Judge Backs S.D. in Limiting Sewer Upgrade

A federal judge granted city officials here a massive reprieve Friday, approving their request for an interim order to fund some, but not all, of the costly sewer improvements outlined in a major lawsuit.

Ecstatic officials called the ruling by U.S. District Judge Rudi M. Brewster a huge victory, saying it would save San Diego ratepayers $1.2 billion over the next 10 years. The City Council had previously authorized $1.3 billion in sewer-related improvements to satisfy significant portions of the lawsuit.

The judge’s ruling will allow a 6% annual rate increase through 1997 to proceed. The council had voted in May to finance the purchase of bonds through the rate increase, which would have been 15% a year for 10 years had the full package of improvements been ordered.

Had Brewster sought to enforce each of the mandates covered in the “consent decree” that acts as the key component in the long-standing lawsuit, officials said sewer rates would have doubled by the year 2003 to pay for the $2.5 billion in bonds.

“It’s great!” City Manager Jack McGrory said afterward. “It’s real positive. I’m real happy with a decision that shows, frankly, that we’ve got a judge in a federal court that’s taking a big-picture view of the (federal) Clean Water Act and all its implications.”

However, the lawsuit is not settled yet. The issue of satisfying the rest of the consent decree was put off until 1994. The city still may be liable for all of the remaining $1.2 billion in improvements.

The gist of the lawsuit is to force the city to comply with the act, which is enforced by federal and state agencies. The Sierra Club is also a party to the suit, which lists the city as sole defendant.

The 19-month stay granted by the judge involved primarily the construction of as many as nine new water-reclamation plants, only one of which the city is required to build before 1994.

He ordered all parties to return to court by February of that year to consider the city’s next move in meeting the decree. Attorneys for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency attacked the city’s motives throughout Friday’s hearing but declined comment afterward.

“We object to any modifications and view any attempt to modify the consent decree as a rejection of its provisions,” Karen Dworkin, the attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, which is representing the EPA, said heatedly in making her argument.

“My point is that, if you start tinkering with the consent decree, then we don’t even know what law we’re operating under,” Dworkin said.

Brewster’s ruling clears the way for the following improvements, which the council gave its approval to in May:

* Extending the Point Loma outfall pipe from its present 2.2 miles, at a depth of 220 feet, to 4.5 miles, at a depth of 330 feet, at a cost of $54 million.

The outfall pipe, which ruptured earlier this year, fouling the coastline from the international border to Ocean Beach for more than two months, would, when completed, be one of the “longest, deepest ocean outfalls in the world,” officials said.

The city plans to construct a pipe running alongside the existing outfall to act as a backup should another rupture occur. The city also plans to construct a device that it hopes will reduce, if not eliminate, the buildup of air.

Officials reiterated Friday that an independent inquiry into the rupture by a firm in Northern California indicates that a massive air bubble lodged in the pipe is the most likely cause of the rupture, among those being considered.

* Improving the E.W. Blom Wastewater Treatment Plant on Point Loma, but not to the level of full “secondary” treatment, which is mandated by the consent decree and the federal Clean Water Act.

The city’s sewer system, which serves 1.7 million residents of San Diego County, uses advanced primary treatment, which removes 75% to 80% of the suspended solids in the effluent. Secondary treatment removes 90% or more of the solids.

Brewster’s ruling enables the city to upgrade the Point Loma plant to what City Manager McGrory calls a level of “modified secondary,” handling a flow of up to 240 million gallons of effluent daily. The existing flow is about 180 million gallons a day.

* Building a North City reclamation plant in University City, capable of processing up to 30 million gallons a day of reclaimed water. Such water would then be sold for use in agriculture and industry.

* Relocating existing sludge beds from Fiesta Island to a new site on Navy property near Miramar Naval Air Station. McGrory says the plan, scheduled to be implemented by 1995, has the Navy’s cooperation.

* Building a backup sludge-drying facility in South San Diego.

What Brewster’s ruling delays is an upgrading of the Point Loma plant to full secondary status, the construction of a new secondary-treatment plant in the South Bay and the addition of seven other water-reclamation plants.

In justifying the 19-month stay, Brewster said he hopes to see the results of a soon-to-be-released study by the National Academy of Sciences on the effect of a continuing sewage discharge on an ocean environment.

He said the study may indicate, for instance, that maintaining advanced-primary treatment at the Point Loma facility would not have a harmful effect on marine life or the surrounding kelp beds, and thus, the far more expensive secondary treatment would serve no purpose.

City Councilwoman Valerie Stallings applauded the judge’s decision, saying it “vindicates the council” for “digging in its heels and saying, ‘In light of this scientific study, and the recession, this warrants a much closer look.’ ”

Councilman Tom Behr said the council’s decision to forgo, for now, the construction of more than half a dozen water-reclamation plants “doesn’t mean we’re against water reclamation. But to build unneeded capacity, just to warrant reclamation, didn’t make any sense.

“If we have the necessary (sewage-flow) capacity at Point Loma, and (at the proposed) North City West (reclamation plant in University City), then there isn’t enough capacity to go around. We would have been adding capacity for a dry plant.”

McGrory said that, in the end, the city “just had a real difficult time with the position of the EPA. When we’re guilty of virtually no environmental damage, why force us to go ahead with full secondary treatment (at Point Loma)?

“Every scientist we’ve talked to said it would have accounted for a minimal improvement, at best, in the quality of the discharge, and to have spent that kind of money would have just been ridiculous. And obviously, the judge agreed.”