City utility failures spur calls for vulnerability review
Mike Lee
Sign On San Diego
09/28/2011
Breakdowns in San Diego’s sewer and water systems during the Sept. 8 power outage highlight the need for a systematic review of weaknesses in the sprawling and aging utility system, the head of a city advisory board told council members during a Wednesday hearing at City Hall.
“At least expose the vulnerabilities so that we know if we are willing to live with them or not,” said Jim Peugh, chairman of the city’s Independent Rates Oversight Committee, which looks at utility issues.
The City Council’s natural resources committee focused on power-related water and sewage problems during a regular meeting Wednesday. Only a handful of residents spoke. Both they and council members praised the performance of the city utility staff during the emergency. They also raised questions about why the city didn’t start cleaning up sewage from Los Peñasquitos Lagoon more quickly and what will be done to prevent future problems.
Answers to specific issues raised by the power failure are expected to trickle out over the next several weeks, though it’s likely to take much longer for an assessment across more than 6,000 miles of sewer and water pipelines.
Peugh said his committee has formally recommended an overarching vulnerability report in recent years to no avail and that it’s been a decade since a limited analysis addressed seismic risks to the utility system. He said a new assessment should look for gaps related to wildfire, vandalism, terrorism, earthquakes and similar threats.
Roger Bailey, head of San Diego’s utility department, said his agency started working toward such a review before Sept. 8 and is committed to getting one done in the aftermath. He said it’s likely to provide a menu of items that require upgrades and highlight another dilemma. “Nobody wants to pay for anything, but you have all the needs,” he said.
The utility failures underscored longstanding problems, said council member Carl DeMaio. “We have not properly maintained our infrastructure,” he said. “It’s a reflection of our financial challenges as a city.”
Investment might increase in the wake of the regional power outage. Residents in 13 neighborhoods were advised to boil their drinking water when pressure dropped too low in places, and an estimated 3.5 million gallons of sewage polluted local waterways when two major pump stations stopped working. The core issue was lack of adequate backup power supplies.
