The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to amend the city’s current contract to recycle excess methane gas from the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant. The decision curbs the original plan of trucking the volatile gas through Peninsula neighborhoods. “It’s a strong win for the environment and an even stronger win for the community,” said District 2 Councilman Kevin Faulconer. The city will now use existing San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) fuel lines to transport the gas when the project begins in 2011. Faulconer learned in August of resident opposition to the gas-hauling alternative that grew out of an effort by Citizens for a Green and Safe Point Loma, a citizens group that has been vocal in opposing the city’s trucking option. Catalina Boulevard resident John Pedersen spearheads this group. “Citizens for a Green and Safe Point Loma and Point Loma residents are very pleased with the revised outcome for the handling and distribution of excess methane gas from the Point Loma Wastewater facility,” Pedersen said. “Utilizing the existing SDG&E pipeline to transport the gas instead of trucking through our residential neighborhoods is a practical, green and safe solution.” Now the project falls into the hands of SDG&E and BioFuels Energy, the Carlsbad company that the city has contracted with. Jeffrey Reed, director of marketing and emergent technology for SDG&E, said construction for the project will begin late next year or early 2011. “Given the (City) Council approval now to restructure the project to pipeline injection, BioFuels Energy will be moving forward with additional design work, financing and then commencing construction,” Reed said. According to Reed, SDG&E has recently been looking into putting bio-gas on its grid. So when Faulconer came to SDG&E with the proposal that he and locals developed in September, Reed said SDG&E officials were happy to pursue the alternative. “We’ve had a bio-gas initiative for the last couple of years studying feasibility of bringing bio-gas resources onto the system. We were certainly ripe for this,” Reed said. “We were at the stage of beginning to identify initial commercial projects that could start to supply their gas to the system. So it was quite timely.” SDG&E will work with BioFuels Energy in support of its efforts. Reed said SDG&E would be responsible for the design, engineering and construction for the interconnection of existing facilities with its grid while the BioFuels would do the same for any other facilities necessary for the project. “SDG&E views bio-gas as a very important potential renewable resource for the state and we’re very pleased to see the first commercial project going into the implementation phase,” Reed said.