Council Members Demand Tecolote Spill Accountability

City Manager Michael Uberuaga said Wednesday that there "most certainly will be accountability" for any mistakes that allowed up to 2 million gallons of sewage to spill undetected into Mission Bay. 'This City Is Not Going To Take It Anymore' Improperly routed city phones and errors in dealing with voice mail messages were blamed for the delay in fixing the sewage leak, Uberuaga said. At Wednesday's meeting of the city's Natural Resources and Culture Committee, Uberuaga said that the city is going through a "comprehensive" investigative process to determine what "personnel actions" to take associated with the spill response. "I want to underscore that while there is concern about accountability, there most certainly will be accountability for any mistakes made," Uberuaga said. The committee is continuing to get updates on what is being done in the wake of the spill, caused by debris that blocked a pipeline in Tecolote Canyon and caused it to overflow. Missed Phone Call Delayed Repair The city became aware of the spill Feb. 28, but a Regional Water Quality Control Board member reported leaving a message about it more than a week earlier on Feb. 19. That message was accidentally deleted without being heard. When the call reporting the spill came in on the Feb. 19 Presidents' Day holiday, city phones were misprogrammed so that the call did not reach the city's emergency dispatch center as it should have. Instead, the call was routed to a message line. Two days later, employees listened to some of the messages, and then deleted the rest without listening to them because they assumed they were redundant. "That was an error," Larry Gardner, director of the Water Department, said. "That was a mistake, and there's no excuse for it." City Council Members Voice Frustration Councilman Scott Peters said that the issue is "personally very disappointing to me, and I've felt a lot of frustration and anger over it," because he ran for office on his background in environmental issues. Peters and other council members said that they are particularly concerned about accountability of city employees. "What happens to someone whose job it is to listen to messages who deletes them instead?" Peters asked. "I think people expect accountability, and we're going to have to show that to the people." Added Councilman Ralph Inzunza: "If something like that happened in my office, that person would be fired because we are here to do the public's good and public service." Councilman Byron Wear voiced similar concern over the spill Tuesday. "This city is not going to take it anymore," Wear said. Uberuaga plans to appoint a new general manager to oversee water and wastewater operations and improve coordination between the departments. In addition, vulnerable sewer lines in canyons will be inspected after all significant rainfalls. Among other corrective actions the city is taking: making sure urgent calls reach an operator; archiving messages so they can be retrieved any time; giving more training to workers who get emergency calls; and adding more operators to take calls about the water and sewer system. Uberuaga said that it is "extremely difficult" to prevent sewer spills, but that the city should detect them quickly to minimize the damage, and "that's where the failure was." Dave Schlesinger, director of the Metropolitan Wastewater Department, said the upper and lower portions of Tecolote Canyon were inspected, but not the middle section where the spill occurred. "This was an error of judgment by department personnel," Schlesinger said. To properly overhaul the antiquated sewage system, the city would need to allocate about $1 billion, Schlesinger said. This is three times as much money as is currently planned for improvements. Last month's spill came about a year after a 34 million-gallon sewage spill that flowed into the San Diego River and onto beaches. The state fined the city $3.45 million for that spill, and another fine is widely expected for this one. Previous Stories:

• March 27, 2001: Councilman Raises Stink Over Tecolote Spill
• March 23, 2001: Tecolote Sewage Spill Prompts Change
• March 6, 2001: Mission Bay Given Clean Bill Of Health
• March 2, 2001: Sewage Spill Shuts Down Mission Bay