Race for Mayor Gives Sewer Politics a New Meaning

The city of San Diego has squandered the $100 million already spent on upgrading its aging sewage system by waiting more than four years before moving toward abandoning the multibillion-dollar treatment plan, County Supervisor Susan Golding charged Thursday.

Golding, going on the offensive against City Councilman Ron Roberts, one of her rivals in the San Diego mayor’s race, blasted Roberts for missing the Tuesday night vote at which the council refused to proceed with the initial financial steps of the controversial program.

Roberts, who attended most of the council meeting, was at a campaign fund-raiser during the vote.

“This is not leadership,” Golding said, “and it’s $100 million wasted at a time when the city is in a financial crisis.”

“After throwing down the toilet $100 million, they’ve now reversed their position, confronted the judge and said they’re not going to do it,” Golding said at a news conference outside police headquarters, where she posed in front of a toilet.

In an interview, Roberts said much of the $100 million has been spent on projects that must proceed whether or not the city moves forward with the court-ordered upgrading of its sewer treatment system. These include the design of an extension of the sewage plant’s Point Loma outfall and a North City satellite treatment plant, he said.

As for missing the vote, Roberts said Mayor Maureen O’Connor told him that the council was going to postpone a decision until next week. At the council’s upcoming meeting on Monday, it will discuss which aspects of the lengthy construction timetable it wants to delay. Roberts said that is a far more important meeting.

Those plans must be taken before U.S. District Court Judge Rudi Brewster, who oversees the legal agreement between the city, state and federal agencies governing the construction schedule.

Roberts said he would have voted along with colleagues to begin plans to alter the timetable, because the projected burden on sewer ratepayers has become too onerous.

Specifically, Roberts contended, the council has always intended to seek a legislative way out of upgrading the Point Loma plant to “secondary” treatment levels, which would remove more suspended solids and organisms than the city’s existing “advanced primary” treatment process.

But Golding said Roberts has been the “the council’s most outspoken supporter” of the $2.5-billion project.

She said the city never should have abandoned its waiver from federal Clean Water Act standards, a decision made before Roberts joined the council, and pledged to fight to regain the waiver if elected mayor.

City officials have said that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has informed them that it is impossible to regain the waiver.