Mayor Jerry Sanders has announced his intent to press for a waiver to bypass a $1.5 billion upgrade to a secondary treatment process at the Point Loma Waste Water Treatment Plant.
Sanders told reporters at a press conference Oct. 10 at City Hall that his decision was based on a report from the scientific review committee made up of experts from the Scripps Institution Of Oceanography and the Jacobs School of Engineering.
Sanders asked the group to analyze data collected from around the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant outfall about 4.5 miles off the western coast of the Peninsula.
Headed by Paul Linden, professor of environmental science and engineering and director of the sustainability initiative at University of California, San Diego, the team released its final report at last week’s conference.
“The team of scientists from UCSD and San Diego State and myself thoroughly reviewed all the data available from the city [outfall] monitoring program,” Linden said. “We found no indication that there was any harmful impact of the outfall on the local oceanographic environment. There seems to be no reason for concern about the outfall at all.”
The mayor’s decision to pursue the waiver hinged on the report as the city approaches a December deadline for the waiver application to the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The waiver is good for five years and would be the third waiver sought since 1997.
While maintaining his decision was based primarily on the environmental data, Sanders also cited economic reasons for seeking the waiver.
He said the cost of the upgrade is an expense that is “simply not needed and the ratepayers cannot afford.”
The $200,000 study analyzed data collected within the last five to 10 years in and around coastal and near-shore areas of the outfall, according to the report.
Part of the scope of study includes a review of shoreline to check for signs of wastewater effluent near the shore, said Tim Bertch, director of the Metropolitan Wastewater Department.
Team members also looked at the composition and quality of water column and sediment samples from as deep as 310 feet below the water’s surface, he said.
In addition to physical and chemical compositions, the committee also studied data about the ocean life, including bottom-dwelling fish, crustaceans, worms and other organisms, Bertch said.
The report concludes there are “no indications of significant impacts on the Point Loma bottom community.”
But while the report reveals no significant effects of the outfall, the report also concedes the team’s conclusions were constrained by the time and scope of the project. The review committee collected no new samples, did not conduct fundamental research and performed limited analysis of observational data, according to the report.
The committee also makes several recommendations, including further analysis of the area’s microbiology, sediment chemistry and pollutants consumed by fish and bacteria that enter the food chain.
Complications also arise when reviewing data from the Point Loma outfall because of the large area being affected by natural forces over time, according to the report. Addressing those concerns has been a major recommendation of a previous Point Loma Outfall Project report.
The city is currently involved in several comprehensive studies, including the Sediment Mapping Project of the Point Loma and South Bay outfall regions and analysis of deeper ocean habitats, according to the report.
If the city acquires another waiver, several factors could affect future decisions about the plant, Bertch said.
When the decision was first made in 1997 to seek a waiver, he said, the cost to upgrade to secondary treatment was about $3 billion. Cheaper and better technology has allowed the cost to come down, he added.
“Five years from now it could be a whole different evaluation ” secondary treatment might seem more like the right answer, [or] it might seem even less like the right answer,” he said. “So to prejudge that and commit the ratepayers to an eventual bill that may not be required is not what we decided to do.”
The Point Loma Wastewater Plant treats about 175 to 180 million gallons per day of wastewater generated by 2.2 million residents, according to the department’s website. For general information on the city’s water department visit www.sandiego.gov/water.