Petition Asks Less Costly S.D. Sewage Treatment

Three San Diego City Council members sent a letter Friday to the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency asking him to allow the city to use new and less costly methods of treating sewage while still meeting stringent federal standards.

On another front, the Sierra Club on Friday said it will ask the judge overseeing a federal lawsuit seeking to require San Diego to upgrade to secondary sewage treatment to reject a consent decree, and instead hold a hearing on alternative ways to meet secondary treatment standards.

Both the Sierra Club and the three council members--Bob Filner, John Hartley and Linda Bernhardt--say the city can have secondary treatment as required by the Clean Water Act without spending billions of dollars.

After years of legal fighting, the city and the EPA agreed in January to a consent decree requiring San Diego to build six water reclamation plants and two secondary sewage treatment plants at a cost of nearly $3 billion.

But the federal judge in the case, Rudi Brewster, who must approve the consent decree, has called for a Nov. 1 hearing to determine if he has the authority to review whether the city must proceed with the project. The EPA says he does not and that the jurisdiction belongs to Congress.

Several scientists have said that San Diego’s current method of primary treatment--the city treats about 190 million gallons a day at its Point Loma plant--is not harmful to the ocean. The scientists, including those who work at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, say upgrading to secondary treatment would provide only marginal environmental improvement at a cost they say is wasteful.

“We think there is an alternative that is less costly and more environmentally sensitive,” said Bill Benjamin, a Sierra Club lawyer. He likened the proposed new system to a “Rolls-Royce.”

“It’s much too expensive and there’s ways to meet environmental concerns,” Benjamin said, noting that the city could save millions of dollars and not have to build a South Bay treatment plant by, among other things, embarking on a massive retrofitting program of area homes that would dramatically cut down on effluent coming into the sewer system.

Benjamin said the Sierra Club, which pushed the city to agree to secondary treatment, still believes the upgraded system is necessary to comply with the Clean Water Act but that different and less expensive methods exist to meet the act’s standards.

Similarly, the three council members in their letter to William K. Reilly said: “We want to make it clear: We endorse the goals and standards of the Clean Water Act. We simply want the flexibility to meet your environmental standards by other technologies.”

Filner said in an interview that Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego) told the three council members that the EPA administrator has the authority to decide which methods can be used to meet the secondary treatment standard.

Because of new technology in sewage treatment, reclamation and retrofitting, the city can comply with the federal law and save $1 billion, Filner contends.

The letter specifically asks the EPA administrator to withdraw from the consent decree.