Council OKs Extension of Sewage Outfall Pipe : City Hall: San Diego hopes the $54.8-million project, which would deposit effluent 4.5 miles at sea, will help it comply with mandated clean-water guidelines.

The San Diego City Council gave unanimous approval Monday to extending the city’s sewage outfall pipe in another attempt to comply with environmental guidelines imposed by state and federal governments.

On an 8-0 vote, with Councilman Bob Filner absent, the council agreed to extend the 9-foot-diameter pipe from 2.2 miles to about 4.5 miles. The $54.8-million project would place the pipe at a depth of 320 feet.

The pipe, which now deposits effluent at a depth of 220 feet, ruptured earlier this year, dumping as much as 180 million gallons a day of partly treated waste only 3,150 feet offshore, at a depth of 35 feet.

The rupture, detected Feb. 2, was repaired April 4 at a cost of $16 million. The pipe was built in 1963 and had not ruptured in 29 years.

“It’s a milestone construction contract,” Dave Schlesinger, head of the city’s Clean Water Program, said of the extension project.

Schlesinger said the council has yet to consider a plan to construct a pipe parallel to the extended pipe. The parallel pipe would be used as a backup in case of another rupture.

Deputy City Manager Roger Frauenfelder said the council’s vote “puts us into compliance with the California State Ocean Plan, which calls for a cleanliness standard in the kelp beds, as though the kelp beds were beaches.”

“That means that the outer edge of the kelp beds, which is only about a mile from the existing outfall, will be 3 miles (away), and the kelp-bed standard, in terms of fecal coliform bacteria, will now be the same as (for) beaches.”

The council recently gave conceptual approval to $1.3 billion in improvements to the city’s sewer system, including the outfall extension and a thorough upgrading of the city’s municipal collection system.

The council has balked at various mandates of a consent decree that serves as the primary component of a massive lawsuit against the city in federal court. A key issue has been secondary treatment of sewage.

Secondary treatment, which removes 90% of the suspended solids in the effluent, is required under the federal Clean Water Act, which the lawsuit seeks to enforce.

The E.W. Blom Wastewater Treatment Plant, which serves 1.7 million of the county’s residents, uses the advanced primary method, which is roughly 15% less effective than secondary treatment.

As part of its recently approved package of sewer improvements, which will mean a 6% annual increase to ratepayers through 1997, the council agreed to ask U.S. District Judge Rudi M. Brewster for permission to pursue a “modified secondary” program.

The next hearing in federal court is July 10, but City Manager Jack McGrory said Monday that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has already responded negatively to the city’s sewer-improvement package, adopted last week.

McGrory said the EPA informed the city by letter that it may be in jeopardy of losing as much as $40 million in federal funds by not following through with more comprehensive improvements to the sewer system.

McGrory said the city is seeking an “interim court order” from Brewster that would allow the approved improvements to go forward, and that Brewster may rule on those sometime before July.