november2011

38 SanDiegoMagazine.comNovember2011

LOCAL ELECTED OFFICIALS wasted no time pat-

ting San Diego on the back for a job well done when

an unprecedented power outage le the entire region

in the dark Sept. 8.

People did their jobs well. No major crimes were re-

ported. Hospitals managed despite a couple problems

with backup systems. As San Diego City Councilman

Kevin Faulconer put it in a Sept. 11 refl ection, “The

nation’s eyes were on San Diego. They saw a city with

no lights, no power ... and almost no crime. We defi ed

expectations.”

What’s unfortunate is that, if we defi ed expecta-

tions, it means we expected a lot of things to fail.

Maybe we were just happy that what did fail failed as

we had planned it would.

Just more than two hours a er the power went out,

sewage started spewing from a manhole at Sorrento

Valley Road near the I-805 and I-5 merge. For fi ve

hours, at an average rate of 8,600 gallons per minute,

it kept going, and going, polluting the beautiful Los

Peñasquitos Lagoon.

By the time it was over, combined with another

spill in the South Bay, nearly 3.5 million gallons of

raw sewage spilled into the ocean and San Diego Bay.

Basically, the power went out and the city pooped

itself. Beaches were closed all the way to Cardiff.

For decades, the city that depends on, and invests in,

tourism above many other priorities, has struggled to

do right by its beaches. San Diego has received a special

waiver from the EPA allowing us to treat our sewage at

a lower standard than elsewhere. A decade ago, pipes

were failing so regularly that major sewage spills de-

fi ned political contests. Former mayor Dick Murphy had

enough problems getting re-elected. He certainly didn’t

need the massive sewage spills he got, which always

seemed to come right before election day.

But most of those problems were due to faulty

and old piping. Nothing broke when the power went

out in September, it just stopped working. Of the

eight most important pump stations in the San Diego

system, two did not have any kind of backup power

source.

Some stations do have backup generators. One

actually uses a natural gas feed to keep its engines

running.

That’s Pump Station 2, in fact, by Lindbergh Field.

It’s a very important facility that pumps wastewater

over the hill of Point Loma where it fl ows down to

the city’s most important treatment plant. If Pump

Station 2 were to lose power—and then gas from

SDG&E—well, that would be very bad. Sewage that is

not able to go up would come down, and that facility

could not hold everything that would come down.

Imagine the welcome to tourists that sight (and

smell) at the airport would be.

The city’s fresh water system faces a similar defi -

ciency. The blackout caused pumps to fail. This caused

water pressure to drop. That raised worries that water

from garden hoses or other outside sources might be

sucked into the clean water system, contaminating it.

No contamination occurred. But boil-water notices

bothered residents for days.

Roger Bailey, the city’s director of public utilities,

estimated it would cost up to $3 million, at least, to

install a backup generator for Pump Station 64 in

Sorrento Valley. Protecting the whole wastewater and

water systems from blackout would be a multiple of

that number. And even if you provide backup power,

that won’t help if an earthquake bursts dozens of

pipes or a fi re consumes a pump station. Where do

you hedge your bets?

We live in a city where disaster isn’t all that hard

to imagine. Twice in a decade, major fi res have con-

sumed the county. We’re not in prime earthquake

country, but we’re not far from it.

Are we really just accepting that if power is

knocked out by any of these forces or just a major grid

failure, we’ll lose control of the city’s bowels?

Yes, unless we decide not to.

❯❯ CITYFILES | Politics

“Are we really

just accepting

that if power

is knocked out

by any of these

forces or just a

major grid failure,

we’ll lose control

of the city’s

bowels?”

The Power Went Out and

the City Pooped Itself

❯❯ BY SCOTT LEWIS

CEO of voiceofsandiego.org,

a nonprofi t news organization that

partners with San Diego Magazine.

SANDY HUFFAKER/GETTY IMAGES