2 Councilmen Urge New Federal Sewage Rules

San Diego City Councilmen Bob Filner and Bruce Henderson, back from a trip to Washington to lobby for changes in the U.S. Clean Water Act, called Friday for new federal standards to allow the city to escape a substantial part of the $2.6-billion to $2.8-billion cost of upgrading its sewer system.

The pair, the most vocal opponents of the federal law that requires the city to upgrade its sewage treatment system, said they are encouraged about the possibility of modifications after a round of talks with congressmen, U.S. senators, environmental activists and Environmental Protection Agency staffers. The Clean Water Act comes up for reauthorization in 1992.

Filner said a congressional committee will hold hearings late this year, possibly in San Diego, on the Clean Water Act’s mandate that all coastal cities treat sewage according to so-called “secondary” standards, a higher level than San Diego’s current “advanced primary” method.

Study Effect on Ocean

They also expressed confidence that Congress will partly fund a $450,000 National Academy of Sciences study to determine whether sewage treated to a lesser extent harms the ocean, specifically the water off San Diego. Filner and Henderson, backed by some Scripps Institution of Oceanography scientists, contend that it does not.

The EPA last year sued the city for missing the July 1, 1988, deadline for building the upgraded sewage-treatment system and for past sewage spills into San Diego waterways. A trial is scheduled for Dec. 5, if the two sides do not settle out of court.

Filner and Henderson said Friday that the law should be changed to take into account the extensive water reclamation plants planned for the San Diego region, facilities that will cleanse water even more thoroughly than required by law. As much as 135 million gallons daily will be reused for irrigation.

That effort will substantially reduce the solids that the city would dump in the ocean, allowing the Point Loma plant to remain at advanced primary-treatment levels with no net difference in contamination to the ocean, they argued. It also could save $700 million and might eliminate the need for a planned South Bay sewage plant, they said.

Deputy City Manager Roger Frauenfelder argued, however, that the city will need the South Bay plant because the system will soon lack the capacity to send South Bay sewage north to the Point Loma plant. The federal government also is planning a facility in the South Bay to handle as much as 25 million gallons of Mexican sewage that pours over the border each day.

City plans call for expansion of Point Loma, construction of North City and South Bay sewage plants and addition of satellite water-reclamation facilities around the region.