Sierra Club Threatens to Stall Sewage Plant Pact

The local Sierra Club chapter threatened Thursday to hold up the city of San Diego’s tentative legal settlement with three other government agencies on construction of a $2.8-billion sewage system because the plan contains no meaningful water-conservation provisions.

But the Sierra Club’s attorney conceded that it is still unclear whether the environmental organization, which has intervenor status in the complex litigation, can hold up a settlement among the city, the state Water Quality Control Board, the U.S. Justice Department and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“It is the Sierra Club’s position that, yes, it would not be appropriate for a consent decree to be executed without having the Sierra Club a signatory to it,” said William Benjamin, a Sierra Club attorney. “But that decision has not yet been made.”

City attorneys maintain the opposite position--that they can settle their differences on a construction timetable for the huge sewage system upgrading without the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club is entitled only to a hearing before U.S. District Judge Rudi Brewster to press its objections, said James Dragna, a private attorney hired by the city.

Attorneys for the four government agencies have reached a tentative agreement that calls for the city to complete the largest public works project in its history by Dec. 31, 2003. The settlement is the product of negotiations that began even before the federal and state agencies sued the city for missing a July, 1988, deadline for compliance with the federal Clean Water Act.

The law requires that all cities upgrade their sewage treatment systems to so-called “secondary standards,” under which 85% to 90% of suspended solids are removed from the effluent before it is dumped in the ocean. The city’s existing “advanced primary” treatment system removes 75% to 80% of the solids.

City planners have drawn up a $2.6 billion to $2.8 billion renovation project that includes the upgrading of the city’s Point Loma treatment plant, another secondary treatment plant in the South Bay and six water reclamation plants around the city. The plants would yield as much as 135 million gallons of water each day for reuse on golf courses, parks and highway medians.

At a news conference Thursday, the Sierra Club pressed its longstanding demand that the council reduce the 190 million gallons per day of effluent being treated at the city’s Point Loma sewage plant to 100 million gallons daily by 1999.

That could be accomplished, the Sierra Club contends, by replacing every toilet in the Metropolitan Sewerage System with 1.6 gallon ultra-low volume toilets. The effort would allow for a drastic downsizing of the planned construction project and save ratepayers, who will foot the bill for the system, a substantial sum, Sierra Club members said.

As an alternative, the Sierra Club is offering a plan under which the city would reduce the total sewage flow by 50 million gallons daily within eight years, but only if it also devoted any fines for past sewage spills to a sizable water conservation effort.

The EPA is demanding the fines, which could total millions of dollars, as payment for sewage spills into local waterways dating back to 1983. No settlement has been reached on the penalties, which are the subject of separate negotiations and could be the basis of a separate trial before Brewster if no deal is reached.

The money could be used as sewage fee rebates or other forms of incentives to promote installation of the ultra-low-volume toilets, according to Sierra Club officials.

Besides saving money, the water conservation effort would create excess capacity in the system that could accommodate the sewage that will be generated by population growth, Emily Durbin, a Sierra Club member and plaintiff in the lawsuit, said.

But Dragna, who agreed that the city endorses the Sierra Club’s water conservation goals, nevertheless said that water conservation is “a whole separate issue” not appropriate for inclusion in a legal settlement concerned with sewage treatment.

“This document is the vehicle to require (the city’s) waste water treatment system, not to dictate its water use or growth patterns,” Dragna said.

As engineers continue to design and build the system, they can tailor it toward a larger water conservation effort, he said.