Poway Study Indicates Overcharge for Sewage

A Poway report claims that a state-of-the-art sewage flow meter has made discoveries that could mean both a cash windfall for the city and accommodations for more development.

The meter, installed in March, has found that the San Diego Metropolitan Sewage System has overcharged Poway for dumping its sewage to the tune of $520,335 over the last three years.

The Metro Sewage System has been billing the inland city for 4.4 million gallons of sewage a day, but, after eight months of data collection and analysis with the new meter, Poway discovered it has only been emitting 3.6-million gallons, said Mark Weston, Poway’s director of engineering services.

Officials at the Metro Sewage System, however, said there have been problems with the Poway sewage gauge, and the new figures will have to be looked at carefully before any rebates are handed out.

Poway’s current contract allows for a maximum of 5-million gallons of sewage a day.

The report’s findings allow Poway to approve more development in the area, which previously had been blocked by the lack of sewage space, Weston said.

“One of the impacts from our analysis is that we can add a few more sewer connections to our system under our current contract,” Weston said.

Before the report was issued, the city was down to just 72 unallocated sewage hookups reserved for commercial properties and had a hookup waiting list of 30 single-family homes and 75 subdivisions earmarked for single-family homes or apartment complexes. After the report was issued, the City Council approved 988 new sewage hookups.

“We think this will buy us another two years of continued development,” Weston said. “One of our permanent solutions is that the city has planned to build a water reclamation plant.”

But that plant, which would be on the west side of Poway, is not expected to be completed for at least four years, Weston said.

Although Poway already has acted on the findings of the report, it is uncertain whether San Diego Metropolitan Sewage will make similar findings.

“There’s been issues of accuracy of flow measurements before, and sewage flow measurement devices are not terribly accurate gadgets to begin with,” said Dennis Kahlie, supervisor for contracts and revenue at Metro Sewage.

“There have been some problems associated with the Poway meter, with it being properly calibrated,” Kahlie said.

Even if the Poway figure of 3.4-million gallons a day is correct, Kahlie said, it would still have to be determined whether the city has been using less or more than that over the last three years before a rebate amount could be agreed upon.