New Event Could Decide Fate of San Diego Sewage Plant : Congress: ‘Corrections Day’ inspired by Speaker Gingrich targets unnecessary rules and regulations. Foes hope to corral enough votes to kill proposed facility.

If all goes as planned, San Diego’s epic struggle to avoid building a new sewage treatment plant will take center stage on Capitol Hill this week as a classic example of bullheaded federal regulators blindly enforcing ill-conceived laws.

The issue has been chosen as the first to be taken up on “Corrections Day,” an idea born of House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Republican governors to zero in on federal rules and regulations they regard as silly, unneeded and just plain dumb.

Opponents of the sewage plant hope to round up enough votes during Tuesday’s high-profile legislative show to cut San Diego a special break from federal clean-water rules.

But more important symbolically, they hope to teach a stern lesson to the Washington bureaucracy that is blamed for the 23-year-old contest of wills.

For San Diego officials, the cachet of being Exhibit A in the dumb-law spotlight is deeply satisfying.

“This is an example of the federal government and defenders of the status quo choosing to value a regulation over sound environmental policy and public health protections--a case of valuing process over product,” said Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-San Diego), a rookie House member who has helped lead the effort to lift the requirement that San Diego build a new $3-billion sewage treatment plant.

“This is why Speaker Gingrich has singled out San Diego’s battle with the Environmental Protection Agency as a prime example of a stupid federal regulation which merits speedy correction,” Bilbray said.

To hear the other side tell it, Corrections Day is a perversion of the legislative process that gives Gingrich an unsettling amount of personal power and provides special interests an easier way to kill regulations they simply don’t like.

“This is not a correction,” said Rep. Norman Y. Mineta (D-San Jose), “it is a massive new loophole that would allow San Diego to do far less treatment than it is doing today.”

Bilbray denied that charge and said the present plant meets all state and federal water standards.

Such wide differences of opinion have characterized the long-running squabble over how San Diego should treat its sewage.

Environmentalists and federal regulators have seen the issue in black-and-white: San Diego should hew to the same clean-water standards as all other cities. Local officials have insisted that the federal law is a ham-handed approach that ignored the effectiveness of the city’s existing sewage-treatment technique.

The city now provides so-called “advanced primary” treatment of its waste water. But in 1972, a stricter standard was adopted.

As part of the federal Clean Water Act, secondary sewage treatment was mandated as the national standard. Cities and sewerage districts were given five years to comply.

After several extensions of the deadline, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sued San Diego in 1988 to upgrade its primary treatment facility at Point Loma, which pumps up to 190 million gallons of treated sewage into the Pacific Ocean through an outfall pipe being extended 4 1/2 miles out to sea.

Over the years, San Diego and the EPA have engaged in spirited legal warfare involving waivers, federal court hearings and consent decrees that has polarized the combatants and inculcated lingering suspicions.

In April, 1993, a key development occurred. A National Academy of Sciences study concluded that San Diego’s sewage-treatment method and deep-open discharge method were effective, opening the way to the EPA’s more conciliatory position.

But perhaps most galling to foes of Bilbray’s San Diego Coastal Corrections Act--as the bill to be voted on Tuesday is officially called--is that the city has already won a major concession from Congress on the issue.

President Clinton signed into law last year a provision that allowed San Diego to apply for a waiver. The EPA last month announced that it has granted preliminary approval of the request.

“It is ironic the San Diego legislation is being used to kick off Corrections Day,” Mineta noted in a written dissent to Bilbray’s bill. “There is nothing to correct. As a result of last year’s bill, San Diego is in a class by itself.”

For Bilbray, a former San Diego County supervisor, an apparent EPA promise to act is not good enough. Waivers have been tentatively approved before, only to be followed by lawsuits.

“San Diego has been a victim of changing bureaucracies within the EPA for over 16 years,” Bilbray said in prepared remarks. “The city is understandably concerned over future EPA actions regarding the waiver process.”

Essentially, Bilbray’s Corrections Day bill seeks to permanently exempt San Diego from the federal waiver process, which requires the city to reapply for a new waiver every five years.

The EPA strongly opposes this effort, saying that a permanent waiver would eliminate the periodic scientific review of treatment effectiveness called for in the National Academy of Sciences report.

During subcommittee debate in mid-July, Mineta also charged that the Corrections Day bill allows San Diego to drop the level of treatment. “Last year’s bill will allow San Diego to go on doing the level of treatment it is doing today, which is less than the secondary treatment that virtually every other city has to do. But [the Bilbray] bill would allow them to do far less than they are doing today.”

Underlying the debate over the merits of the Bilbray bill is genuine concern about the Corrections Day process itself. On June 21, the House approved the Gingrich-inspired mechanism to kill “dumb” federal regulations. It allows the Speaker to invoke the new procedure on the second and fourth Tuesday of each month.

Republicans say the procedure will speed along actions that have solid support, noting that the three-fifths majority vote needed for passage will require affirmative votes from both parties.

But some Democrats worry that Gingrich will have virtually exclusive power to decide what goes on the Corrections Day agenda and that the new process will mute the minority party’s voice in important policy matters.

“I fear that the new corrections procedure . . . will become a fast track for special interests to stop regulations that protect public health and the environment,” said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) during debate over adopting the process.

There’s even confusion over what constitutes a “correction.” Such measures will have to meet the “you-know-it-when-you-see-it” test, said Rep. Gerald B. H. Solomon (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Rules Committee.

Caught in the middle of the debate is Rep. Bob Filner, a Democrat who fought for a waiver during his eight years as a San Diego city councilman and deputy mayor before coming to Washington in 1992.

During subcommittee consideration of the Bilbray bill July 12, Filner strongly backed the Corrections Day bill but blasted the process.

“This has been a well-documented case and deserves to be corrected. But I warn my colleagues to be on guard for using this as a precedent for other situations that are far less documented, far less worth our support and rely mainly on anecdote. I’m afraid that this process that we are undergoing, with San Diego being the first case, will be distorted. We have a strong case here, but we should not lower our standards in the future.”