Escondido Scuttles Plan to Reduce Treatment of Ocean-Bound Sewage

ESCONDIDO —  Giving way to public pressure from its coastal neighbors, the Escondido City Council has scuttled plans to dump lesser-treated sewage into the ocean off Cardiff beach.

The turnabout came late Wednesday night when Mayor Jim Rady said he “suddenly came to realize” that, his previous arguments notwithstanding, Escondido should not dirty the image of North County’s beaches.

The decision was hailed by north coastal city officials and a coalition of coastal residents, banded together as People for a Clean Ocean, who had in recent months mounted an intense public opinion campaign against Escondido and other agencies seeking to treat their sewage at less than federally mandated “secondary treatment” levels.

At the secondary treatment stage, heavy sewage material is settled and the remaining waste water is oxygenated and treated with microorganisms so that it is 85% clear of suspended solids before being piped 1 1/2 miles offshore and dumped into the ocean.

Escondido previously had been granted a waiver from the secondary treatment standards by the Regional Water Quality Control Board, but the permit was not issued because the waiver was challenged in court. And since then, residents, surfers, politicians and environmentalists along the North County coastline have argued that sewage treated only at an “advanced primary” level would harm the ocean environment and pose a public health problem. “Advanced primary” treatment results in waste water that is about 75% free of suspended solids.

The Escondido City Council voted 5-0 a year ago to seek the waiver allowing for the advanced primary treatment, and since then Rady has said the coastal critics were acting emotionally rather than factually in arguing that the lesser-treated sewage was dangerous to the coastline environment.

“We spent $50,000 on oceanographers, scientists and other experts and they all told us dropping the level is safe,” Rady said in June. “On the other hand, we’ve got lay people protesting this but not providing any documentation.”

Rady said he changed his mind after talking with John MacDonald, a candidate for 5th District supervisor and a member of the Oceanside City Council which, under similar pressure, dropped its request for a waiver in April.

He said MacDonald told him that, scientific arguments notwithstanding, Escondido’s lesser-treated sewage would give the perception that North County’s coastline is tainted.

That perception would be a liability to Escondido as well, Rady said, because of his city’s own tourism efforts. Rady said he did not accept that argument until after meeting with MacDonald.

“Maybe it was my ignorance or stupidity, but I realize now that we’re spending money to bring tourists here for our golf, Lawrence Welk’s (resort village) and the (San Diego) Wild Animal Park, and they want to go to the beach as well.”

Rady said he also was swayed by the prospect of the city getting involved in the pending lawsuits over the issuance of the waiver; concern over “the deterioration of what should be a good working relationship” with the new cities of Encinitas and Solana Beach, which share the same sewage outfall line off Cardiff and which have already agreed to treat sewage at their San Elijo plant at the higher, secondary level, and the fact that there no longer is the great concern about saving energy. A reduced treatment level would have saved the city about $200,000 a year in energy costs.

Earlier Wednesday, Rady met with MacDonald and Mayors Margaret Schlesinger of Solana Beach, Marjorie Gaines of Encinitas, Mary Casler of Carlsbad and Larry Bagley of Oceanside, where Rady announced his change of heart and said he expected to win the full council’s support that night, according to those in attendance.

At the meeting, Rady asked Schlesinger and Gaines for assurances that their respective city councils would not object if Escondido sought to construct a second outfall line adjacent to the existing one off Cardiff, in exchange for dropping the waiver request. Schlesinger said the two mayors told Rady they could not offer such an assurance but would report his request back to their councils.

The council, reversing its previous stand, voted 5-0 Wednesday to drop the request for the waiver. Councilman Ernie Cowan said Wednesday night he supported the waiver withdrawal because of the public relations problems it was causing the city.

Council members Doris Thurston and Jerry Harmon said that despite their initial support of the waiver, they had come to change their mind in recent weeks.

Harmon has brought the issue of the waiver back to the council several times in recent months, but was alone in asking that the waiver request be withdrawn. “I voted for it originally but after looking at it in more detail and doing research on my own, I concluded it wasn’t the right thing to do,” Harmon said Thursday. “I’ve been trying since then to convince the other members of the council.”

He said he believed Rady and the other council members changed their minds because both MacDonald and Clyde Romney, MacDonald’s opponent, had opposed the waivers. “They (other council members) saw the political sands shifting and decided it was time to back out before there was any more political egg on their face,” Harmon said.

Thurston said she supported the waiver originally “because I wanted to do some research on it. But in the last six weeks I let it be known I was in favor of keeping the secondary treatment for several reasons: I felt not only that the people on the coastline were for it (the higher treatment level), but so were the people of Escondido, and because there had been enough new research to make us take a second look at the viral count (of the sewage outfall).”

Richard MacManus, founder of People for a Clean Ocean, said he was “very delighted” but not surprised by Escondido’s turnabout.

“No one should put down Escondido for doing what it initially had done (in seeking the waiver). They were only given one side of the story” about the safety issues related to lesser-treated sewage, he said.

He noted that Escondido originally sought the reduced treatment level at a time when the San Elijo plant, which serves Encinitas and Solana Beach, was only treating its sewage at the advanced-primary level.

“Escondido said, ‘You’re doing less treatment so how can you expect us to do more than you?’ ” said MacManus. Following the decision by Encinitas and Solana Beach to treat sewage at the secondary level, the pressure was on Escondido to follow suit, he said.

“I felt it would eventually happen, but we were willing to pursue this as far as necessary” through the courts, MacManus said.

Schlesinger said she was “absolutely delighted” by Escondido’s decision. “That’s what we’ve been hoping for--and really, what we expected--all along. The mayor of Escondido feels that having the good will of all the coastal cities was important, and we feel the same way about them.”

Bagley said “it made sense” for Escondido to drop the waiver and said the pressure is now on the member agencies of the Encina sewage treatment plant, including the cities of Vista and Carlsbad, to increase the level of their sewage treatment to the secondary standards. A year ago, the Encina plant--with virtually no public attention or brouhaha--received a waiver to give advanced primary treatment to its sewage, saving its member sewage agencies a combined total of $1 million a year in reduced energy costs.

Casler said Thursday that despite Escondido’s change of position, Carlsbad would not back off from its own waiver. “It’s the difference between emotions and facts,” she said. “All our tests have given us a clean bill of health.”

MacManus said the Encina sewage plant may become the next target for People for a Clean Ocean, but said the battle will be more difficult since the waiver already has been granted and acted upon.

The Encina plant in Carlsbad discharges about 14 million gallons of sewage a day into the ocean; Oceanside, which sought but then dropped its request for a waiver, discharges about 11 million gallons of sewage daily.

In contrast, the metropolitan San Diego sewage system, which handles sewage from Del Mar to the Mexican border and inland to Alpine, discharges 170 million gallons of sewage daily into the ocean after it has gone through the advanced primary level of treatment.

San Diego has asked--so far, unsuccessfully--for permission to treat its sewage just at a primary level, in which the sewage is put in settling ponds and the waste water, without any further treatment, is pumped into the ocean with only between 55% and 60% of the suspended solids removed.