San Diego Was Warned About Sewage Pipe

Engineers had warned city officials two years ago that a sewage outfall pipe was corroded and could cause the kind of massive spill of partly treated sewage that continued to gush into the ocean Thursday.

In other developments:

* The multiple rupture of the huge pipeline kept spewing as much as 180 million gallons a day into the water less than a mile from shore, but repair work had to be put off until today at the earliest as a winter storm pounded the coastline and more storms are expected.

* Gov. Pete Wilson declared a state of emergency, qualifying the city for state aid in helping to pay for an estimated $10 million in repairs.

* Tests showed fecal coliform bacteria counts at least three times higher than the legal limit, and the figure was expected to rise. Much of the city’s coastline remains under quarantine because of health risks.

* San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor pleaded with residents to follow a 10-point conservation plan that includes limiting showers to three minutes, limited flushing of toilets and use of washing machines, recycling bath and sink water and not using garbage disposals.

Questions about the condition of the nine-foot-diameter pipeline, built in 1963, were raised Thursday by Ladin Delaney, who was executive officer of the Regional Water Quality Control Board in early 1990. He said the engineering report he asked the city to make revealed serious corrosion.

City officials disputed claims that corrosion triggered the spill. They say it was caused by settling of the ocean floor combined with strong ocean currents during recent low tides.

The reinforced concrete pipe, each section of which is 25 feet long and weighs 30 tons, came apart in 19 sections, sending almost all of San Diego County’s partially treated sewage pouring into the ocean 3,150 feet from shore.

The pipe may be severed in at least three more sections, officials said Thursday, and putting it back together may take much longer than the six to eight weeks first predicted.

A Boise, Idaho, company joined forces with a Long Beach firm Thursday to send out a barge into the spill area. But a series of storms may delay the repair work until Saturday or Sunday.

Deputy City Manager Roger Frauenfelder said initial results from more than a dozen sampling stations along 4 1/2 miles of quarantined coastline and throughout San Diego Bay revealed heavy contamination from the tip of the Point Loma Peninsula to the site of the spill about half a mile north. Results there showed fecal coliform bacteria counts three times higher than the legal limit.

By late Thursday, Gary Stephany of the county’s Department of Health Services said readings two miles north from the tip of Point Loma showed as much as 16 times the legal limit. He said he expects even higher readings today.

Mike Devine, chief of the county’s environmental health services, said sewage is flowing south on the surface of the water but at greater depths north. Although test results of bacteria north of Point Loma and in San Diego Bay have been negligible, he warned against eating shellfish, lobsters or sea urchins harvested near the area.

“There’s a tremendous potential for great damage to the near-shore environment,” said John Grant, an environmental specialist with the state Department of Fish and Game’s Office of Oil Spill Prevention and Response, which is monitoring the spill.

City officials continued to blame the massive rupture on “natural, external” forces, such as the settling of the ocean floor, combined with gradual wear from low tides and turbulent seas.

But reacting to the 1990 engineering report about corrosion, Susan Golding, chairwoman of the county Board of Supervisors and a San Diego mayoral candidate, blasted city officials. She said they knew about the deteriorating pipe and did nothing about it.

“I don’t think any of us want to be known as a county where you surf on sewage,” Golding said at a news conference. “The city’s own consultant told them that this pipe had major problems and could rupture.”

City officials defended the condition of the pipe, which Frauenfelder said had performed “flawlessly” in 28 years of operation. He conceded that engineering reports had sounded warnings as far back as February, 1990, but said corrosion had “nothing to do” with the dislodging of pipe sections.

In Sacramento, Assemblyman Tom Hayden (D-Santa Monica) laid part of the blame on Wilson. Hayden said Wilson led the fight as San Diego mayor to get a waiver from the federal Clean Water Act, allowing San Diego to dump its partially treated sewage far out into the ocean, rather than build a costly secondary sewage treatment plant as required under the environmental law.

“I don’t single out Gov. Wilson, but he deserves some special focus in the sense that he led this fight and is directly responsible for wrecking the beaches in San Diego,” Hayden said.

Times staff writers Jonathan Gaw, Ralph Frammolino, Greg Johnson and Marla Cone contributed to this report.