Judge Should Stay His Course : EPA demands over San Diego’s sewage program should be rejected

Last month, U.S. District Judge Rudi M. Brewster wisely allowed the city of San Diego to rein in the multibillion-dollar Clean Water Program, thereby potentially saving ratepayers from Del Mar to the Mexican border hundreds of millions of dollars. But if the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has its way, much of that savings will soon evaporate.

The EPA will be in court Friday demanding that Brewster force the city to continue the expensive planning process necessary to complete the entire program despite the 19-month reprieve from such spending Brewster issued in July.

We urge the judge to reject that request and stay his sensible course. Forcing the city to pay tens of millions of dollars to prepare for projects that may never be built is a senseless waste of money.

Clean Water Program officials estimate that it would cost $76 million to continue the planning, design and land acquisition functions necessary to satisfy the EPA’s request. That flies in the face of the intent of Judge Brewster’s earlier ruling, which was to save money, not spend it on phantom projects that may never get off the drawing board.

Taking its cue from the judge, the city has already slashed the Clean Water Program’s once-bloated budget. By the end of the year, almost half the program’s paid consultants will be gone, reducing their numbers from 68 to 35. And city staff involved in the program will be reduced by about a third, dropping from a high of 170 to 115.

Those staff reductions, coupled with savings associated with Brewster’s approval to dramatically scale back the program, could save ratepayers a whopping $203 million in fiscal 1993 alone.

These savings are welcome in a program that has already soaked up hundreds of millions of dollars to fund a federally required sewage-treatment overhaul of dubious merit.

Scientists from the respected Scripps Institution of Oceanography have testified that the current form of “advanced secondary” treatment at the city’s Point Loma plant is enough to protect the environment when the effluent is discharged deep into the ocean. And to ensure that any possible environmental damage is mitigated even further, the city has already agreed to double the length of the existing discharge pipe, giving San Diego one of the longest, deepest outfalls in the world.

Meanwhile, the National Academy of Sciences’ long-awaited study on the environmental effects of sewage discharge is due to be released next month. The study should give both sides firmer scientific footing upon which to base their costly decisions. So why the rush to spend?

Last month, the judge said he “would hate to see . . . the (EPA) . . . say to (the city), ‘We don’t care what the scientists tell us. You’re going to go to secondary sewer treatment whether it costs you $5 billion or $20 billion.”

So would we. Judge Brewster has given both sides a window of opportunity to find a rational, science-driven compromise that could save this community billions of dollars. Until that compromise is found, not a dime of ratepayers’ money should be spent on projects that may ultimately prove unnecessary.