Sewage Capacity Puts Poway Homes on Hold

Poway City Council members voted unanimously Tuesday night to impose a year’s moratorium on all residential and public construction projects, citing the lack of sewage capacity.

City Manager James Bowersox said all sewage capacity in these categories has been committed to approved projects or to projects with completed applications.

The moratorium will not affect the city’s South Poway industrial development, where capacity still exists.

Bowersox said that additional capacity is not available from the city of San Diego and the metropolitan sewage system.

No opposition was voiced at Tuesday’s session, the first of two to be held before the moratorium takes effect Nov. 18.

The yearlong moratorium on residential, public and semi-public construction projects could be lifted early if San Diego allots more of its sewage capacity to Poway or Poway reallocates its existing capacity.

Residential projects already approved by the city will not be affected, city officials said, but new residential projects will be put on hold until the city receives more sewage capacity.

Poway imposed a similar building moratorium in March, 1987, but lifted it seven months later when San Diego approved an increase in the city’s capacity from 4 million gallons a day to 5 million gallons.

The additional capacity was rationed according to a system approved by the Poway City Council. City Manager Jim Bowersox said last week that the city would have run out of capacity by Nov. 1 if the moratorium had not been imposed.

Commercial and industrial projects in the city will not be affected by the moratorium because sewage capacity is available for those uses, Assistant City Planner James Lyon said.

Poway is planning to build a waste-water reclamation plant to reduce the waste going into the metropolitan system, allowing resumption of residential building when sewage capacity becomes available.

Stephen Streeter, assistant city planning director, said the plant, to be built near Interstate 15 south of Poway Road, will not be operating for at least four years.

In the meantime, Poway officials plan to seek more capacity from San Diego and to initiate several studies aimed at freeing up permits for residential and public projects, Streeter said.