Environmental Press # 117

Subj: FWD: San Diego Waiver lawsuit filed
Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 10:01:54 -0700
From: Doug Korthof <doug@seal-beach.org>
To: voiceforveterans@aol.com (via CleanOcean@StopTheWaiver.com)

The two big waivers left were OC and San Diego. There are 2 outfalls in SD, the South Bay Ocean Outfall and the Point Loma Ocean Outfall. San Diego has the complication that Tijuana sewage is processed out the SBOO, so they need federal help to get rid of their waiver.

However, Mayor Murphy and the Sewage District are trying hard to stave off the future and keep their right to dump primary sewage. Murphy was elected on a 4-point "clean the ocean" platform, but now gloats over the SD waiver.

San Diego has gotten legislation (carried by Sheila Kuehl) to reduce protections for some endangered species -- thus allowing S.D. to take Imperial Valley farmers' water and kill some migratory birds as the Salton Sea evaporates. The Indians knew this sea as occasionally fecund, their traps and snares up around Indio show that in prehistoric times, the Salton Sea was much larger then it is now. It is not true that it was created only in 1905.

 

  

If allowed to continue on the current mad course, S.D. will continue to import new fresh water from "somewhere else", and continue to dump their primary sewage "somewhere else" -- that is, on top of the creatures of the sea. Murphy himself knows, and has implied, that this cannot go on forever; evidently, he just wants to push the problem off on the next administration -- and the next generation.

THANKS to M.A. Gonzalez, Esq., for forwarding this first lawsuit to try to bring some reality into S.D. water and wastewater policy.

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FORWARDED MESSAGE
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Date: Tue, 17 Sep 2002 12:39:40 EDT
Subject: San Diego Waiver Litigation Filed

Yesterday San Diego BayKeeper sued the State Water Resources Control Board in Superior Court challenging the issuance of Waste Discharge Requirements for the Point Loma Outfall. The State and the City of San Diego (named as Real Party in Interest in the lawsuit), will be served papers this afternoon.

You will recall, earlier this summer, the State Board overturned the Regional Water Board's decision to require a reduction in solids emissions, additional monitoring, and beneficial reuse of reclaimed water. The State Board alleged that there was insufficient evidence in the record to justify the reduction in solids.

BUT, what the State Board neglected to address was that there was also insufficient evidence to justify the 50% increase in Mass Emissions limits they ultimately approved. Essentially, BayKeeper is suing the State Board for the same reason it overturned the Regional Board.

It's almost poetic....

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