 195 million gallons of sewage into the ocean each day.

Secondary treatment would remove 85% to 90% of suspended solids from the effluent, which is piped into the ocean more than 2 miles off Point Loma. The system’s existing “advanced primary” treatment removes about 75% of suspended solids.

Keeping the plant at its current advanced primary treatment level could slice $700 million to $1 billion off the estimated $2.6-billion to $2.86-billion cost of the project now envisioned by city engineers. It also would prevent a huge increase in the amount of sewage sludge produced at the plant, a thick substance that would have to be hauled away and dumped elsewhere.

The meeting marked the first time in its more than two-year history that the Metro Sewer Task Force has even entertained the possibility of taking a position against a system-wide upgrading to full secondary treatment.

Formed in April, 1987, to advise the council, the 18-member task force was given the assignment of recommending how the city could best achieve secondary treatment as required by the federal Clean Water Act.

Confusion at Core

But stepped-up pressure from Councilmen Bruce Henderson and Bob Filner and increasing clamor in recent months from the Scripps scientists led to Tuesday’s scientific debate.

With doubt over the necessity of secondary treatment repeatedly surfacing at task force meetings, E. Miles Harvey, chairman of the task force, asked O’Connor on Aug. 2 for the authority to consider the question. The council voted that authority, and Harvey and O’Connor then set up Tuesday’s debate.

“It’s simply an attempt to find out what this ‘scientific’ evidence is on both sides of the aisle, from the Scripps scientists and the EPA,” Harvey said before Tuesday’s meeting. “This is causing too much confusion. We need to solve this confusion.”

The task force has no authority over city policy; only the council can decide whether to seek an exemption from Clean Water Act standards requiring an upgrading to secondary treatment.

Harvey said the task force will discuss the testimony at a meeting Tuesday.

At the same time, however, city officials and their hired consultants continue to plan the upgrading of the system, which will include technology to reclaim as much as 120 million gallons of water each day for use in irrigation. Even Henderson does not argue that the city must build secondary-treatment plants in the North City and South Bay as a step toward cleansing sewage before water can be reclaimed and sprayed on golf courses, crops and highway median ice plant.

$2.6 Billion to $2.86 Billion

Last month, engineers designing the massive sewage-treatment upgrading released a basic outline of their recommended plan calling for new plants near the Golden Triangle and in the Tijuana River Valley, along with four satellite water-reclamation plants. The possible configurations for the plan carry price tags ranging from $2.6 billion to $2.86 billion.

But three days later, the council refused to approve a $6.35 monthly increase in sewer bills requested by the planners, slicing out money that would have been devoted to planning the secondary-treatment upgrading while it awaited more information on the subject. The $3.59 increase approved by the council raised the average homeowner’s sewer bill to $17.11 from $13.52 monthly, effective immediately.

Meanwhile, attorneys from the city and the U.S. Department of Justice continue to negotiate a settlement of the EPA’s 1988 lawsuit against the city for failure to comply with the Clean Water Act and repeatedly spilling raw sewage into San Diego waterways.

With a Dec. 5 court date approaching, the attorneys are attempting to reach a compromise on a timetable for construction of the treatment facilities, their configuration and how to pay for the upgrading.

The city wants to put off construction until the first decade of the next century, but the EPA is pressing for construction in the late 1990s, sources have said.