SEWAGE: Escondido Seeks to Expand Ocean Dumping : Escondido’s Proposal for More Sewage Dumping Stirs Up Coastal Groups

Environmentalists are concerned that Escondido’s plans to dump more treated sewage into the ocean off Cardiff will endanger the San Elijo Lagoon and its endangered bird species.

Oceanographers worry that the cumulative effect of ocean sewage dumping will hurt the offshore kelp beds, home to sea life, and the newly created Encinitas Marine Life Sanctuary along the coastline to the north.

Surfers are sure the project will add pollution to some of the best surfing waters around: the waves off Cardiff State Beach and around Swami’s Point.

Federal and state watchdog agencies see the expansion of the city’s underwater sewage pipeline--or outfall--as growth-inducing, and merchants whose livelihoods depend on North County’s beaches protest the project as just another inland incursion into their beachfront communities’ economic health.

All of these coastal factions, and probably a few others, will head inland today when the Escondido City Council holds a public hearing on its plans to increase sewage flow into the Pacific.

Escondido, which shares the offshore sewage disposal system with the coastal city of Solana Beach and the community of Cardiff, owns 79% of the outfall capacity and has the power to unilaterally expand the system.

Escondido’s plans to expand the outfall, either by installing underwater pipe with more capacity at a cost of about $8 million or by expanding both the pipeline’s size and length for $22 million, was first scheduled for final approval by the council last February.

It was delayed because the new slow-growth Escondido council majority sought a temporary solution to handle increased sewage discharge until growth controls are in place. Then they hoped to implement a major water-reclamation plan that would all but dry up the sewage flow down the 14.2-mile land line and the 1.5-mile ocean outfall.

Escondido Mayor Jerry Harmon, godfather of the ambitious sewage reclamation plan, had hoped to get the plan--selling treated sewage water for agricultural uses and for ground-water recharge--going before there was a need for an increased sewage outfall capacity. But the costs and the complicated bureaucratic permit processes have delayed the start-up.

Harmon is now seeking the support of coastal opponents to increase sewage flows temporarily without spending millions of dollars to upgrade the disposal system, giving the city the time and money to put its water conservation, sewage reclamation and growth-control measures into effect, and, in the long term, reducing the city’s need to dump treated sewage into the ocean.

“It’s a tough thing to judge,” Harmon said recently about his campaign to win over coastal interests. “I guess I will find out if they believe me at the meeting.”

The existing outfall capacity is 21.5 million gallons a day, and Escondido’s earlier pro-growth council members had sought to increase the capacity to 35 million gallons a day. Now Mayor Harmon and his slow-growth council are proposing no improvements in the outfall, but want to expand its capacity to 24.3 million gallons a day by opening an additional 100 underwater release ports on the pipeline.

That action, along with timed sewage releases, should handle the system’s sewage flows until the mid-1990s so the city can get its sewage water reclamation program in gear.

At least one organization, the San Elijo Lagoon Conservancy, has come over to Harmon’s side, with some reservations.

Allen Crutcher, president of the Conservancy, has talked with Harmon and agrees with him that the alternative “is probably the least environmentally damaging plan,” because there would be no offshore construction, an increase in sewage flows smaller than other alternatives and no opportunity to increase future sewage discharges up to 35 million gallons a day, as the other alternatives would allow.

But Crutcher and Conservancy leaders want the pledge in writing that the funds not spent on outfall expansion will go into the water reclamation program. They also want pledges from Escondido that it will not utilize emergency storage to even out sewage flows, because that would leave the San Elijo Lagoon unprotected if a surge occurred while the emergency storage facilities were full.

“There are several species of endangered birds in the lagoon,” Crutcher said, “and there is a question whether this or any plan to increase flows takes into account protecting the area from future spills and pollution.”

Attorney Richard MacManus, a spokesman for People for a Clean Ocean, is less convinced that there is an environmentally safe method of disposing of more sewage water--even highly-treated sewage water--in the ocean.

And, he contends, Escondido planners are using outdated data and questionable techniques. No recent studies were made of the impact of increased sewage flows on the new Encinitas Marine Life Refuge or the San Elijo Lagoon with its endangered light-footed clapper rails, Bolding Savannah sparrows, least terns and California brown pelicans.

Ocean currents can carry sewage effluent into the lagoon, the marine refuge and the other sensitive coastal areas, MacManus said. But, he concedes, Harmon’s plan to dry up the outfall flows by an aggressive water-reclamation program is a step in the right direction.