Environment: Latest Levy Could Cost $1.59 Million
The city of San Diego may once again have to pay a seven-figure fine for another sewage spill.
The Regional Water Quality Control Board is debating how to assess a $1.59 million fine for a 1.5 million gallon sewage spill in Tecolote Canyon in February. This is on top of the $3.47 million fine assessed for a 34-million gallon spill in Alvarado Canyon in February 2000.
The water board had originally been scheduled to discuss the matter at a Sept. 14 hearing, but due to the tragic events of that week, the meeting has been delayed to Oct. 10, said Rebecca Stewart, sanitation expert for the board.
The board had previously acted to assess the fine June 13. The city was then given the option of reducing the fine by instead paying for three supplemental environmental projects, Stewart said.
These environmental projects consist of work the city can do above and beyond its permit, in order to improve local water quality, she said.
The first project is a $400,000 Mission Bay Contamination Dispersion Study will look into how contaminants from Rose Creek and Tecolote Creek get distributed throughout the bay from currents, Stewart said.
Health Risks Study
Meanwhile, an epidemiology study would investigate health risks to people who swim in Mission Bay. This $700,000 project would supplement a similar study of Mission Bay already funded by the state, she said.
The city would also fund an $800,000 construction project to improve water quality in the Rose and Tecolote creeks, stopping pollution before it reaches Mission Bay, Stewart said.
However, the construction project may be dropped at the Oct. 10 meeting. As a supplemental project to avoid a fine, the project is too similar to work that the city already should be doing, she said.
Karen Henry, deputy director of the storm water pollution prevention program with the city’s Metropolitan Wastewater Department, said the supplemental environmental projects will help support the mayor’s goal of reducing beach closures by 50 percent by 2004.
“They’re on our project list,” she said. “These were the highest ones up on our priority list that met the qualifications for a supplemental environmental project.”
Lawsuit Possible
The city is looking for money for all 13 projects on the list. Some of them have already received funding from sources such as the governor’s Clean Beaches initiative, Henry said.
Marco Gonzalez, senior attorney for the local environmental group San Diego Baykeeper, remains skeptical. He pointed out that the Mission Bay spill comes one year after a massive spill into Alvarado Canyon, and from there, into the San Diego River and the Pacific Ocean.
“Both the San Diego Baykeeper and the Surfrider Foundation recognized before the Mission Bay spill that the city wasn’t doing enough to abate its historical pattern of spill violations. So we filed a lawsuit in February of this year, to address the last five years’ worth of spills. We were in negotiations with the city about filing that lawsuit when the news broke about the spill in Mission Bay,” he said.
That proved to Gonzalez that the city had failed in its obligation to prevent spills and maintain the system in accordance with its permit. Smaller spills after that served as additional proof.
It also proved to Gonzalez that the city’s much-touted early warning system hasn’t worked. It didn’t catch the Tecolote spill, he said.
“They’ve had to go back and revisit how their left hand speaks to the right. I’m not sure they’ve got it all figured out yet,” Gonzalez said.
