Sierra Club Asks Judge to Block Sewage Plan : Environment: Calling expansion of plant a waste, group wants the city to return to the drawing board for a better system.

A Sierra Club attorney Wednesday asked a federal judge to throw out plans for a $2.6-billion upgrading of San Diego’s sewage treatment system, arguing that the huge project is “not so much a waste water plant but a plant that wastes water.”

Robert Simmons, a University of San Diego law professor representing the Sierra Club, urged U.S. District Court Judge Rudi Brewster to block a proposed legal settlement between the city and the federal government and order mandatory water conservation measures to reduce sewage flows by 30 million gallons daily within eight years.

Simmons asserted in legal papers filed for Wednesday’s hearing that Brewster could accomplish the same goal by “imposing a sewer hookup moratorium” that would effectively freeze city growth.

“Send us back to the drawing board,” Simmons asked Brewster. “We can design a better (system).”

The arguments came on the opening day of what is expected to be a four-day hearing of the Sierra Club’s challenge to an out-of-court settlement among four government agencies. The proposed settlement calls for the city to complete the largest public works project in its history by Dec. 31, 2003, in order to comply with federal Clean Water Act sewage treatment provisions.

The upgrading to so-called “secondary” standards would improve the city’s sewage treatment by 10% over the existing “advanced primary” system before the waste is dumped into the ocean. Under plans designed by the city and its consultant, as much as 135 million gallons of sewage daily would eventually be “reclaimed” for reuse in irrigation by further cleansing.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Justice Department and the Regional Water Quality Control Board sued the city in July, 1988, to force construction of the project and demand payment of fines for city sewage spills from 1983 to 1988. The fines have been set aside for future negotiations or a separate trial.

At issue in the hearing is whether the Sierra Club can persuade Brewster to bind the City Council to mandatory water conservation measures that include replacement of every toilet in the Metropolitan Sewerage System with ultra-low volume 1.6-gallon toilets. The district includes 1.7 million people in San Diego and 15 other cities and sewer districts.

By ordering the toilet conversions and other plumbing changes, the system’s current 190 million-gallon daily sewage flow can be reduced to 160 million gallons, even as the city grows over the next 13 years, the Sierra Club claims. The proposed sewage system could be substantially smaller, according to the environmental organization, saving city taxpayers $200 million to $1 billion off the $2.6-billion to $2.8-billion estimated price tag.

The City Council, which Tuesday took its first look at planning for a less ambitious, 12-point water conservation plan being developed by city staffers, opposes inclusion of water conservation measures in the legal settlement, preferring to develop the conservation measures separately.

The city and the three other government agencies--longtime adversaries--are now allied against the Sierra Club and co-intervenor Emily Durbin as a result of their agreement last month to settle their differences.

In legal papers and oral arguments Wednesday, city and Justice Department attorneys said nothing in the Clean Water Act requires inclusion of water conservation measures in a legal settlement that covers treatment of waste. In addition, they argued, the Sierra Club’s estimates of conservation benefits are an unproven, risky foundation on which to base design of an expensive sewage treatment system that will serve the city until 2050.

Justice Department attorney Gerald George also asserted that Brewster lacks the authority to add the provisions to the legal settlement.

“It is difficult to argue that what the Sierra Club is asking for is required by law when, 20 years after the Clean Water Act was passed, they can point to no case where it was ordered,” George said.

James Dragna, a private attorney representing the city, said after the hearing that the Sierra Club demands--and the sewer hookup moratorium in particular--are a covert attempt to use design of the sewage treatment system to slow or stop growth.

“The Sierra Club attempts to litigate this radical anti-growth program by cloaking it in the guise of objections” to provisions of the legal settlement, Dragna’s legal papers said.

Simmons also objected to elements of the settlement that would allow the city to gradually raise a 210 million-gallon daily cap on sewage treated at the city’s Point Loma plant as the plant’s capacity is expanded.

He also wants Brewster to reject the plan’s water reclamation provisions because the city would be required to reuse only 50% of the 89 million gallons that would be reclaimed each day by 2010.