Bush Budget Includes $103 Million for Border Sewage Treatment Plant : Environment: $40 million more is allotted for city’s sewage system upgrading, regardless of court action.

Hopes for ending years of Mexican sewage flows into San Diego County received a major boost Monday when President Bush included $103 million for a border-area sewage treatment plant in his 1991-92 budget.

The money, when added to $52 million already approved by Congress during the past three years, means that final design and some construction can go forward on the $200-million project, with completion by late 1994 or early 1995, Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego) said Monday.

“This is strong news for San Diego,” Lowery said of the federally planned plant, which would be jointly operated by Mexico and the United States under the aegis of the International Boundary and Water Commission, a binational organization that worked out final plans in mid-July of last year.

Lowery said “the major battle” for federal funds is inclusion in the President’s budget, Congressional approval is now likely.

Lowery also announced that the Bush budget targets the city of San Diego for $40 million to help in the controversial upgrading of its own outdated sewage system. The final makeup of that upgrading, which could cost up to $2.4 billion, is the subject of continuing legal battles, including a U.S. District Court hearing today, over whether the city needs to improve treatment of sewage now piped into the Pacific Ocean.

The President’s budget, in proposing funds for the binational plant, said, “The facility will treat raw sewage discharges from Tijuana into the Tijuana River. These discharges have severely affected the (National Estuarine Sanctuary and Tijuana Slough) National Wildlife Refuge and have caused the closing of beaches around San Diego for the past several years.”

Lowery said the $103 million includes $100 million for the Environmental Protection Agency for plant design and construction, and $3 million for the Department of State for pipelines connecting the plant to Mexican sewage piping.

The plant would handle 25 million gallons per day of sewage, more than enough to cover the 10 million to 12 million gallons of effluent that flow daily north across the border via the Tijuana River and the many gullies and arroyos because of higher elevations and a lack of adequate pipelines on the Mexican side.

Lowery said that the President’s inclusion was particularly noteworthy because both the EPA and the White House Office of Management and Budget had fought regional efforts in the past for the project.

Jean Gingras, a legislative aide to Lowery, said Monday that the International Boundary and Water Commission has already signed a contract for part of the pipe that would take treated secondary sewage from the plant--in which 90% of suspended sewage solids are removed--toward an outfall off Imperial Beach.

“That construction should start in late April or May,” she said. Gingras said bid requests have also been solicited for design of the plant and for the piping into the ocean. “They should be able to start construction by the time the new money would be available” after October, the beginning of the federal fiscal year.

Lowery said the Mexican government has committed about $40 million toward the project and that the remaining $20 million or so needed will probably be included in the federal budget next year.

The $40 million for the city of San Diego will be available for any type of upgrading of the existing system, no matter what the outcome of the city’s legal maneuverings is, Lowery said.

The money is part of $300 million in grants that Bush proposes for five coastal cities--Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and San Diego--which have the greatest needs for improving their sewage treatment processes.

“After years of delays, the federal government has recognized its responsibilities to cities like San Diego . . . which were ordered to comply with secondary treatment standards after the federal cupboard was bare,” Lowery said.

Until 1986, San Diego had a waiver from the EPA for required secondary treatment, but in 1987 the city withdrew its application for renewal after the EPA said it would reject further requests. Three state and federal agencies sued the city in July, 1988, for missing the deadline to upgrade its sewage treatment capacity to so-called “secondary” standards.

After 18 months of legal wrangling, the City Council, on Jan. 22, 1990, approved an out-of-court settlement with the EPA, the U.S. Justice Department, and the Regional Water Quality Control Board, promising to complete the $2.4-billion upgrading of its system, including reclamation plants throughout the city and a $500-million improvement of the Point Loma treatment plant to secondary levels, by Dec. 31, 2003.

Secondary treatment is about 10% more effective in cleansing sewage than the “advanced primary” treatment process now used at Point Loma. The federal Clean Water Act required all cities to upgrade their treatment facilities by July 1, 1988, but by the time San Diego agreed to the settlement, known as a consent decree, available funds had been exhausted.

But last November, after hearing from prominent marine scientists, U.S. District Court Judge Rudi Brewster ordered today’s hearing on whether the Point Loma upgrading is necessary.

For years, prominent scientists from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have claimed that the sewage that emerges from a huge pipe about 2 miles off Point Loma does not harm the ocean. Councilman Bruce Henderson has used their research in leading opposition to the mammoth sewage-treatment project on that basis.

The hearing is expected to last three weeks. Eliminating the Point Loma upgrading could save the city $500 million.

The settlement committed the city to a timetable for construction of the largest public works project in its history, including water reclamation plants that would cleanse as much as 45 million gallons of sewage daily and make it available for use in irrigation. Brewster ordered the city to continue working toward those milestones, with the exception of work at Point Loma.

For example, the city faces a Feb. 15 deadline for review and approval of environmental impact reports on the water reclamation plants, but Monday the council postponed discussion of them for one week in order to seek clarifications from Brewster.

Today’s hearing also concerns the federal and state agencies’ attempt to fine the city for more than 1,000 sewage spills between 1983 and 1988.