Environmentalists Say They’re Cool With East County Taking Cred for Pure Water’s Production

There’s a debate over whether the city of San Diego should or could build a smaller sewage-to-drinking water recycling project than originally planned.

If fully built out, the project costs would top $5 billion. And the City Council is desperate to save ratepayers money. But the city probably can’t build a smaller Pure Water project, even though some want it to, because recycling wastewater is something the city promised to do – or risk being sued by environmentalists. 

A bloc of East County cities is building their own, similar project. And they’ve told San Diego, hey, why don’t you just build less, save money and count the water we make from our toilet flushes toward your project? San Diego’s Public Utilities Department told City Council President Joe LaCava they’re looking into it during a heated water and wastewater rate hike debate. 

But it wasn’t clear whether environmentalists had a problem with East County sharing San Diego’s commitment toward wastewater recycling.

So, our MacKenzie Elmer asked them. 

They told her, yep, we’re good with it. As long as San Diego is able to recycle and produce 83 million gallons of sewage per day – sewage that right now dumps into the Pacific Ocean via the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant – we don’t really care how you get there, they said. 

“Coastkeeper has always supported and been open to including East County’s recycled water as part of Pure Water’s 83 mgd goal in Phase II,” wrote Philip Musegaas, executive director of Coastkeeper, a group that took part in a huge legal fight to commit the city to stop polluting the ocean with its toilet water. “The text of the Cooperative Agreement clearly contemplates including other sources from the Metro JPA in the Phase II goal.”

The cooperative agreement is, in simple terms, the promise the city made to environmentalists on reducing its ocean pollution. Marco Gonzalez of Coast Law Group, the environmental attorney who helped lead the coalition that put Pure Water in motion many years ago, concurred. 

“We have always agreed that production of potable recycled water anywhere in that system would count towards the City’s obligations,” he wrote in an email.

Now, whether the city of San Diego would agree to that is a different question.

The post Environmentalists Say They’re Cool With East County Taking Cred for Pure Water’s Production appeared first on Voice of San Diego.