Sierra Club Seeks Halt to Sewage Pipe Work : Courts: It says the $30-million ‘Big Pipe’ along border won’t be needed if a judge decides next year to alter San Diego’s sewage treatment upgrade program.

The Sierra Club has asked a federal judge here to halt work on the $30-million so-called “Big Pipe” in the Tijuana River Valley, saying the large sewage conduit might never be needed.

The 2 1/2-mile-long, 12-foot-diameter pipe, part of the city’s planned $3-billion-plus sewage treatment upgrade program, is intended to carry treated sewage from several border-area plants to a pipeline that would discharge the effluent into the ocean.

However, local Sierra Club attorney Robert Simmons said Monday that until a federal judge makes a final decision early next year on the scope of the sewage treatment program, it is uncertain whether the pipe will be needed.

To proceed with construction in the interim, Simmons argued, could waste millions of tax dollars while also doing unnecessary environmental damage to the endangered wildlife on the land just north of the border where the pipe is being laid. The city is paying about one third of the construction cost, with the state and federal governments covering the rest.

“This pipe could turn out to be the biggest White Elephant on the West Coast,” said Simmons, who will seek an injunction to halt construction at a Feb. 21 hearing before U.S. District Judge Rudi Brewster.

San Diego city officials, however, said that the Sierra Club’s objection, coming more than three years after environmental impact reports on the project were approved, not only is too late, but also misinformed as to the pipe’s potential need.

“At a minimum, there’s going to be an international treatment plant requiring a pipe through that area,” said Ted Bromfield, a chief deputy city attorney. “Why disturb sensitive habitat twice? That’s the only thing that would be accomplished by stopping construction at this point.”

Current plans call for the pipe--now 23% complete--to link up to a city sewage-treatment plant and water-reclamation facility, as well as the international treatment plant scheduled to be in operation by 1996.

Those plans, though, could be significantly altered by Brewster next year when he reviews, among other things, the results of tests of alternate sewage treatment methods at the city’s Point Loma treatment plant.

In addition, Simmons speculated that the “desperate need for water” along the border could result in the international treatment plant being upgraded to a water reclamation plant, precluding the need for a huge pipe to dump treated sewage into the ocean.

“That’s a very, very iffy assumption,” Bromfield responded. Concurring, other San Diego officials noted that Mexico is unlikely to have the expensive pipes and pumping equipment in place that would be necessary to use recycled water from the international plant when it is completed.

“Without that, you need a pipe,” Bromfield added.