Title:
Director, Metropolitan Wastewater Department; vice president of operations, Bajagua.
Education:
Naval Academy, 1965; Georgia Tech, 1968
Age:
57
Residence:
Bonita
Birthplace:
Franklin, N.H.
Family:
Wife, Marion; three children, David, Dana and Daniel.
Hobbies:
Golfing, running, tennis
After Overseeing the City’s Largest
Public Works Project, Dave Schlesinger Is Ready For New Challenges
So far, Dave Schlesinger has had only two jobs in his entire life.
Coming off of a 25-year stint in the Navy, he was hired by the city to be the director of the Metropolitan Wastewater District. He marked his last day with the district May 18, after an 11-year career.
Now, Schlesinger is starting his new job June 4 as the vice president for operations for Bajagua, LLC, a San Marcos-based private company looking to build a sewage treatment facility in Tijuana.
Schlesinger hopes that this next job will be his last, he said.
Schlesinger, 57, began his brief resume in 1965. He graduated from the Naval Academy with a bachelor of science degree, and did a tour in Vietnam. After that, the Navy sent him to graduate school Georgia Tech, where he majored in construction management and got a master’s degree in civil engineering.
In the years that followed, Schlesinger served as an officer in the Navy’s Civil Engineering Corps , which handles all the engineering, maintenance and public works for naval bases, he said.
After serving for a quarter century, he eventually retired as a captain, he said.
His shift from the Navy to a city government job was almost by accident. His last tour of duty was in San Diego, where, as commanding officer of the Navy’s engineering field division, part of his duties required him to sit on the San Diego Association of Governments board representing the Department of Defense, Schlesinger said.
‘Once-In-A-Lifetime Opportunity’
“One day, Harry Mathis came up to me , he was a community activist , and he said, ‘Hey, you know, if you’re considering retirement, would you consider coming to work for the city of San Diego? It looks like they’re going to have a big upgrade on the wastewater system.’ And any time an engineer hears about a couple-billion-dollar project, that’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he said.
There was also a personal reason to stay in America’s Finest City. Back in 1968, Schlesinger met his wife, Marion, in San Diego, and he had long since promised her that after he retired from the Navy, he would take her back to her hometown.
So Schlesinger jumped at the chance to work locally. And because the job he was applying for was very similar to the one he already had, his time in the Navy was a “25-year training period” for the new job, he said.
Still, he was surprised by the challenges that faced him the minute he walked through the door in July 1990. In the late 1980s, the federal government sued the city of San Diego for hundreds of violations of the Clean Water Act, he said.
Among the many issues was the fact that the entire system was overloaded. There were massive backups at pump stations and elsewhere throughout the system, Schlesinger said.
Treatment Controversy
Also, the Point Loma treatment plant had only advanced primary treatment of sewage instead of the more aggressive “secondary treatment” standard, he said.
The previous city council had signed off on a multi-billion-dollar proposal for massive upgrades to the system. But no one in city government had a firm grasp on the total price tag for these facilities, and how much it would cost to the ratepayers, Schlesinger said.
“(It wasn’t) meeting the needs of the people. There was controversy if the Point Loma Plant should ever go to secondary treatment, so we did a big scientific review of all that,” he said. “When we finally came up with the numbers, the City Council, which had changed by then and Mayor Golding was in charge, basically said, ‘Hey, this is too much money,'” he said.
Schlesinger came up with a more modest plan. The first major project , extending the ocean outfall from the Point Loma facility from 2 & #733; miles off the coast to 4 & #733; miles , broke ground in 1993.
The project was financed with $350 million in city-issued bonds. This was the first time the city issued public debt to finance wastewater improvements since 1966, he said.
Once the outfall was completed in 1994, that took care of many of the problems the city was having with complying with statewide ocean pollution standards, Schlesinger said.
‘Dodge A Big Bullet’
“The court then said, ‘Hey, there are no violations of the California state ocean plan,'” he said. “So we dodged a big bullet when we were able to prove that the extension put us in compliance with the state standards.”
