Marathon Meeting Held on Sewage Suit

Representatives of city, state and federal agencies met for five hours Monday evening but failed to reach a settlement in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s lawsuit against the city of San Diego over sewage treatment standards.

The negotiators, 23 from half a dozen agencies, huddled in Mayor Maureen O’Connor’s office during the marathon session. A formal settlement conference before U.S. Magistrate Irma Gonzalez was scheduled for today.

The negotiators also were discussing millions of dollars in proposed fines against the city for past sewage spills into San Diego waterways.

“I think everybody left in a rather amicable mood,” E. Miles Harvey, chairman of Metropolitan Sewage Task Force, said after Monday meeting. “I think several issues have been narrowed.”

Harvey said the two sides moved closer on the key question of a timetable for upgrading the city’s sewage treatment system to so-called secondary standards, as required by federal law. He said further discussions will be held today.

O’Connor, who opened the session at 4:30 p.m., had said she did not expect a settlement Monday night. She said that simply bringing all sides to the negotiating table Monday was a significant accomplishment.

City Councilman Bob Filner, an opponent of the costly upgrading of treatment standards, criticized the mayor for failing to notify the council of the meeting.

“I just find it incredible that we have people in there, and we don’t know anything about this,” Filner said.

If a settlement is not reached, the city and the federal government are to square off in court Dec. 5 on the suit, which the EPA filed in July, 1988, contending that the city failed to comply with the federal Clean Water Act and repeatedly spilled raw sewage into San Diego waterways.

Under the act, all U.S. cities were required to install “secondary” sewage treatment systems, which remove 85% to 90% of solids from sewage, by July 1, 1988, a deadline the city could not meet.

City planners and their hired consultants are designing a sewage treatment and water reclamation system that would cost an estimated $2.6 billion to $2.86 billion, the largest public works project in city history.

Earlier this month, the Metropolitan Sewage Task Force, which advises the City Council, urged it for the first time to delay improving the sewage system at the city’s Point Loma plant until 2015. That recommendation was based on testimony from scientists who believe that the current 190-million-gallon daily flow of effluent from the Point Loma plant is not harming the ocean.

The city’s current “advanced primary” system removes about 75% of solids from sewage.

The city had abandoned plans for a secondary system in 1981, when it concluded--mistakenly--that the EPA would give it a permanent exemption from the standards. In 1986, the EPA tentatively denied the exemption and, in 1987, the city gave up fighting for one.