In the aftermath of San Diego County’s largest sewage spill since 2000, an investigation has been ordered for the estimated 14 million gallons of waste from Naval barracks that was pouring into San Diego Bay for two years and was only turned off on Nov. 17, the same day it was discovered.
Construction workers had improperly connected a sewage line to a storm drain instead of the correct line at Palmer Hall, a 12-story barracks built in 2004 to accommodate 1,032 sailors at 32nd Street Naval Station. The error resulted in raw sewage emptying into Chollas Creek, which runs into nearby San Diego Bay. The leak was finally discovered by a team of Seabees on Nov. 17 who were working on an adjacent unrelated construction project.
Navy spokesman Kevin Dixon confirmed Soltek Pacific, the construction company contracted to build Palmer Hall and responsible for the cross-connection, are contracted for other projects, but would not comment on whether they will continue to retain their services in the future.
As the Navy began conducting its own investigation into how this oversight occurred, the Regional Water Quality Control Board issued the Navy a Notice of Violation on Dec. 1 for their two-year discharge of raw sewage into Chollas Creek. It orders that the Navy submit a technical report to the board no later than Dec. 20.
In the report, the Navy must explain how the incident occurred; describe steps it will take to identify similar drain connections at the facility and prevent future sewer line cross-connections; propose a plan for monitoring water quality in Chollas Creek and San Diego Bay adjacent to its station; and include a clean-up plan to mitigate water quality impacts to Chollas Creek that occurred during the two-year period.
However, that’s about all the board can do. Water resource control engineer Melissa Valdovinos of the Regional Water Quality Control Board, writer of the Notice of Violation, said monetary fines are out of the question, as the board isn’t allowed to fine the federal government or its organizations. That leaves little else the board can do in terms of inflicting consequences on the Navy for the spill.
“A lot of times that’s incentive for people to get their act together, and we don’t have that option in this case,” Valdovinos said.
All that leaves is the power to order information about the spill and make administrative requests outlining what the Navy will do in the future to insure inspections are through “” hopefully making sure it doesn’t happen again in the future. The Navy may also be ordered to implement their own proposed mitigation plan.
All of this, though, fails to address the obvious: the14 million gallons of raw sewage in San Diego Bay. Unfortunately, there is realistically no way to rectify the contamination.
Valdovinos said she didn’t know how such a thing could be cleaned up. Since the spill happened over the course of two years, “it has been so disbursed by now. How do you approach cleaning up the entire bay?” she said.
“With such a long period of time, it’s hard to pin down the effects on San Diego Bay,” Valdovinos said. “I can’t just look at their lab results and say ‘the sample you took from Chollas Creek: any kind of pollution we see is a direct consequence of the Navy’s actions.'”
After all, Chollas Creek is hardly pollution-free to begin with. It and other outlets to San Diego Bay suffer ongoing pollution from many different sources, much of which travels by way of storm drains and urban runoff.
For its part, the Department of Environmental Health monitors bacteria levels in all major waterways, including San Diego Bay, and will shut down recreational areas if the pollution rises above acceptable levels. The Navy also regularly monitors water quality near the 32nd Street Naval Station, but mainly for industrial runoff “” not for types of bacteria caused by sewage.
The Navy is also required, as in this case, “to report any kinds of discharge, be it from just a gallon, to whatever,” said Dixon.