Councilman Says EPA Misled City on Sewage

Saying that federal officials “rushed us to judgment” on a proposed sewage-treatment plan, San Diego City Councilman Bruce Henderson charged Thursday that the city was misled into thinking it had six months fewer than it actually did to oppose the $2.8-billion project.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s improperly abbreviated timetable, Henderson argued, should “substantially strengthen our hand” at a court hearing next month where San Diego will seek to regain a waiver from federal clean water standards at the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant.

“I don’t know whether it was malicious, but the EPA misled us, and that had a dramatic impact on the city’s decision,” Henderson said, referring to the council’s 1987 vote to abandon its request for a waiver extension.

“We were made to feel that we were up against a very tight deadline, that we really had no realistic alternatives,” Henderson told a City Hall news conference. “Clearly, that was not the case. They have a duty at the very least to go back and give us six more months.”

Regional EPA officials in San Francisco declined to comment on Henderson’s charges, outlined in legal briefs filed Thursday in U.S. District Court.

According to attorney David Mulliken, who represents Henderson in his effort to intervene in a federal lawsuit concerning the sewage project, EPA regulations give local governments up to one year to appeal the agency’s tentative denial of a waiver request.

Instead, when the EPA tentatively turned down San Diego’s request for an extension of its existing waiver in September, 1986, the city was told it had only six months to try to change the agency’s decision, Mulliken said in the court documents.

When Mayor Maureen O’Connor met with top EPA officials at the time, they painted a bleak picture of the city’s prospects of succeeding in that effort.

“We were led to believe that we were never going to get the waiver, but if we played along with (the EPA), there was a chance to get some federal money” to help upgrade the Point Loma plant, Henderson said. As a result, the council withdrew its waiver request in February, 1987.

The city agreed with the EPA to improve its overall sewage-treatment program, setting the stage for the largest and most expensive public works project in San Diego history. In addition to upgrading the Point Loma plant, the project includes construction of a new South Bay facility and six water reclamation plants.

However, growing scientific doubt about the necessity of secondary treatment, combined with the politically unpalatable prospect of dramatically higher sewage bills to pay for it, have continued to give the council pause over the Point Loma project.

Culminating years of controversy, the council voted in closed session this week to try to reactivate the waiver it abandoned 3 1/2 years ago. While seeking the Point Loma exemption, the city intends to proceed with the other components of the overall program.

In Thursday’s court documents, Henderson’s attorneys ask U.S. District Judge RudiBrewster to suspend the consent decree between the city and the EPA at the Nov. 1 hearing and to order an evidentiary hearing on the need--or lack thereof--for secondary treatment.

Concerned that the cost of preparing for such a hearing might cause the council to reconsider this week’s decision, Henderson’s briefs also ask Brewster to order the city, if necessary, to pursue the waiver reactivation request.

Before having an opportunity to offer his arguments in court, Henderson first must persuade Brewster at next month’s hearing to allow him to become a party in the lawsuit, which was filed against the city in 1988 by the U.S. Justice Department on behalf of the EPA.

In the suit, the federal government accuses San Diego of violating the Clean Water Act’s requirement that municipalities provide so-called secondary treatment to remove about 90% of suspended solids from sewage. The city’s advanced primary treatment process now removes about 80% of the solids from waste water before it is discharged into the ocean off Point Loma.