Council Votes to Mark Time on Sewage Contract : Government: Decision paves way for review of proposed $2.4-billion water treatment and reclamation project.

Questioning both the cost and size of the city’s multibillion-dollar sewage treatment program, the San Diego City Council on Monday approved a one-month delay for a $36-million consulting agreement, the project’s largest contract to date.

By a 7-1 vote, the council decided to spend only about $1 million on planning the project pending an independent commission’s 30-day review of its cost effectiveness, scope and environmental sensitivity.

With some council members questioning the accuracy of the water treatment and reclamation project’s estimated capital cost--$2.4 billion in 1990 dollars--and others wondering aloud whether it should be scaled down in light of new potential water sources, Monday’s vote could initiate a comprehensive re-evaluation of the largest public works project in San Diego’s history.

“I think we should pause before going ahead,” City Councilman Ron Roberts said of the proposed $36-million contract to Sverdrup Corp. “What made sense two years ago does not necessarily make sense today.”

Instead, the council approved a $950,000 contract with Sverdrup for consulting services relating to a proposed 12,000-foot extension of the pipeline now used to pump treated sewage into the ocean about 2 1/2 miles off Point Loma. Even if San Diego’s overall secondary sewage treatment plan were eventually scaled back, city officials stressed, the pipeline extension still would be built.

The council also allocated $125,000 for a consulting contract, yet to be awarded, for an engineering feasibility study of the sewage program.

During Monday’s debate, Roberts and other council members questioned whether the ambitious program--under which the city would upgrade its Point Loma treatment plant, construct seven water-reclamation plants and a South Bay treatment facility, and replace aging sewer pipes--is based on outdated assumptions.

Possible new state water regulations spawned by the drought could make water now available only to agricultural users available to cities, Roberts noted. As a result, previous estimates about the price competitiveness of reclaimed water and the amounts likely to be used may have to be reassessed, he added.

Moreover, alternative chemical technology now being tested at the Point Loma plant could preclude the need to upgrade that facility in order to comply with the federal Clean Water Act. Positive results from those tests, city officials hope, could strengthen San Diego’s application for a waiver from the federal water standards.

“We’re getting committed to a plan that’s cast in concrete . . . and doesn’t allow for flexibility,” Roberts said. “It may be that we won’t need to do some of the things now being planned, at least not on the scale they’re being planned.”

Any major change in the city’s sewage treatment program, however, would require the approval of U.S. District Judge Rudi Brewster, who oversees a consent decree between the federal government and San Diego in which the city committed itself to so-called secondary treatment of its sewage. The effluent now sent out to sea has undergone “advanced primary” treatment, which removes about 80% of the suspended solids.

In June, Brewster deferred approval of the plan for 18 months to give the city time to aggressively pursue water conservation, reclamation and treatment programs that could substantially reduce the project’s price tag. The 30-day independent review by a panel of volunteers could arm the city with the data it needs to persuade Brewster and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that the entire program should be reassessed, several council members said.

Monday’s action also reflected the council’s diminished confidence in the project’s cost estimates, which range from $2.4 billion to as high as $10 billion, depending on whose figures are used and how they are calculated.

The $2.4-billion figure represents the capital costs as measured in 1990 dollars, but the price tag rises to $4.1 billion when inflation is added. Even the higher figure, however, does not include financing costs and the expense of several major components of the overall plan, prompting City Councilman Bruce Henderson and others to predict that the final cost could approach $10 billion.

“I don’t believe any of these figures we’re getting,” said Councilman Bob Filner, who cast the lone vote in opposition to Monday’s $1-million action. “I think we’re going in the wrong direction. We’re building our whole system, a very expensive system, around a wrong set of assumptions. . . . I think we should tell the judge that we messed up.”

The proposed multibillion-dollar sewage treatment plan has been embroiled in controversy virtually from its inception. Although the federal EPA officials argue that the secondary treatment program is needed to bring the city into compliance with clean water standards, San Diego political and scientific leaders contend that the city’s discharge of treated sewage into the ocean poses no significant environmental risks.

On that question, however, Brewster sided with the federal authorities, fining the city $3 million last March for “causing significant harm to the marine environment” through inadequate waste-water treatment. In his later June ruling, though, Brewster pointed to shortcomings in the “extremely expensive” consent decree’s attempt to correct that deficiency, prompting his 18-month delay in imposing it.

In a related action Monday, the council took the first step toward relocating sludge beds on Fiesta Island to a site near the Miramar Naval Air Station.

The California Coastal Commission has ordered the city to relocate the sludge beds from Fiesta Island, where 115 tons of sludge produced by the Point Loma sewage treatment plant daily are dried, by July, 1994.

The decision to review Miramar as an alternative came on a 7-1 vote, with Councilman Tom Behr in opposition and Mayor Maureen O’Connor absent.