Sewage Continues to Gush From Pipe Off San Diego

A “catastrophic” sewage spill, spewing forth 170 million gallons of effluent every 24 hours, continued to gush into the ocean Tuesday.

Repair teams worked round the clock to patch a ruptured pipe, and officials monitored what they called a growing health hazard.

The spill of treated sewage, detected by the Coast Guard on Sunday night and confirmed Monday afternoon, was described as much worse than anyone first believed.

“Experts are calling it a catastrophic failure,” said Ruth Covill, a county health official who oversees Proposition 65, which mandates that the public be alerted about the presence of toxins in local waters.

Covill said divers, surfers or swimmers coming into contact with the coliform bacteria in such treated sewage--from which 75% to 80% of solids have been removed--run the risk of contracting a variety of water-borne diseases, from gastrointestinal disorders to dysentery, hepatitis and typhoid.

“This water is not bacteria- and virus-free,” Covill said. “It is contaminated and poses a health risk for some time to come.”

County officials were deciding late Tuesday whether to broaden a quarantine area that extended 4 1/2 miles up the coast. Experts said the spill could take weeks--possibly longer--to repair. No one was willing to talk about cost.

“This is a very serious situation,” said Paul Downey, a spokesman for San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor. “We’re watching it very intently. We need to find out exactly how and why this happened, to make sure such a spill never happens again, especially one of such magnitude.”

The spill itself is 3,150 feet offshore from Point Loma, on the seaward side of the small peninsula.

Treated sewage normally flows from the Point Loma treatment plant facility through a 108-inch pipeline, made up of 25-foot, 30-ton sections of reinforced concrete. The sewage is deposited 2.2 miles out to sea at a depth of 220 feet.

Roger Frauenfelder, a deputy city manager, said the rupture occurred when at least two of the sections shifted out of alignment. He said no one knows the cause of the rupture or how long repairs will take.

San Diego City Manager Jack McGrory said the “best guess” was that the settling of the ocean floor, coupled with “the tremendous force of effluent moving through the pipe, blew out additional sections.”

McGrory said at least 19 sections of the pipe incurred damage. He said teams of engineers were dispatched to the area Tuesday, but repairing the pipe is made more difficult by its size and the fact that it is under water.