Sewer Spills

Clean Beaches and Bays

All San Diegans are aware of the chronic sewer spills that occur each year, causing pollution to reach area beaches, endangering public health and threatening our quality of life. This is caused mainly by the neglect we've shown our sewer collection system over the past 30 years. The 34-million gallon Adobe Falls Spill and the 1.5-million gallon Tecolote Spill, just this year, illustrated in graphic detail the immediate need for upgrades to our sewer system.

Upon taking office, I and my colleagues were briefed on the deteriorating state of our sewer infrastructure. An independent study found that over 1,000 miles of the City's 3,000 mile sewer collection system was in need of repair or replacement. The study noted that we were replacing our sewer system on a 100 year schedule when the useful life of the pipes was 50-years. The EPA recently agreed with this assessment ranking the City of San Diego in the bottom quarter of California sewer agencies for total spills and spill volume.

Soon after taking office the new City Council embarked on an aggressive $900 million program to replace aging sewer pipes and prevent spills from reaching the beach. To do this we have implemented the following program:

Triple the rate of sewer pipe replacement from 20 miles per year to 60 miles per year.
Clean all 3,000 miles of pipeline by 2004, and create an aggressive ongoing cleaning schedule thereafter for the entire sewer system.
Use television cameras in the sewers to locate the most deteriorates areas and replace those first, before sewer spills occur.
Concentrate cleaning, rehabilitation, and replacement in canyon areas where spills often go undetected.
Remove sewer lines from remote canyons, when feasible.
Create a team of volunteers to help monitor sewer lines in remote canyon areas.

This problem was created by decades of neglect. We will not solve this problem quickly and unfortunately we will continue to have spills. This new, aggressive program, though, will begin to address this long neglected problem that is so central to our quality of life.