Ocean Unhurt by Waste Flow, Report Claims : Environment: Scripps study reports that water near Point Loma sewage outfall is just as clear as it was 15 years ago.

The quality of ocean water near the Point Loma sewage outfall is no different today than it was 15 years ago, despite a nearly 70% increase in sewage discharge, two biologists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography reported Tuesday.

The study, which is the first long-term analysis of ocean water quality near the sewage discharge, examines water clarity--not bacteria--levels over the past 15 years. Touting this report, the biologists say there is no need for the controversial federally mandated upgrading of sewage treatment, a proposed multibillion-dollar plant that has caused 13 years of legal wrangling.

“Any reasonable, rational person who looked at this data would say, ‘My God, why spend a billion dollars?’ ” on improving the plant, said John McGowan, a Scripps professor who worked with graduate student Alessandra Conversi examining data collected monthly from seven locations near the outfall from 1972 to 1987.

For the research, the two biologists used water clarity measurements taken with a sampling device called a Secchi disk, a white disk one foot in diameter that is lowered from a boat by wire. The method gauges the transparency of the water by measuring the depth at which the disk disappears from sight, McGowan said.

The two biologists found that the water off San Diego is clearer in the winter than in the spring, a naturally occurring result of springtime growth of plankton. But they did not find any dramatic changes in water clarity, even after July, 1985, when the Point Loma facility significantly upgraded its treatment.

The biologists’ findings drew mixed reactions.

Dan Avera, assistant deputy director for the county’s environmental health department, questioned whether the clarity measurements were appropriate, saying that harmful bacteria might not be detected in such readings.

“We have had sewage spills, but the clarity may not be impacted. The clarity of the water was fine, but the bacteria conditions did not meet bathing standards,” Avera said. “There’s more involved with the need for sewage upgrade than just clarity.”

But San Diego Councilman Bruce Henderson hailed the results.

“We are not doing anything that hurts the ocean--scientists have been saying that for years,” Henderson said. “There are a hundred reasons not to do this (upgrading), and there are none to do it.”

Former Scripps administrator Jeff Frautschy said: “The findings are not surprising. . . . People familiar with the ocean have an entirely different perspective--the amounts of (treated sewage) sound tremendous, but, from the standpoint of the ocean, it’s a pretty trivial amount.”

The findings add another twist to a longstanding battle between San Diego and federal and state watchdog agencies.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state of California have sued San Diego for what they described as thousands of violations of the 1972 Clean Water Act and the California Ocean Plan.

Last year, San Diego signed an agreement that requires the city to build a secondary sewage treatment facility to handle the 190 million gallons of sewage produced by 1.7 million residents of San Diego and its suburbs.

But in July, a federal judge deferred approval of the upgrading until 1993--giving the city more time to show that some of the expensive components are unnecessary.

Lois Grunwald, an EPA spokeswoman, declined to comment on the new finding, saying it would not affect the mandated upgrading.

“The City of San Diego is required to do it. . . . It’s required by federal law,” Grunwald said.

McGowan’s research, which took two years, was funded by the California Sea Grant College, a state organization that uses federal money to fund California marine research. Although the federal government mandates the collection of data on a monthly basis from the vicinity of sewage outfalls, the data had not been analyzed before, McGowan said.

Though declining to comment on the study, Barbara Bamberger, conservation coordinator for the Sierra Club, said: “The EPA has proven there has been some damage. I don’t want to spend ridiculous amounts of money, but I also don’t want to gamble with our ocean.”