San Diego

The city of San Diego is offering to speed upgrading of its sewage-treatment plant and prevent future spills into San Diego waterways in an effort to settle a 17-month legal wrangle with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, City Hall sources said Tuesday.

In negotiations now being conducted between the city and the U.S. Justice Department, the city is offering to complete the treatment system sometime during 2004, sources said.

In addition, the city would build another system to prevent spills in lieu of a separate penalty not to exceed $3 million, the sources said.

In return, the EPA would drop its federal court lawsuit, which seeks to force the city to upgrade its sewage-treatment system to so-called “secondary” standards by the end of 1999 and pay fines for sewage spills and other violations dating back to 1983.

In court papers published last month, the city contended that it would take until August, 2007, to overhaul the system.

The EPA and the state sued the city last year for missing a July, 1988, deadline for compliance with the federal Clean Water Act, and spilling untreated sewage into local waterways. The federal law requires that all cities upgrade their sewage-treatment systems to secondary standards, under which 85% to 90% of solids are removed from effluent before it is dumped into the ocean. The city’s existing “advanced primary” treatment system removes 75% to 80% of the solids.

The two sides are scheduled to go to trial Jan. 9.