Candidate Claims Danger Is Lurking in City Sewers

San Diego mayoral candidate Tom Carter charged Wednesday that aging sewage pipes running beneath and around San Diego Bay pose a far greater environmental danger than the February rupture of the city’s sewage outfall pipe off Point Loma.

Carter contended that the two pipes, which transport nearly 180 million gallons of raw sewage from Pump Station 2 on Harbor Drive to the Point Loma treatment plant, would pour untreated waste into the bay if either ruptures. Because both are in use, there would be no way to divert the waste, Carter said.

“If this (pipe) had broken in San Diego Bay, we would have an environmental disaster that would make Guadalajara look mild,” Carter said in his first news conference of the primary campaign, held outside the pump station. At the prompting of his campaign consultant, Carter amended the statement to exclude loss of life from his comparison.

Milon Mills, director of the city’s water utilities department, said an inspection last year of the 21-year-old pipe that runs beneath the bay showed it to be in good shape. Mills said there is no reason to believe that the pipe, or a 30-year-old conduit that runs under the Naval Training Center before linking up with the bay pipe is in danger of rupturing.

The two pipes carry all of the region’s untreated sewage to the Point Loma plant, where it is treated to “advanced primary” standards and dumped 2.2 miles offshore. A huge rupture of that pipe was detected Feb. 2, and about 180 million gallons of sewage per day flowed into shallow waters 3,150 feet offshore until repairs were completed April 4.

Mills acknowledged that, if either pipe carrying sewage to the treatment plant ruptured, the other would be unable to handle all the waste water and would cause a major spill. However, he said, the pump station would be immediately turned off, isolating the broken conduit.

After the initial spill, sewage would naturally flow into the San Diego River and out into the ocean, not into the bay, Mills said.

But Dave Schlesinger, director of the city’s Clean Water Program, said a break in either pipe would cause a “catastrophic sewage spill into San Diego harbor.”

Carter, a local businessman seeking elected office for the first time, said valves should be added to the system now under construction so that the city could divert sewage north and south before it reached Pump Station 2 in the event of a spill.

Schlesinger said that satellite sewage treatment plants planned for North City and the U.S. Mexico border would essentially do that, by routing sewage to proposed outfalls in the South Bay and Ocean Beach instead of Point Loma. Those plants are scheduled to be completed by 1997, he said.

Mills added that gas-powered pumps are being added to prevent a surge of pressure that could rupture the two pipes in the event of a power failure.

Carter also criticized the City Council for spending $100 million on the scheduled sewage treatment upgrading and then refusing to go ahead with financing for the next phase of the $2.5-billion project.

About $64 million of that total has been spent on planning and design of the huge new system, Schlessinger said. Another $15 million was spent repairing the Point Loma ocean outfall, and $21 million has been spent on the South Bay outfall now under construction, he said.