The city then enlisted the help of Rep. Bob Filner, D-San Diego. He responded with the Ocean Pollution Reduction Act, which allowed San Diego to apply for a waiver from federal secondary treatment requirements, Schlesinger said.
In return, the city agreed to some measures that would help reduce water pollution. San Diego got the waiver in 1995.
During the 1990s, the department took on a number of projects to upgrade the system and deal with the last remaining questions the court had about compliance. The first of these was the 30-million-gallon-per-day North City Water Reclamation Plant, which broke ground in 1993 and was competed in 1997.
Other projects include the Metro Biosolids Center, the South Bay Ocean Outfall, and the soon-to-be completed South Bay Reclamation Plant. These projects cost a combined $1.9 billion , mostly from bonds, with the rest either from federal grants or ratepayer contributions, he said
Getting the federal funding to build these projects was always a tremendous challenge, Schlesinger said.
“I spent a lot of time in Washington asking for money because you’re competing for these grant funds. Don’t kid yourself , it’s a competition. Everybody’s asking for money,” he said.
Similarly, he got to know the staff of the regulatory agencies very well, including the Environmental Protection Agency and the Regional Water Quality Control Board. That helped speed the approval process for many of the projects, Schlesinger said.
Historic Project
Schlesinger is proud of his track record with the city.
“We built the largest public works program in the history of the city , on schedule, within budget, and with all the regulatory requirements. And we did it safely , we worked over 7 & #733; million man hours. Never suffered a fatality, and this was heavy construction , dangerous underground work,” he said.
There are several other things Schlesinger remains proud of. These include biomass generators installed at the treatment facilities. These generators collect methane , a natural by-product of the treatment process , and burn it to generate electricity, he said.
The electricity is used to power the plants, making them self-sufficient. Excess energy is sold to the city, providing an important source of electricity for San Diegans now that the cost of power has skyrocketed, Schlesinger said.
Still another thing Schlesinger is proud of is the department’s Bid to Goal Pay-for-Performance Program. This gives public works employees cash bonuses for coming up with ways to save money.
“Public employees know how to do it better than anybody else. But they’ve become inefficient over the years when they’re shackled with personnel regulations that don’t make any sense, procurement regulations that don’t make any sense, no incentive to save because they never can earn a bonus,” he said.
But now that employees are allowed to share in the profits if they come up with ways to bring projects in under budget, they’ve saved the department millions of dollars, Schlesinger said.
Challenges Remain
Schlesinger acknowledged that challenges still remain for the wastewater department. The biggest problem is that many of the sewage pipes in the 3,000-mile system are old and crumbling, and need to be replaced, he said.
This is why, despite the massive investment in infrastructure in the past decade, sewage spills have continued to plague the city. Now that the major facilities have been built, the new challenge is the network of pipes that connect them, Schlesinger said.
Schlesinger noted that the city council moved last month to tentatively approve $900 million for replacing these pipes. However, ratepayers may ultimately finance these improvements with possible sewer rate increases , something Schlesinger noted is sure to be controversial when it comes up for a vote.
But for now, Schlesinger is taking on a different challenge. In his new position with Bajagua, Schlesinger will work to build a plant in Tijuana to treat Mexican sewage currently seeping into the United States, he said.
The proposal would provide primary and secondary treatment for at least 50 million gallons of sewage a day, Schlesinger said.
Although there is already an international sewage treatment plant at the border, along with other facilities, this is not enough to handle the large amount of effluent coming into the country every day, he said.
“It is the worst environmental issue in the region by far. The federal government has been grappling with this issue for about 60 years,” Schlesinger said.
Due to cross-border considerations, there are many obstacles to getting the Bajagua plant built. But Schlesinger is attracted to the challenge.
“After looking at it for a year, I thought, ‘Well, it can be done, and it’s going to be an exciting job,” he said. “I’m looking forward to coming to work every day. That’s how you can tell when you have a good job.”
